Don't have full rights? Don't pay taxes!

I love Melissa Etheridge for this. Why should I be expected to pay full taxes and such when I'm not given full rights and privileges as the straight world?


You Can Forget My Taxes
by Melissa Etheridge

An Academy Award-winning and Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter.

Singer Melissa Etheridge rails against the passage of the gay-
marriage ban in California - and she won't be paying the state a dime.

Okay. So Prop 8 passed. Alright, I get it. 51% of you think that I am
a second class citizen. Alright then. So my wife, uh I mean,
roommate? Girlfriend? Special lady friend? You are gonna have to help
me here because I am not sure what to call her now. Anyways, she and
I are not allowed the same right under the state constitution as any
other citizen. Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay
my state taxes because I am not a full citizen. I mean that would
just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same
rights, sounds sort of like that taxation without representation
thing from the history books.

Okay, cool I don't mean to get too personal here but there is a lot I
can do with the extra half a million dollars that I will be keeping
instead of handing it over to the state of California. Oh, and I am
sure Ellen will be a little excited to keep her bazillion bucks that
she pays in taxes too. Wow, come to think of it, there are quite a
few of us fortunate gay folks that will be having some extra cash
this year. What recession? We're gay! I am sure there will be a
little box on the tax forms now single, married, divorced, gay, check
here if you are gay, yeah, that's not so bad. Of course all of the
waiters and hairdressers and UPS workers and gym teachers and such,
they won't have to pay their taxes either.

Oh and too bad California, I know you were looking forward to the
revenue from all of those extra marriages. I guess you will have to
find some other way to get out of the budget trouble you are in.

...Really?

When did it become okay to legislate morality? I try to envision
someone reading that legislation "eliminates the right" and then
clicking yes. What goes through their mind? Was it the frightening
commercial where the little girl comes home and says, "Hi mom, we
learned about gays in class today" and then the mother gets that
awful worried look and the scary music plays? Do they not know anyone
who is gay? If they do, can they look them in the face and say "I
believe you do not deserve the same rights as me"? Do they think that
their children will never encounter a gay person? Do they think they
will never have to explain the 20% of us who are gay and living and
working side by side with all the citizens of California?

I got news for them, someday your child is going to come home and ask
you what a gay person is. Gay people are born everyday. You will
never legislate that away.

I know when I grew up gay was a bad word. Homo, lezzie, faggot, dyke.
Ignorance and fear ruled the day. There were so many "thems" back
then. The blacks, the poor ... you know, "them". Then there was the
immigrants. "Them." Now the them is me.

I tell myself to take a breath, okay take another one, one of the
*thems* made it to the top. Obama has been elected president. This
crazy fearful insanity will end soon. This great state and this great
country of ours will finally come to the understanding that there is
no "them". We are one. We are united. What you do to someone else you
do to yourself. That "judge not, lest ye yourself be judged" are
truthful words and not Christian rhetoric.

Today the gay citizenry of this state will pick themselves up and
dust themselves off and do what we have been doing for years. We will
get back into it. We love this state, we love this country and we are
not going to leave it. Even though we could be married in Mass. or
Conn, Canada, Holland, Spain and a handful of other countries, this
is our home. This is where we work and play and raise our families.
We will not rest until we have the full rights of any other citizen.
It is that simple, no fearful vote will ever stop us, that is not the
American way.

Come to think of it, I should get a federal tax break too...

Melissa Etheridge is an Academy Award-winning and Grammy Award-
winning singer-songwriter.