Little did I know that being a progressive liberal, and supporting the inclusion of gay and lesbian couples as legally recognized marriages, was supporting a societal shift that was planting the seeds of the end of my marriage. Oh, I heard the far-right Dobsons and Falwells proclaiming that gay marriage would erode the institution of marriage, but I laughed at them. "What narrow-minded bigotry," I foolishly thought. But indeed, it's the far-right who got the last laugh as my marriage crumbled under the weight of society's moral relativism in allowing committed, loving homosexual couples to enter into a legally recognized union.

I thought that when my wife and I found ourselves growing in different directions, when we tried to make things work out but we kept finding ourselves unable to live in harmony together, that it was because of our choices and our mistakes. That getting married at the age of twenty was bound to cause problems down the road as people change so much in their twenties. That we didn't give each other the extra commitment and work along the way to compensate for those changes. That we had only ourselves to blame for our divorce. But I was just making excuses for the encroachment of homosexuality into the institution of matrimony.

Gay marriage was just too much of a burden for our union to bear. The weight of this basic civil liberty being extended to non-heterosexuals snapped our marriage in half like a two-by-four. If only this society had held the line and stood firmer in its resolve to deny this basic freedom to those who fall in love with the same gendder, my children might still have happily married parents.

This has not been easy for me to admit. How relieving it would be to once againsay that my ex and I take responsibility for the breakdown of our marriage, that the blame rests upon our shoulders. How embarrassing and shameful it is, to be forced to acknowledge that forces beyond our control split us apart and ended our matrimonial bliss. Moreover, how I feel such sympathy for such paragons of conservative virtue like Rush Limbaugh, or Newt Gingrich, who have known all along the destructive power that equal rights for gays and lesbians would wield over their marriages.

It's practically as if the gay rights movement forced into Newt Gingrich's hands the very divorce papers that he thrust into the hands of his cancer-ridden wife, or that the homosexual agenda stabbed the heart of Rush's marriages, forcing him to be 0 for 3. And these clear-minded virtuous citizens never had the comfort that I had: that veneer of rationalization, the belief and acceptance that these divorces were, in fact, their own responsibility and their own fault. They have always known the cold, humiliating truth about gay marriage being at the root of their marital dissolutions. And those brave souls have my deepest sympathies - and now, empathy as well, as I too have been victimized by gay marriage.

There. It was a burden to get off my chest, but I feel that somehow, I've made the first step to recovery.

UPDATE: The comments threads have shown that gay marriage has caused bee stings, flat tires, snowstorms... my god, the menace promotion of this civil right has caused us. We must get the word out of the irreparable harm promoting freedom causes! Help spread the word, my fellow Kossacks!