I would like to ask everyone to stop and think before supporting any same-sex marriage ban. Many of you may recall the drawn out battle a lesbian couple faced to get a family membership at the YMCA. That was just one couple and one battle.

This is something to ponder the next time you get a family discount on auto insurance, file a joint tax return, write a will, visit a spouse in a hospital, purchase property, draw income from a spouse's pension fund, live in married student housing. This list goes on and on.

In fact, married couples receive about 1,300 state and federal benefits that relate to everything from taxes, social security, inheritance, medical directives, divorce, child support, foster care and employee benefits. A same-sex couple of 30 years would receive none of these benefits, but an incarcerated sex offender married for two weeks would. If my partner of three years were to die today, his landlord would have more rights than I.

Many say marriage is a sacred institution, but at the end of the day it is not the church, but the government that grants licensure to receive marriage benefits. The government currently places no moral limits on marriage, such as who can get married, length of relationship, reason for getting married, or number of times they get married as long as they are a man and a woman.

If asked, decline to sign and write your representatives and congressmen and tell them you don't support government-sanctioned discrimination.