I guess I won't be eating Jelly Belly jelly beans anymore...no great loss

I'll admit it: I love Jelly Belly jelly beans.  However, since the chairman, Herman G. Rowland, Sr., seems to think that not everyone deserves equal rights, I will no longer consume them.  They're really empty calories anyway, and it's a sugary snack that is only bad for me--and everyone else.

What I don't understand is why people give time and energy to depriving people of rights and making life harder for people who are doing nothing to hurt them.  I don't care what your idea of "sin" might be; that's your belief, your matter of private conscience, and you are malicious for enforcing your beliefs on the rest of society.  Your legislation of sin does nothing to improve the quality of life for anyone, include you.  You're only doing it to harm other people.  Oh, you think you're saving them from a life of sin and eternal damnation, but the only life we know we have is the one you're making miserable for other people, and all over a faith-based belief in what you think a mythical deity wants from you.

LGBT people being who they are and loving whom they love does nothing to harm anyone.  What happens between consenting adults in relationships or in the bedroom is neither your business, nor should you be spending energy and money on this sort of cause.  You could feeding starving people.  You could be investing in the economy.  You could be doing something positive with that money, but you choose to be a malicious jerk.

Transgender people have it hard enough.  They have to struggle and come to terms with their gender identity in a society that largely does not accept them for who they are.  Acting to make it more difficult makes you a bully and a coward, because you are pushing people to conform to your idea of what is "normal", while trying to keep things you fear and don't understand out of your view.

Face your fears.  Stop pushing people around.  Use your money to achieve positive goals.  Do things that actually help.  Make the world a better place.  Stop picking on people who aren't causing you any harm and wish you no ill will.

Why it bothers me to say I'm an ally

I had a thought yesterday that's been nagging at me.  I've been called a "straight ally" before, and I've called myself the same, but yesterday, I thought it sounded like I'm in some other class of people, and I don't have a stake in the fight for civil rights for people with sexual orientations and gender identities different from mine.

I have friends in my life who don't have the same rights I do.  I do have a stake in this fight, because the fight for civil rights involves the happiness and well-being of my friends.  If they have to go through hardships and discrimination, the resulting turmoil affects me, too, because I care about them.  I care what happens to them, and when they can't do the same things I can because some people believe that the way they love is a "sin", it saddens and angers me.

Let's say someone I've known for ten years has a same-sex partner who gets in a tragic accident.  That partner ends up on life support, and the friend of mine can't make the decision to pull the plug because he's not the spouse, and he hasn't jumped through the legal hoops necessary to be in a position to make the decision.  That's not fair at all--especially if family comes in and makes a decision contrary to the wishes of my friend.

We don't have to go to extreme examples.  There are tax benefits to marriage.  There are legal benefits.  Credit benefits.  A person better versed in all of the rights one can't have because one cannot get married can give a large list, I'm sure (I've heard it's around 250 items long), but the point is that these are things people can't do because other people--people who aren't affected by the relationships at all--believe that legislating what they believe to be a "sin" is appropriate.

Anyway, call me an "ally" or whatever, if it suits a purpose, because not everyone who has had their rights denied is a personal friend, of course, but I'm on their side anyway.  However, I'm more than that.  I do have friends who are being denied the rights I enjoy, and, as a friend, I want to see them treated equally under the law.