<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div><div><div>It is really quite simple, Wayne. (I may have conveyed thus in an earlier posting . . . ALOT earlier).</div><div><br></div><div>The most wonderful part of my life has been the last 38 years (39 in June), that portion of my life that I have shared, and will continue to share, with my soul mate.</div><div><br></div><div>For somebody to deprive any two people from sharing and experiencing that same feeling is simply WRONG!</div><div><br></div><div>As a wall plaque (that I gave to my spouse when we got home on March 9th) says . . .</div><div><br></div><img src="cid:33BE7012-0F50-486F-952A-11328C0FDEFA" alt="image.jpeg" id="33BE7012-0F50-486F-952A-11328C0FDEFA" width="460" height="460"><div><div>Seeya round town, Moscow.</div><div><br></div><div>Tom Hansen</div><div>Moscow, Idaho</div><div><br></div><div>"If not us, who?</div><div>If not now, when?"</div><div><br></div><div>- Unknown</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div><br>On May 15, 2012, at 9:39, Art Deco <<a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com"></a><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com"><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a></a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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<div class="timestamp">May 15, 2012</div>
<h1>For Some, Same-Sex Marriage Is Not Politics, It’s Personal</h1>
<span><h6 class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/helene_cooper/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Helene Cooper" class="meta-per">HELENE COOPER</a> and <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/jeremy_w_peters/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Jeremy W. Peters" class="meta-per">JEREMY W. PETERS</a></h6>
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<p>
WASHINGTON — Some of their best friends turned out to be gay. </p>
<p>
Or a daughter (Dick Cheney). Or a close pal (<a href="http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/candidates/jon-huntsman?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Jon M. Huntsman Jr." class="meta-per">Jon M. Huntsman Jr.</a>). Or a couple seated close by (the Maryland lawmaker Wade Kach). </p>
<p>
President Obama’s embrace of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/same_sex_marriage/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about Same-Sex Marriage, Civil Unions, and Domestic Partnerships." class="meta-classifier">same-sex marriage</a>
rights last week instantly touched off speculation about the possible
political implications, but that misses a more nuanced point. Like so
many other Americans in recent years, politicians are less influenced by
party, faith or color on the question of favoring greater legal
protections for gays, both liberals and conservatives say. </p>
<p>
Instead, it’s more personal. </p>
<p>
“If you don’t know anyone who’s gay, then it’s an alien lifestyle,” said
Theodore Olson, the former solicitor general for President George W.
Bush who supports same-sex marriage. But, he added, when “you realize
that that’s Mary from down the street, she’s a lesbian and she’s with
Sally, what would it be like if they couldn’t be together?” people come
around. </p>
<p>
During the civil rights movement, many white Northerners — including
some who had never before interacted with black people — joined
African-Americans to fight for the principle of equal rights, often
opposing white Southerners who had lived among blacks all their lives
yet saw nothing wrong with the separate but equal statutes. Principle
seemed to come before the personal in many cases. </p>
<p>
With the gay rights movement, it often seems that the opposite applies.
While there are many people who support gay rights because it is in line
with their personal or political views, for many others, their approach
on the issue is experiential, and comes down to a simple issue: knowing
an openly gay couple. In fact, it can seem as if there are two Americas
when it comes to gay rights: one in which same-sex couples interact
regularly with their straight counterparts, helping to soften
impressions of homosexuality, and another in which being gay or lesbian
remains largely unspoken. </p>
<p>
Take Maureen Walsh. By night, Ms. Walsh runs Onion World, a sausage
restaurant in Walla Walla, Wash., with her family. But by day, she is
the Republican state representative for a district in the state’s
conservative southeastern corner. She said she had no problem with
domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. But when it came to
marriage, she drew the line. Then she started thinking about her
26-year-old daughter, who recently came out of the closet. </p>
<p>
“In some selfish way I did think what an affront to my beautiful
daughter, who deserves something everybody else has in this country,”
Ms. Walsh said in an interview, recalling how her decision to vote yes
on the same-sex marriage bill that passed in Washington in February
sprang more from a motherly impulse than from any political or
ideological reasoning. </p>
<p>
“It’s selfishness, but it’s motivated by love,” she said. “And I’d rather err on the side of love, wouldn’t you?” </p>
<p>
Then there’s Terre Marshall, a Republican delegate from Hawaii and
professional public speaker who once attended a predominantly
African-American church in Boulder, Colo., that advocated — as she, too,
did then — the traditional view of marriage as between a man and a
woman. About a decade ago, Ms. Marshall received a bombshell: a sobbing
telephone call from her best friend and business partner who disclosed
that she was lesbian, and that her relationship with a woman who Ms.
Marshall had thought was a roommate, not a girlfriend, had just ended.
</p>
<p>
“How could I have missed something so important to my closest friend?” Ms. Marshall said. </p>
<p>
Right away, she said, any opposition she had had to gay rights
dissolved. “I realized that I could care less about her sexuality. What I
cared about was my friend.” It didn’t take long for Ms. Marshall to
find her way to supporting gay marriage. </p>
<p>
Even some who once considered homosexuality amoral said they were
surprised to discover how quickly their perceptions changed once they
were forced to put a face to something they had considered only in an
abstract sense. </p>
<p>
Mr. Kach, the Republican state delegate from Maryland, provided a
pivotal vote for the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage earlier
this year. In an interview, Mr. Kach recalled how not so long ago he
became incensed when his local newspaper ran a picture of a gay couple
and their child on its front page for a story about Father’s Day.
</p>
<p>
“I was just absolutely appalled,” he said. “I didn’t think of them as a
couple. I thought of them as people who were engaged in that,” he paused
before saying, “the homosexual activity.” </p>
<p>
Then he attended a legislative hearing on same-sex marriage in February.
Because he arrived late, he had to sit next to the witness table where
he found himself eye to eye with gay couples who were testifying. One
was a pastor whose partner was ill with cancer, Mr. Kach said. </p>
<p>
“I’m sitting there watching the one with cancer rub the back of the one
who’s testifying,” he said. “I just saw the love and the devotion that
they had to one another.” </p>
<p>
Mr. Huntsman, a former Republican presidential candidate and governor of
Utah, said his position supporting civil unions hardened in 2007 after
the gay partner of a close friend was barred from the emergency room as
his friend’s son lay dying after a swing-set accident. </p>
<p>
“You can’t experience something like that without saying, ‘Where’s the
fairness?’ ” said Mr. Huntsman, a Mormon, whose religion strongly
condemns homosexuality. Mitt Romney, a fellow Mormon, does not support
civil unions or gay marriage. </p>
<p>
On Capitol Hill, Representative Nan Hayworth, a Republican from New York who swept into Congress on a wave of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about the Tea Party movement." class="meta-classifier">Tea Party</a>
support, became one of only a handful of Republicans to join the
Congressional gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender caucus. Her son is
gay. And Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a conservative Republican
who represents many gay constituents in a district that spans from Miami
to the Florida Keys, became the first in her party to co-sponsor of
legislation to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. </p>
<p>
Justice Lewis Powell of the United States Supreme Court was perhaps one
of the most famous public figures to come around on gay rights. He voted
in 1986 to uphold a criminal sodomy law, telling his law clerk at the
time, “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a homosexual.” The clerk, who was
gay, replied, “Certainly you have, but you just don’t know that they
are.” </p>
<p>
Justice Powell later said that he regretted his vote. </p>
<div class="authorIdentification">
<p>Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and Jeremy W. Peters from New York.</p> </div>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank"></a><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com"></a><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com"><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a></a><br>
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