Save Yourself for Marriage...Unless Marriage Is Not Saved For You

In mid-March, the HRC website reports that it is taking on a huge fight that is rather out of its comfort zone. It explains that the HRC offers its "support" (though I am starting to wonder what that support means outside of a pat on the back...digression) to Senators Frank Lautenberg and Barbara Lee who are introducing a bill that will repeal programs in school that offer an abstinence-only sexual education instruction. The HRC explains that it has long opposed these types of programs largely due to the fact that a government telling you to"save yourself for marriage" is highly ironic for LGBT youth who are concurrently told that they are not allowed the marriage that they would be saving themselves for. Amidst these ideas are obvious concerns about HIV and STI transfer when young children are sent into the world without knowledge about how contraceptives are necessary for much morethan avoiding pregnancy, and that pregnancy itself is not the only outcome in sexual intercourse.

What I appreciate so much about this post is that it is one of few posts that do not directly deal with the gay marriage debate. Though it is a central factor in the reasoning of the HRC to not support abstinence-only education, gay marriage is a footnote to the larger focus of the article. While I understand that it can be effective for an activist group to focus its energy onto one issue (i.e. gay marriage), I think that the HRC often looks past certain issues in the gay community and diminishes the entirety of the dialogue to one simply about gay rights. In this mindset, it

can be easy to overlook the cohesive expanse of the movement and all that it can entail. Here, however, the talk about HIV activism and the idea that not all people can wait for marriage is an important one to have.

In the future, it might even be worth mentioning that not all gay Americans are looking for a marriage. There is a large population in the country that are vehemently opposed to the institution in its heteronormative nature and its feeling that a religious institution should have legal footing in America. While marriage EQUALITY is obviously the main aim of the HRC, they might to well to determine ways to incorporate this subset of the homosexual community into the fight for gay rights.