In discussing legalization of same-sex marriage, you go right for claims designed to elicit emotional responses of fear and tribalism. You enumerate terrible and violent social and personal consequences in places that have accepted same-sex marriage. I can tell you right now that if that's true: you have unexpected defenders.
If you show me where your churches are being menaced, where you are being harassed with slurs and turned away from work and housing, where you're being fined and jailed for speaking your beliefs, and where your neighbors are being beaten for their religious belief that male-female marriage is the only union approved by God, then I will bring passionate defenders who disagree with those beliefs, and we will link arms around your home, your churches, and your neighbors to protect you and the people you care about from your assailants and tyrants. We will stand against our own if we must to ensure that what has been done to us does not become our sin, too.
Tell us where it's happening, and we'll come to your aid the way nobody has come to ours when we've been called faggots by strangers in cars and "gay" has become popular vernacular for "stupid", "lame", and "ridiculous", or when our neighbors were literally beaten into curbs, our homes and churches vandalized, and gathering places violently stormed. We will not let that happen to you. We care about you. Many among us have children of their own, and those who don't have our own children care about yours, who are our nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters.
Where are the attacks? Many of us will try harder to listen and not dismiss your persecution. We'll try to remember how few listened to us for so long and called us oversensitive and drama-prone. I recognize many won't, and some would like nothing more than for your religions to dissolve, and they'll be loud, but many of us will defend and protect your rights as we would any group facing tyranny, even if we get less attention for it than the radicals. We will not allow your churches to burn, your homes to be invaded, and your children to be "recruited".
Tell us where. Tell us how. We will help put a stop to it. But people are catching on: you don't get to pretend it's "us or them" anymore when it comes to liberty. You don't get to hide behind potential abuse you might face: we're here to stand with you against it.
Now what are your reasons?
