When I first told my high school English teacher in Newport Beach, Calif., that I was seriously considering attending UW, she said, “Go. It’s like Berkeley.” It didn’t take me long to understand what she meant.

Madison seems to be, at least from my experience here, a very gay-friendly city. In just the few short weeks I’ve lived here, I have seen a gay pride parade on State Street, an Isthmus cover story dedicated to gay nightlife and countless rainbow flags and gay couples walking the streets. However, one thing that puzzles me as a student of politics is that the legalization of gay marriage in Wisconsin is not even in the works.

I do not understand why in a city as accepting and political as Madison, efforts to legalize gay marriage are minimal at best. This is not to say there aren’t groups out there that support gay marriage, or that they are not doing exceptional work. I merely find it odd that I have seen what seems to be hundreds of “Support the Unions” and “Recall Walker” signs and only a few reading “Equality Now.”

As I mentioned earlier, I’m from California, a place with a very vocal history on the issue. San Francisco was the first city in America to elect an openly gay official in 1978, as well as the first to recognize gay marriage in 2004. The state legalized it in 2008 before the historic passage of Prop 8 (something that still eludes most of my friends, liberal and conservative alike).

Some who do not support gay marriage nevertheless support civil unions. However, as I have learned in California, that is far from marriage. Many gay people feel that civil unions are degrading. Having two separate institutions for two different groups of people seems a lot like a “separate but equal” argument.

Many opponents feel that gay marriage infringes on their personal religious beliefs. I would like to remind them that we have freedom of religion; their church does not have to recognize gay marriage if it doesn’t want to, but if another church wants to marry a gay couple they have the right to do so.

In the state of Wisconsin, many people have not had the exposure to diversity that I have. Speaking from experience, like all groups of people, gays are people just like everybody else. They have no ‘gay agenda’ to impose on you, nor do they have a hedonistic lifestyle so vile you cannot speak of it. They live a very similar lifestyle to straight people.

Many are understandably hesitant to use the word marriage to describe the union between gays. This is a personal moralistic view or value that they personally hold. There is nothing wrong with having this view personally; however, we as Americans come from a national philosophy that has developed over centuries in which “all men are created equal,” in which minorities are entitled to the same rights as everybody else, in which “separate but equal” is unacceptable.

Although it may be your personal opinion that marriage is not the right word for a union between gays, under the letter of the law, gays deserve to be equal to straight people, and the only way to assure this is to make the institution of marriage the same for everyone.

Wisconsin should attempt to legalize gay marriage because it is right, if for no other reason. This begins with a populist grassroots movement focused on advancing the rights of gays. As a Supreme Court case is pending with likely implications towards legalization nationally, Madison should be fighting for the rights of the people of its city.

Spencer Lindsay ([email protected]) is a freshman with an undecided major.