This article appeared recently in the Star Tribune.

6 months of gay marriage has state confronting profound change

describing how change has come to Minnesota.

In one rural Minnesota town, a florist is considering shuttering her business, unwilling to provide flowers for gay and lesbian nuptials but fearful that she might face lawsuits if she refuses.

And in Owatonna, Misty Zacharias, 36, said the passage of same-sex marriage “was a real eye-opener for me,” and an object lesson to the self-described conservative on the value of making your voice heard.

“The people for gay marriage worked really hard and told people about their beliefs and their lives,” she said. “I want people to be happy, but there are certain values that I have to stand by. There are still many people who have a traditional view for how marriage should be. I feel like my view is being less tolerated.”

For the many gay and lesbian couples who once had to hide their very relationship, the changes wrought in the past six months have been profound.

Wow.  There are still many people who have a traditional view for how marriage should be. I feel like my view is being less tolerated.

Does this woman have any idea what it actually means to face intolerance? Does she realize that her view has run rough-shod with intolerance over everyone else?

She is completely within her rights to believe whatever the fuck she wants about her ideas of “traditional marriage”, but that view has not been the prevailing practice in America for decades — easy divorce, multiple marriages, and even marriages across religious, ethnic, and racial lines, and all the rest have pretty much destroyed that idea of “traditional marriage” long before we saw a move for marriage equality for all people.

At one point it was “traditional” to marry within your race, within your religion, within your general socio-economic status, etc.   But then, with Loving v. Virginia,  they had to recognize interracial marriage.  And people started more visibly marrying people from other denominations (“oh, but they’re still Christian”), and then from other religions.  Eventually the boundaries of “traditional marriage” were so blurred that all they have left was “one man/one woman”.

And it’s not a brand new thing for same-sex couples to be married.  Churches have been performing “holy union” ceremonies for couples for many decades.  Couples living together, recognized in their social circles as married, etc.  The only difference is that now we are finally able to have these unions recognized under the law, which is where it actually matters.

If we waited for society to get on board first, and then hope they would give us recognition, it would never happen.  But once it is in the law that our marriages are just as valid as everyone else’s, and discrimination becomes illegal, THEN society will mostly come around and realize it is not the big earth-shattering issue they once feared it would be.

So that woman’s upset about her views not being tolerated is false.  She can have her beliefs, and if anyone asks her opinion, she is entitled to share her honest views.  For her to interject her opinion when nobody asks is what makes her views intolerable.  For her and her kind to try and create laws that institutionalize discrimination and bigotry is what’s intolerable.