Let's step away from the abstract, all the rhetoric and semantics, smokescreens and conflict. Let's get down to the human face. Here is your human face;

I am gay. I think I was born gay. Is being gay sometimes a choice? Maybe it is for some folks, but not for me. I didn't choose to be left-handed or green-eyed either, but I am.

I am your neighbor. I am the stranger who held the door for you yesterday, the smiling friendly person who chatted with you in the checkout line last week, the one who let you pick greens from my yard for your tortoise. I am the one who gave you a jumpstart in the parking lot that day, the one who picked you up on the side of the road and drove you to fill that gas can and returned you to your car. I buy Girl Scout cookies and chocolate bars and wrapping paper, pledge to T-Ball hit-a-thons and fundraiser walks. I donate clothes to Goodwill, food to Plowshares, money to the Southern Poverty Law Center. I am courteous to you because it's the right thing to do. I give back to my community because it's the right thing to do.

I am a citizen of this nation. I believe your kids have a right to a strong, useful education. I believe your tax dollars should do more for less. I love baseball and football and cooking and books and children and laughter and the gloriousness that is my life in this land. I don't believe in your God but it's ok with me if you do. I don't want to force myself into your church, your home, or onto your children. I respect your opinions even when I don't agree with them, and I support your right to voice them. I support your right to govern your own life according to your personal beliefs.

I love my girlfriend. She is the glue that binds it all together, the sweetness unsurpassed by anything I have known, and the epitome of life's reason for living. I don't want to marry her in your church. I don't want you to provide spiritual support to something you find personally objectionable. But I want to be able to get her daughter medical treatment if she's hurt. I want our future kids to be legally protected by both of us. I want to be able to visit her in the hospital if she is incapacitated. I want whoever outlives the other to receive Social Security benefits from the system we've both paid into our whole lives.

I am not trying to convince you that I am a saint, or holier than thou. I am a terrible procrastinator. When I party, I tend to do it hard. I swear too much. I am opinionated and sometimes stubborn. I can be grumpy, unreasonable and sharp-tongued.

Just like you. Just like you. So tell me again why my family can't be protected by the laws of this country the way yours is? Tell me again why I should not have those rights you take for granted every day? Look me in the eyes and tell me how being me and living my life as best I can justifies second class citizenship? Look into my human face and explain to me how what I am justifies being shunned, hated, mocked, threatened, beaten, killed.

I am listening.