Being proud of the United States legalizing gay marriage is like being proud of your kid for not being the class bully. Accepting love should be our norm, not an exception we celebrate. God’s love isn’t defined by you or me, or the United States Supreme Court, and shouldn’t be used as a weapon to impose hate on other people.

I’m a straight, Christian, teenage female. I grew up in the church and I grew up loving gay and lesbian people around me, without knowing or celebrating it. The problem with people being ‘proud’ is that it’s the wrong kind of pride. We want to cover ourselves in glitter, just to watch ourselves shine. We can’t seem to let ourselves forget all the reasons we have to be better than our neighbor. We aren’t proud enough to defend our friends when the situation arises, but we’re happy to change our profile picture to a rainbow-filtered version of our face and pretend to be as accepting as God wants us to be. Our generation likes standing behind a cause, just as long as we never have to really commit to a something that our friends might disagree with. We defend nothing and even leave ourselves out to dry because it's easier to have no values than to process our thoughts into a solid opinion that we might have to defend.

I believe in Christ and I believe that He is our savior. If you don’t believe those things or even if you believe the opposite, that’s okay. You’re human and you have a right to believe whatever you want to, and my duty, my Christian duty, is to love you. With a Christ-like love, I am called to spend every day as a relentless and unconditional lover of God and his creations. All of them, all of us. It isn’t my job (or anyone’s for that matter) to protest your right to happiness, because really, that’s what this is all about.

While we shouldn't be proud of our temporary lapse in hatred, we should be excited to kickstart change in our nation. It's ironic, honestly, that we're basically re-living the civil rights movement, because we've been through this before. People will always hate gays, just like there will always be people that hate African-Americans and whites and Christians and Jews and every other defining quality that a person may posses. Hate will always be a part of life and passing a law isn't going to change that. We as a nation still aren't okay with everyone being on the same level that we are. Saying that you're uncomfortable with gay marriage because you're uncomfortable with how the Bible defines sin is like taking a step back in time by three thousand years. Sex isn't love because our generation's excuse for love is lost connections and late night squirming.

The United States decided that after two hundred and thirty nine years of collecting taxes from and giving benefits to straight couples, we’re okay with allowing two men or two women to have the same rights as are found in the confines of vaginal sex. We're finally okay with humans being defined as humans, yet we deem ourselves remarkable for understanding the human condition and accepting love as love regardless of gender.

We need to transition from a society amazed by a glimpse of equality into one where we are appalled by the mention of degrading a culture, no matter who is on the lesser end. Our generation needs a reality check. We need to become humble and kind and realize what God's message really was. He sent Jesus to comfort the broken, not to put the perfect onto pedestals. We live in a society of broken and empty people, but maybe that's so God has more pieces to work with.

Accept your neighbor. Love your friend. See your differences and celebrate them with the same joy you had on Christmas morning as a child. That's God's love, and that should be an American love.