This is an issue I’ve been grappling with for a long time and have never been able to collect my thoughts in a way that has left me confident enough to write. Lately, I feel more informed on the issue than I have ever been, having read what little I have been able to from all sides of the spectrum to help put words and clarity to my vague understanding of the debate: but and even after all the reading, digesting, pondering, pacing and the thinking, I still feel completely unprepared to write about it in a way to do it justice.

But I need to write about it, for me, to help me sort out my thoughts and to express them. My purpose is not to represent either side of the argument or to try to win it, but to simply express my relationship with this issue and my understanding of it – which inevitably includes making a stance.

And that is the hardest thing for me to do: choosing sides.

The biggest hindrance from writing about this previously has been fear. Not so much fear of doing the topic injustice, but of revealing my ignorance perhaps being seen as simply spouting someone else’s opinions. I will be the first to admit that my desire to conform to a mode of thought is greater than my ability for objective reasoning. However, this is something I’ve tried very hard to come to terms with on my own for the longest time.

In many ways, this is an issue that has very little to do with me. I am not gay, I am not American, I couldn’t have voted for or against Prop-8. I get to marry whoever I want and for longer than I’ve been around, that is something that nobody has ever challenged. What right do I have in having a say in whether or not people who are different from me get to.

I come from a country where Muslims – and Muslims only – are allowed to have 4 wives and where once our deputy prime minister was imprisoned with sodomy charges. We’re in a completely different place, issues wise – in a lot simpler of a place. What do I know about rights?

The very first time I tried to form my own opinion on same-sex marriage was in early 2004. I was 19 and had little to no political opinions of my own. I am 24 and still have very few to speak of. My debut in the blogosphere more or less coincided with the same-sex weddings that were happening in San Francisco at the time.

I had been reading a blog in which many college students from perhaps one of the most liberal universities in the US were writing about the issue at the time and I was just about the only one who stood on the conservative side, though I did so without a clear understanding of why, besides knowing that I couldn’t condone homosexuality because of what I had been taught and believed.

I started my “research” then, and began to try to decide what I agreed and disagreed with. My simple conclusion at the time was that marriage and family was a desirable thing, something that we are losing quickly in our society and that same-sex marriages would only preserve something that was dying but paramount to human existence. It never occurred to me to think about it changing marriage completely. Most of all, though, I remember never being able to decide just how involved governments should be in defining marriage – the ultimate question that I never answered (and still have yet to answer) being about the relationship between Government and religion and where the line should be drawn.

The thought process went something like this: laws exist to protect individuals and from their rights being infringed upon, but so many have moral/religious roots. Theft is illegal because we all agree on what ownership means. Taking a life is against the law because we accept life as a basic human right and possession, but we can’t agree on abortion because we don’t all agree on whether or not an embryo/fetus is human and has those rights – mostly based on religious beliefs. The list goes on. Those were all commandments in the Christian world, but we could argue it out with our human logic, and that’s why we still all agree on those laws. But what about “thou shalt not commit adultery”? We all agree that adultery is bad, but why isn’t it punishable by law? Why isn’t the government involved in that instead? Things didn’t add up in my mind, and as I couldn’t see how allowing same-sex marriage was an infringement on the rights of anyone else, I concluded that I was pro-gay-marriage because I couldn’t find a way to justify making it against the law simply because I believe what my religion teaches about homosexuality and not condoning it. I decided that I would rather err on the side of being accepting instead of being closed minded and “intolerant”.

There are a lot of holes in my simple, simple, logic. But that is what I thought. I never felt confident enough to write about it, and always had “that post I want to write about why I am pro-gay-marriage” at the back of my mind. And though I considered myself pro-gay-marriage (and thoroughly enjoyed calling myself a “liberal Mormon” even all through this year) because couldn’t see a good enough secular and logical explanation to oppose it, like with all opinions I have, I was always waiting to be proven wrong.

When same-sex marriage once again dominated the internet this time around, I was rather apathetic about it. I didn’t have the energy to go through the whole debate with my own brain all over again. But when many of my LDS friends were toting “Yes! on Prop 8″ everywhere, I began to be annoyed. To me, they were being stereotypically Mormon, like I had been in 2004, taking the obvious, brainless anti-gay-marriage stance.

Innately, however, I’ve always had the desire to understand why same-sex marriage is not something that I should condone. It took understanding Christopher’s perspective (because I knew he had come to those conclusions on his own, not just because he was told that is the way he should think) and mostly, learning about the Church’s stance and it’s involvement in Prop 8 to help me understand what I consider to be the Lord’s perspective on the matter.

Few will ever really understand how and why I’ve cried over this. I’ve cried and cried for those who have been denied the right to marry their loved one – I truly do understand how important this is; I’ve cried in frustration for being unable to completely have a firm hold on every single argument and come to a solid, logical, objective, well-thought-out and fair conclusion. But there is no “fair” conclusion. Not when fairness itself is what is being challenged.

I still find the arguments for same-sex marriage very convincing if you completely take the divine nature of man and women and the sanctity of marriage out of the picture and I can completely understand why people are angry. I would be too. But regardless who “won” or “lost”, what I do see in all of this is that while everybody is trying to defend their side of the argument with secular logic and with semantics and whatnot, things that I will never be great at, the basic debate isn’t about rights or equality, what marriage means or whether or not the government should be involved; the real fight is about whether or not society can and will not just tolerate but accept homosexuality as a practice.

It’s really that simple.

And even if/when the day comes where homosexual marriages become just as common as heterosexual marriages, there will always be anger toward those who still don’t morally condone the behavior and (despite what the members who are struggling with Prop 8 think), the LDS Church will always find themselves on that side of the line and it will always be impossible to “win” a secular argument using the earthly terms that have been set. None of our explanations that are meant to satisfy human logic will ever be able to do God’s logic any justice.

For me, this has been a process of humbling myself and accepting that Heavenly Father understands much more than my little brain can because ultimately,I am willing to give up my flawed opinions for what I understand and accept to be truth. I still have more questions than I have explanations and answers but I know that the Church is run under His direction and don’t question their involvement in Prop 8 because I don’t doubt that it was His will. I know that marriage between a man and a woman is sacred and ordained of God only time will show us just how same-sex marriages run counter to the ultimate plan of happiness.

Ideally I would write all of this without feeling like I have to apologize for being religious first and secular second. But I do, for some reason. I feel like in most cases, they don’t run counter to each other, but this was one instance where I had to first decide which side to be on, and ask for divine help in understanding the logic behind it. I feel like I get it, and despite the unanswered questions, feel a lot more sure-footed on this side of the line than I ever have been, though I’m still working on the part where I get the ability to accurately represent it to those who think otherwise.

As I end this post, I am still filled with the irrational fear of revealing just how simple minded I am. But I have to remind myself that I would rather be simple minded in my willingness to comply with Heavenly Father’s will than to have to prove my own feeble strength of reasoning.

In the end, it really isn’t so bad giving up the parts of myself I feel are treasured in this world in order to become just a little more like He is.