whats love got to do with it?

"Whats love got to do, got to do with it? Whats love but a second hand emotion..." Lyrics by Tina Turner, 'Whats Love Got To Do With It laments the fact that all love is, IS a second hand emotion, and sarcastically just a thorn in the side of a relationship.

I was lucky enough to have spent the past week in Provincetown with Joe, a place made from magic surrounded by promise, and covered with delight, desire and dreams. It is a mecca for Gay and Lesbians, and a sanctuary for heterosexuals who want to find a common denominator in this life rather than differences and distance.

While I was walking Commercial Street, traveling the rocky walls of the breakwater, absorbing the Provincetown dusk's and changing hues of the sky and water, there were dozens of wedding ceremonies taking place and newly wed couples embracing a newly wed bliss in one of the few states that believes in equality not separate but equal.

I am a news junkie, believing the more I know the better prepared I am to defend what I find to be true and fair, but decided that on this vacation less is better and less angst is best. So I distanced myself from most forms of manufactured noise from FOX, wishy washy less factual but pontificated self promotion of CNN, and editorials from MSNBC. No New York Times, Huffington Post, NPR, Newsweek or Time I managed to ween myself from the dangly tentacles of journalists and entertainers who many times misrepresent the news and try to recreate the news in their image.

But somehow, like the oil leak in the Gulf, no matter what attempts are made to cap the flow, news leaked out and I being so aware of issues and events listened and let the residue seep into my head and heart.

Lots of news flying around about the Defense of Marriage Act, the prospects of over turning Prop 8 in California, the attempt of the save our marriage folk to take away freedoms of marriage in those states that have come to terms with equality. Lots of arguments as to the merits of same sex marriage and the evils of same sex marriage.

And in most of the arguments from those who want to save the Institution of Marriage from the clutches of the LGBT community never once spoken is the fact that marriage is about love. The religious zealots will shout its about procreation, the fearful heterosexuals will just scream its not natural, the bigoted self loathing lemmings will cry its for the children, but no one admits that marriage should be about love. Whats love got to do with it?"

For anyone fortunate enough to walk hand in hand with their partner, their soul mate, their lover, their spouse, down the busy boulevard of Commercial Street in Provincetown, the answer to the question of whats love got to do with it, would easily be answered.

Love has a lot to do with it, it being marriage. Love IS the powerful variable that makes a marriage real, legit, and for those who believe in God, a blessing God has bestowed on his creation. It is all about love, and if anyone needs clarification about who should or should not be permitted to marry they should base it on one man loving one man, one woman loving one woman, one man loving one woman, one woman loving one man.

How wonderful if the pro and con rhetoric about who can or should marry one another removed all of the bias, bigotry, vitriolic and venom and faced the facts fresh on and forced the question of what does love have to do with it?

I am back in LA and still see the couples, (in Provincetown) heterosexual and homosexual walking arm in arm, hand in hand, heart to heart, loving each other. And damn if that is not what marriage is all about then what?

"Whats love got to, got do with it..." for those who truly know love and have experienced it a whole damn lot.