Marriage Equality

Opening a Pandora’s box, and will probably be slammed for my views but want to share my thoughts anyway, because I’ve sat on them for way too long.

A bit about me first:

Being raised a Catholic, it was brainwashed into me that when a person gets married, they stay married.  They stick with their partner through thick and thin, through the bad times as well as good.

Being raised Catholic, I had long ago decided IF I ever got married, I would be one of those that’s loyal to my Husband, sticking with them through thick and thin, even if they cheated on me, or did anything wrong, I’d stay with them.

But then I saw what an alcoholic husband did to my mother, and what an abusive defacto (because mum was still legally married even though my father had run away from home), did to her and the Catholic in me decided that no one will ever know how loyal I would have been because I would never get married period.

I decided that if I’m ever fortunate to have kids, I’ll be raising them as a single parent.

But it was clear that wasn’t in God’s plans.  He was fine with me not getting married, but at the same time, I wasn’t meant to have kids either.  Fair enough, there’s others out there populating this world, they don’t need me to add to the crowd.

Besides, I’m here for God and for animals and for nothing else.  So have dedicated my life to God.  As a young child, I even wanted to become a nun, but the calling I had pulled me in two different directions.  The calling to serve God loyally as a nun was overpowered by the calling to serve God through helping his much loved creatures.

Over the years as I got more disheartened by the Catholic church and their hypocrisy, God allowed that.  After all, I spoke to him more than any member of the Catholic church anyway, (no doubt many out there may disagree.. and perhaps nuns may top me in prayers as I talk to God I don’t always pray).  I speak to God every day, and often don’t feel the need to go to Church because I know God is always with me and answers my prayers and questions, even the ones I never think of asking… and not always with answers I want to hear.  But He answers and thankfully, from a small child, I’ve always been blessed to hear him.

No, he doesn’t come as a voice in my head or a voice from the sky (although wouldn’t that be awesome!  The whole suburb could hear this thunderous roar:  “For attention, I have a message for Cass on Smith Street that everyone must hear”, that would certainly save me the legwork of passing the message on in other forms!)

But like with my mum (who also got His messages), He comes to me through dreams, or a guiding wind, or key words that stand out when someone is speaking to me, and you don’t realise they’re key words until they come back to haunt you, an example would be something like a journalist on the news would say (and I’ll use an ancient article as an example):  “The aboriginals are angry at the Prime Minister and claim that he’s in the WRONG AND THAT HE SHOULD SAY SORRY for the way aboriginals have been treated in previous decades” And I’d hear the whole thing, but later in the night, the words in capitals (shown above) would come back to haunt me and the flashback memory would hit me as to why these words have specific meaning.

He even answers me in my own actions.  One particular day, I wanted to head to another suburb for an event and had a definite route in mind, but before I realised it, my subconscious had taken over and I find myself driving into a different direction and low and behold, I discover the reason I was meant to go that way, and that’s when I realise my driving was in God’s hands, and I was meant to be there for whatever reason whether it’s to mention God or my dreams to someone, or to make a new friend or for for something else.

So God answers my prayers and my questions or makes me do things even if I don’t want to do them.  Another really good example was this morning.  I had been praying to God all week about an upcoming inspection and I asked God to please guide me so I can fix whatever is the biggest problem so that when they do the inspection in a couple of days, they’ll be pleased with my achievements.  In fact, I prayed this again last night.

So God answers my prayers this morning.  He caused my mobility scooter to break down and made me walk it home from a street away and develop enough anger that I didn’t want to deal with the scooter ever again, but this meant clearing out a portion of my garage to park the scooter somewhere out of the way.  My anger supplied me with enough energy to clear away years of hoarding and a mountain of clutter (ok.. maybe not a mountain, but a decent sized hill) so that within half an hour to an hour, my anger was spent, and my dead scooter  now had a space all to herself in my garage.  It didn’t solve my problem of what to do with a dead scooter, but it DID answer my prayer even if it was a way in which I didn’t like.  I’m now not worried about the upcoming inspection because I’m confident that the person doing it will be overly pleased at my achievements in the garage alone.

So that’s the kind of person I am; highly spiritual, a resounding faith in God, devoted to him and caring for any animal that God sends to me to help in any way I can.

So this highly controversial question has been raised over and over again with the public, the media and the Government.  “Do we say yes to marriage equality?”

The Catholic in me is confused.  “Marriage is between a man and woman”

The independent person in me is equally confused.  “Seriously?  Marriage is overrated!”

In saying that, I haven’t listened to the Catholic person in me in decades, I’d broken away from the Catholic church as soon as I hit adulthood BECAUSE of their hypocrisy and although I choose to live my life as a nun, happily single, serve God the best way I can (minus the uniform), I also choose to respect others to live their lives the best way they can, be they straight or LGBTI (am I missing any letters?).

I’ve happily been sitting on the fence re this questions because.. well.. basically it doesn’t involve me, but now am forced to hop off the fence to one side or the other, so I did with this what I’ve done with everything else.  I’ve put my question to God.  I needed His advice in this because naturally, I want to do right by God and although we are all given the ability to make choices, I want mine to be the right choice.  If God says vote Yes, I’d do that, and if He said vote No, then I’d do that.

