Thanks to the California Supreme Court coming to its senses and overturning the ban on gay marriage, George Takei and longtime partner Brad Altman are tying the knot! HELL YEAH!

This passage from George’s blog really hit home:

As a Japanese American, I am keenly mindful of the subtle and not so subtle discrimination that the law can impose. During World War II, I grew up imprisoned behind the barbed wire fences of U.S. internment camps. Pearl Harbor had been bombed and Japanese Americans were rounded up and incarcerated simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. Fear and war hysteria swept the nation. A Presidential Executive Order directed the internment of Japanese Americans as a matter of national security. Now, with the passage of time, we look back and see it as a shameful chapter of American history. President Gerald Ford rescinded the Executive Order that imprisoned us. President Ronald Reagan formally apologized for the unjust imprisonment. President George H.W. Bush signed the redress payment checks to the survivors. It was a tragic and dark taint on American history.

With time, I know the opposition to same sex marriage, too, will be seen as an antique and discreditable part of our history. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy remarked on same sex marriage, “Times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper, in fact, serve only to oppress.”

Well said.

It sometimes bothers me to know that I live in a country that purports to defend the freedoms of all people and yet denies its own citizens the right to marry based on sexual orientation. There was a time when people were treated as less than second class citizens just because they weren’t white or men. Now we’re treating people who love each other as second class citizens just because they happen to be of the same gender? That’s not defending freedom. If two grown people wish to marry, and are of appropriate age, let them the hell marry! It’s the new millennium and it’s high time we afford homosexuals the same legal rights that we say we want to spread around the globe. I hope other states follow. This is just ridiculous. There was a time when it would have been illegal for Audrey and I to get married because we’re not the same ethnicity. Have we really learned so little since those archaic days?

Congratulations to George and Brad. And good luck with all the wedding planning. We here at AZM salute you!

[Via George Takei’s Blog from Occasional Superheroine]

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 1:03 pm and is filed under News, The Future. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.