12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touching Testimony At Marriage Equality Hearing
Sixth-grader Matthew Lannon testified at the marriage equality hearing in Rhode Island on Thursday, asking the panel, ” Do you believe that my parents are equal to every other straight couple in Rhode Island?”
Matthew, with his two moms, watching and lending him support, was one of the many advocates and opponents of gay marriage to testify before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday evening at the RI State House.
“My parents and all the other gay and lesbian people here want to be happy, just like you. All they want is to be treated fairly. But unlike most of you, they have to come again here year after year and explain over and over why their love is equal to yours. This year, you have the opportunity to change that. I say, choose love”
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- isagao 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- williamng 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- johnb52 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Cute
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- gummehz thinks 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... is Win
- Youna Cho 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- kimwashere92 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- davidvizcarramcm 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- calli441 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- andrewa10 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Cute, Win & OMG
- josephm35 thinks 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... is Win
- jayayenenwhy thinks 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... is Win
- ashleej2 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- ninag4 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- Sammedawn thinks 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... is Win
- brklyndox 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- laurens38 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- avcolon 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Cute
- buzzzcock 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- amy swiney 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- katlynb 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- jennae3 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- Shinythings 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Cute & Win
- Phillees 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- moosh 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- graceaintnothinbutagthangc 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- dianad15 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- Rachh 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Cute & Win
- Holly Gofightly 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- Karleetyler thinks 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... is Win & Cute
- samantham8 thinks 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... is Win
- tifa08 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- kayley w 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- tsherborne 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
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jeffh40 2 months agoFreedom without virtue isn’t freedom. It will eventually destroy a society. Freedom without morality. Freedom without proper constraints and restraints. Freedom without an accompanying sense of responsibility. Freedom without a spine or a spinal cord of morality. We’re not talking freedom. But in today’s modern vernacular, we are. To young people today, that’s exactly what freedom is. Freedom is hedonism. Freedom is your sybaritic pursuits. You do whatever you want, and as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else, there’s nothing wrong with it. And it’s the “as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else,” that’s where the trouble begins. Because is there great harm to a society when an age-old, I mean, as old as humanity itself custom is corrupted? Any custom, any tradition that has demonstrated it’s usefulness, its primacy over hundreds of thousands of years, is a freedom that would corrupt that, actually good? Is it virtuous? It isn’t.
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MichaelSF 2 months agoAllowing two people to marry is not a corruption of marriage. What virtue and morality is missing when gay/lesbian couples are free to marry? What constraints and restraints apply to straight couples but would not apply to gay couples? What responsibility do gay couples shirk when they get married? Please, I’d like your answers to those questions.
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MichaelSF 2 months ago
Also: The “usefulness” and “primacy” of marriage that has been demonstrated for centuries remains unaltered when two men or two women get married. I think people overreact to the prospect of a couple they don’t know deciding to join together as one family in love. Marriage does not need to be defended. No one is advocating for its demise.
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A.Leigh 2 months ago
I would say that the phrase “as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody” kind of takes care of your argument. Doing something that doesn’t hurt anyone may not be good, necessarily (is there any inherent good in me eating ice cream or watching an episode of Scrubs? not really), but it is also, by definition, not bad. Nobody is negatively affected by it in anyway, therefore it cannot be bad. And there are PLENTY of age-old customs we’ve gotten rid of in recent decades, typically with the result of a much improved society. One custom that, as you say, is “as old as humanity itself” (or at least as old as civilization) is the tradition of women being less well-educated than men, women being limited in or completely barred from owning property, women having little or no say in who they married, and women who didn’t need to work hard labor (in fields and, later, factories) to survive not being allowed to work. Nowadays, women are not just allowed to go to school and have careers, but encouraged to do so, and (almost) nobody would try to discourage them from owning property or choosing who they marry. I, for one, think leaving behind the several thousand year old tradition of oppressing women is one of the absolute BEST things that has ever happened in the entirety of history, and I can’t help but feel horribly sad for all the intelligent and/or talented women throughout history whose skills went wholly to waste because they weren’t allowed to use them, simply because they were women. If society is better off leaving those age-old traditions behind, couldn’t there be other age-old traditions we’re better off without, as well?
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- katiethewriter 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win, OMG & Cute
- carlywarly 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- eml87 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- Robin Lindsay 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- malinb 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- bethf6 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- BrittyJo 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- lauraarayata 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s OMG & Cute
- serjoshua thinks 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... is Cool Beans & Win
- Em0987654321 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
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Robin Lindsay 2 months ago
I completely disagree that this is an “affair of adults”. He and his moms are directly affected by marriage equality laws, and it’s pretty clear that he feels strongly about it. At 12, he can already see how important it is to speak out.
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A.Leigh 2 months ago
If he was 5, I’d agree with you, but 12 year olds are perfectly capable of having their own thoughts and opinions about this sort of thing. Besides, it affects him directly, every day of his life. Unless you have a reason to believe he was coerced into doing this, rather than choosing to of his own free will, I don’t think it counts as him being “used in the affairs of adults.”
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- RogueAuntie 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- EmAsh317 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch...
- sahalstead 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Win
- red01angel 12 Year-Old With Two Moms Gives Touch... and thinks it’s Cute & Win
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