Open letter to Neil Patrick Harris

On Monday, Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Wash., announced her support for a bill that would allow gay couples to marry in the state of Washington after long dwelling in indecision.

Though a vote has not yet been scheduled, if the measure passes, the state will become the seventh to pass the motion for equality in marriage, and its chances are looking up.

To this, my co-editor and I laughed at the disappointment of the Portlandians next door who are angrily shaking their fists, enraged that, once again, Seattle gets everything first.

Haugen stated that though she personally has moral disagreements with same-sex marriage, she settled her differences.

“Everyone has the same opportunities for love and companionship and family and security that I have enjoyed,” she said.

The statement in itself is fundamental to the acceptance of equal rights and the refutation of divisiveness, a concept “traditional marriage” creates.

The possibility of Washington’s newly legislated law is an inspiring one.

Haugen, as an individual who has compromised her beliefs and vouched for acceptance of something even if she doesn’t understand it has made the difference.

Sometimes, it’s too much to ask for a demographic of such deeply ingrained values and conventions to completely refute their pasts and accept what is new.

The struggle between LGBT alliances and those scrimmaging to keep civil marriage as solely between a man and a woman is a battle that can only be won by compromise and understanding.

Opponents of a gay marriage bill struggle with many qualms. One of these is the preservation of personal values and the inability to comprehend a world they don’t exist in.

These qualms prevent families, family values and the very unions they’re trying to prevent. Let me digress.

I, like any good American, obsessively follow the doings of Neil Patrick Harris, his husband whose name I can’t remember and their beautiful, beautiful babies.

Harris and his husband were married after the legalization of gay marriage in New York and, with their union and adorable twin babies, have made what is arguably the most intolerably happy family in all of Hollywood history.

Legitimization of their marriage was not necessarily the only contributing factor to their publicized happiness, as their refusal to stop putting their babies in tiny costumes has undone me.
These contributing factors add to Harris and his husband as a positive example of a family — the very thing that the American Family Association and all its cohorts are asking for.

What a passed marriage bill gave to Harris is the same across the nation: Opportunity.

Perhaps his family will fall apart, as many do. But all we asked was that we be given a chance.

­— ftirado@indiana.edu