He took some time to respond to this, clearly wanting to give me a chance for me to decide on my own, and ONLY because I grew up Catholic, I was leaning to the side of No only because Marriage is really (a religious thing that the Catholics do) [keeping in mind that my entire childhood was this faith, and that’s just how I happened to see this before I started questioning Catholicism as a whole.]

Don’t get me wrong, I see people in other faiths get married, but for some reason, my simple Catholic childlike mind seemed to see it as mostly a Catholic thing to do even though I KNOW that marriage as a whole is a global thing.  Hence my confusion.

Then God answered me in 3 parts.

• He wanted me to reflect on my own life as a person.  I was confused at this, I thought I already had, and He answered, NO.  Look at your character, your thoughts, your actions in every day life, how you’ve chosen to live your life, and of course, I realised what He was talking about.  As a child, I grew up a tomboy.  I put it down to my father not wanting girls, he only ever wanted boys, so he bought me only boys toys; matchbox cars, build it yourself radio kit and the like.  Mum did get me dolls, but I was always more interested in the cars than I was my dolls.  Growing up, I always had a saying:  “Women, can’t figure them out! … what am I saying?  I’m one of them!”  But that was my character, I had a male mind in a female body and I was always getting in trouble by my female friends for saying the wrong thing (which I’d blame ‘foot in mouth’ for) or doing the wrong thing.  I’m not a gossiper and hate when people to gossip to me, it tends to go in one ear and out the other.  When it came to intimate issues, I was even more confused.  I’m not turned on by men (which I put down to past negative experiences), but I’m not turned on by women either.  I am a classic freak of nature in this respect.  And don’t even mention women’s issues.  I was angry when my breasts started to develop and I willed them to stop growing, and thankfully, they did before they fully developed, so I got half-assed breasts, and I’m happy with that.  When my period started I was even angrier at my body.  It didn’t start till late and again I think that was due to me willing it not to.  Then when it did start, I was at war with my body.  Every single monthly that happened was like hell on Earth for me.  From the time I was 16, I wanted to go through menopause and in my late 40s when menopause finally started, I couldn’t be happier.  And finally, before my mother met my father, she had all boys.  So I knew the ability was there.  But my father could only produce all girls, and since it’s the onus on the man to produce the right genes, in this case my father stuffed up.  So now I put it down to the fact that yes, I’m the freak of nature because if mum’s body could have had its say, I’d have been born a male, but as it was my father’s body dictating, I came out female.  The genes and mentality are all there for the masculine, I just didn’t get the body that comes with it.  To add to this confirmation, I’ve had facial hair all my life which I’ve put down to hormone issues, but time and time again, I’ve had this tested, and my hormones are normal.. go figure!  And yet God is pleased with me, approves of me, talks to me and understands that I’m loyal to Him and God loves me.  So this was answer one.
• Then there was this dream.  I was at a party and there was a guy at the door and I wanted to let him in, but everyone else said no, he wasn’t welcome.  I was confused by this and went out to speak with him.  It turns out he was gay and he said all he wanted was to feel welcomed by everyone and it hurts him that he’s always made to feel left out.  I did try to go back in to convince everyone to let him in but they just laughed and carried on, so I left the party.  I didn’t want to be part of a group that was so cold and unwelcoming.  To me, everyone should be included.  That was answer 2.
• Then watching an episode of the Project, and they had a celebrity on, Magda Szubanski, and she was talking about the experience of one friend who’s same sex partner was dying.  Her friend wasn’t allowed in the room even though her partner was screaming for her because she wasn’t “next of kin”.  I was reminded by something a friend said about being treated like second class citizens.  It’s not about the marriage per se, but it’s about the option of being legally bonded by the justice system so that partners CAN be seen as “next of kin” if and when the need arises.  Answer 3.

So I got my answers that I asked from God and it’s clear He is happy with a yes vote.  God gave us all a choice for a reason in the same way that God made all of us who we are for a reason.  Science and genetics play a big role in this community as a whole.  Be it a male stuck in a woman’s body, or vice versa, or people born with the genetics of preferring the same sex to the opposite sex, and although these people have the ability to create children as much as any straight couple, they often use the greater option of adopting an unwanted child or (if they choose to) go childless.

God has seen that there is a need for parents without kids who can take on the responsibilities of parents with kids who need help and He’s catered for this (although you don’t have to be Gay to adopt in the say way Gays don’t have to be childless).

What I’m trying to say is, this community is here for a reason; it’s to teach us all tolerance, understanding, acceptance, and not to judge, that everyone IS different, that everyone, be they straight or LGBTI (and whatever letters I’m missing), HAS a purpose and that we should NEVER judge ANYONE or treat them as second class citizens just because they live their life very different to ours.

Now that God has answered my question re my confusion and doing what is right, that is both ethical and moral, I’ll be voting YES.