A warning from personal tragedy

The video above, It Could Happen To You by Shane Bitney Crone, is a sad and cautionary tale of what can happen to loving gay couples when tragedy strikes. Homophobic families often act with heartless cruelty at such times, revealing the evil that homophobia truly is. But the point of the video is not to attack homophobic families, but rather to serve as a warning to same-sex couples to protect themselves.

There are some heterosexual opponents of marriage equality who say that same-sex couples don’t need to be married or even have civil unions because they can always file legal paperwork to get some of the legal protections of marriage. They always ignore the enormous legal costs that come with such a strategy and, more importantly, that it’s impossible to make the protection offered by such paperwork impregnable in the way that marriage largely is.

When tragedy strikes, we are all at our most vulnerable. That’s why it’s so important to get our legal affairs in order in case the unthinkable happens. But people are lazy, or maybe they simply don’t want to think about planning for death, which is the legalistic reason why marriage equality is so important.

All that aside, it’s always sad to see a love story like Tom and Shane's end, especially when it ends way too soon. At least now, a year after the tragic loss he lived through, Shane has found a way both to move forward and to make something positive from his pain. That’s really pretty remarkable.