When I climbed the Capitol steps in January, I promised myself that I would return to the Senate with an open mind and greater respect for others.

Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage. Our time on this earth is limited, I know that better than most. Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back — government has no place in the middle.

- Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois on his evolving view of marriage equality 

 

Why is marriage important? Why are these Prop 8 and DOMA oral arguments before the Supreme Court so damn important? Don’t listen to all the noise — just listen to the lead plaintiff in the DOMA case, an 83-year-old woman named Edie Windsor, who lost her lifelong partner and ended up in a hospital with “broken heart syndrome,” only to wake up and realize the “federal government was treating us as strangers.” This is an everyday hero.

Hearts and minds, hearts and minds. Ultimately, this isn’t about gay rights, or even gay people for that matter. It’s about exposing yourself to the unknown. The same could be said for our opinions about what it’s like for others to be poor, or minorities, or immigrants, or whatever group we currently don’t understand. This is about meeting people who enjoy different lives than yours, instead of relying on basic stereotypes and propaganda.

Go out and experience a world different from yours. Be the city slicker who sits down with the farmer. Be the Wall Street banker who sits down with the single mother that can’t pay her electric bill. Be the border restrictionist who sits down with the Ecuadorian landscaper whose entire family is waiting back home on his paycheck. Don’t just imagine what it’s like to put yourself in someone else’s shoes; go see what it’s like to put yourself in their lives, if even just for a moment, for a flicker of honest conversation.

A good takeaway from the news that Sen. Rob Portman now backs same-sex marriage, the first GOP senator. READ FULL OP-ED HERE.