I have thought long and hard about writing this post because I want to start by saying something I fear might not sit well with most of Creative Loafing's readers: I am a Christian. My family attends church every week; I teach Sunday school; my husband plays in the worship band. We believe in and are followers of Jesus and we aim to be more like him each day.

I hesitated to write this post because I felt like, once I told you I am Christian, you would assume other things about me - that I'm a Republican; that I hold a staunch, unyielding position against abortion; or that I voted in favor of Amendment One. And you would be wrong.

I hesitated because, sometimes, when I tell people I am Christian, I have to supplement it by saying, "but not the crazy-right-wing-nut-job kind," and that gets tiring.

But I need to write this post. As a Christian. As a follower of a Jesus who was a radical; a revolutionary who stood for the poor and the outcast. A Jesus who did not say a single thing about being gay or straight, but sure did say a whole lot of things about love.

I realized I had to write this post when I was talking to my son as we headed out to vote on Saturday. I was trying to explain to him - a not quite 3-year-old - what it means to be married. "Being married means loving someone so much you want to spend your whole life with that person. You want them to take care of you when you are sick; you want to go on vacation with them; you want to play with them every day; you want to cook yummy food for them and read bedtime stories together."

In that very basic, dumbed-down explanation, I realized just how very little marriage has to do with sex. And isn't that the whole big hang-up the Christian right has? Those two or three Bible verses that talk about a "man lying with another man"? (Bible verses which many theologians argue are poorly translated and taken out of context.)

So let's stop focusing on what happens in the bedroom and look at what marriage is really about: spending your whole life with someone; providing for and taking care of that person; loving him or her the ways Jesus asked us to: "like we love ourselves."

"We are going to vote today because some people want to control who you get to marry," I said to Luki as I buckled him into his car seat. "They don't want to allow some people to spend their whole lives with their best friends."

"That's not very nice," he answered with a frown.

No. Not very nice, indeed.

Please, get out and vote against Amendment One today.