Please vote NO

Here is the text of the e-mail message I just sent to my state senator:

Dear Senator:

I am a resident of your District, and I have lived there for the past eleven years. I did vote for you in the last election. I am writing to urge you to vote NO on the proposed bill which would amend the Minnesota Constitution to limit marriage to only heterosexual couples. This bill is a mean-spirited attempt to inject discrimination into our Constitution. I can appreciate that you have probably heard from many of your constituents--and probably from many who are not your constituents--who are urging you to support this bill because it's what "God ordains." Well, speaking as a devout Christian, I happen to disagree. But whatever people's religious views, I believe that our government should operate on the principle of the separation of church and state, and equal protection under the law. This bill has no place in our Constitution.

I feel extremely strongly about this: I believe marriage between gay people is no affront to the institution of marriage. Certainly, it's no affront to my marriage. In fact, it is only right and proper that gay couples should enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples do. Please, please, please, I'm begging you. Don't further the cause of discrimination by voting for this bill!

Sincerely,
etc.

You can bet he's been hearing from people about this. His voice mail box was full.

Lunchtime walk

The morning fog had burned off by lunchtime and the temperature had hit the mid 60s. Scorning the lunchroom, I decided to take a walk along the river, following some of the trails in Mills Ruins Park, overlooking St. Anthony Falls. The sky blended smoothly from pale beige at the horizon to a soft azure directly overhead, punctuated only with the pale sliver of the new moon. It was the sort of day that kids demand to get out of their strollers and run ahead of their mothers, and people roll down their car windows and crank their radios. After only a few deep lungfuls of air blowing off the river, I felt like a brazen hussy. I took off at a good clip over the Stone Arch Bridge, looking out over Lock and Dam No. 1, the ruins of the old flour mills and the falls. Bicyclists and joggers passed me, winter pale, their faces turned up toward the sun. The scrubby brush along the shore and on the island still look a sere grayish-brown, but a slight tinge of green is beginning to appear in the grass. Geese, gulls, and crows circled the water, exchanging raucous insults, and robins and sparrows made loud and no doubt extremely lecherous music in the trees. Above it all boomed the thunder of the falls, quickening the blood.

Coming inside was hard.