I am a gay man living in Norway who does not understand why some folks would not want me to be happy.

What I am talking about is the marriage equality debate. What I don’t understand is how it is right that I can’t marry the person who makes me the happiest.

I mean, I work, pay my taxes, buy local goods, and do all the things that heterosexual folks do, yet I cannot marry the one I love and choose? How is that fair?

How would opponents feel if the law prevented them from formalizing their commitments to one another?

Not long ago, there was another group of folks facing the same kind of discrimination — yes, I said discrimination. Until 1967, it was illegal for people of different races to marry.

When President Barack Obama was born, his parents could have been arrested in 20 percent of the states in the U.S. for marrying the one they loved and committed to. That is just crazy.

The saddest thing is that the same arguments that were made against mixed race marriages are the same arguments being made today. Fortunately, the Supreme Court will hear the case in the next year and make DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) unconstitutional just as it found anti-miscegenation unconstitutional.

Thankfully we have a progressive president who is not afraid to make the right decision even if it is unpopular with a select portion of the population.

Christopher Anderson, Norway