Freedom to Marry and Normalcy

I think that a lot of people object to same-sex marriage because they see it as something "weird" or "disgusting." I know that when I was first alerted to the idea that people of the same sex might be romantically interested in one another, my first reaction was revulsion at the thought of how they would... express their intimacy, shall we say. But I soon realized that there were pairs of heterosexuals to which I would have a similar reaction when thinking about the expression of their intimacy. So what really distinguished same-sex couples from opposite-sex couples was the novelty of the idea.

Then I got to thinking, sexual orientation is merely one facet of otherwise complicated human beings. And there are plenty of ways in which I am weird, too, and I wouldn't appreciate people judging me on just one single aspect of my personality.

Here are just a few ways in which I buck the norms:

• Physically,
  
  
  
  • I am 5'11" (>95th percentile for white women in the United States)*
    
  • I am left-handed (8-15% of the population is left-handed; the Irish term for left-handed, ciotóg, means "strange person")*
    
  • I have no cavities (Average 18-year-old has had 12 cavities; average person age 40+ has had 29)*
    
  • I can curl my tongue in this weird lasagna-noodle shape. (no stats on that, but my sister Laura and I are the only people I know who can do this)
    
  
  
• Academically,
  
  
  
  • I have a Ph.D (like 0.6% of American women)*
    
  • ... in computer science (like 2.4% [1136] of all American doctorates awarded in 2005; 19% of which [225] were awarded to women)*
    
  • and a B.S. in Physics. (couldn't find any stats on that, but there was one other woman in my class and at the time there were no women professors in my department)
    
  
  
• Demographically,
  
  
  
  • I am American (like roughly 4.5% of the world's population)*
    
  • Our family is a reverse-traditional family (like 147,000 other American households)*
    
  • I out-earn 75% of Americans*, and 99% of all people in the world.
    
  
  
• Philosophically,
  
  
  
  • I am an atheist (5-10% of Americans)*
    
  • I support marriage equality (unlike 81% of my fellow Tennesseeans)
    
  
  

Any one of these facts about me make me unusual. All of these facts together make me a very strange person indeed! But my uniqueness does not disqualify me from being a member of the human race, deserving of love, respect, and equality. Some people's "strange" attraction to members of the same sex doesn't disqualify them, either.