No love on Parliament hill.

You cannot control how Cupid aims his arrows. There is no use in trying and certainly no chance you'll ever understand.Love is the most powerful force in existence, and no self-rationalisation, political institution, or societal repression can hope to contain such feelings. It makes ordinary people commit extraordinary feats. It sustains others throughout a lifetime of hardship. It allows some to execute astonishing acts of self sacrifice. It exudes confidence, resolve, and bliss.

Everyone has a different meaning for love. It is sacrifice and compromise. It is opening up and extending oneself to another. It is joining two lives as one. It is the genuine desire to become a better person to make another happy. It is fate and it is luck. It is simple and complex. It is timeless.

But what is universally inherent in every definition is that love is uncontrollable. No one can help whom they fall in love with. The only choice is how to react. Either to chase or play coy, to shout it across town or quietly dream. Whether to impulsively commit oneself, or regretfully repress. The door is opened for us, but it is our decision as to how, if ever, we cross the threshold.

Since we cannot control love, no one should try to regulate it. Especially the government. When an individual, cognizant and conscious of the past, present, and future, with all the cultural, philosophic, familial, and emotional experience and advice in the world cannot explain, act on, or wholly trust in love, how can the omnipresent, impersonal, and abstract federal government have the audacity to attempt to control it? The government has no place in standardizing love. For starters, love is particular and the government works in large numbers and generalities. Secondly, it stands on shaky ground, as Liberals favor privacy and equal rights whereas Conservatives champion smaller government-where does love come in? And thirdly, the government isn't funny or charming: love involves mischief, awkward situations, and false assumptions-everything we see in Desperate Housewives, which is so like our lives.

More and more it is becoming evident that religious conservatives want to control who you fall in love with. Or at least to whom you express your love. If you love someone of the same sex, then we've got problems. Unless of course you repress your sinful feelings, which is the best way to fight the monsters inside. These activists will tell you love is absolutely controllable, and we should seek help through the church. If you devote your life to Jesus, then there's no way you can become gay-what better examples than all those Catholic priests. And above all, these zealots will tell you who you can marry.

Love is not about marriage, though, it goes beyond any institution. Love cannot be programmed, categorized, or easily referenced. While all love is unique, it is still equal, and rewarding those who love certain people over others is discriminatory and close minded. Punishing those who don't think and act like you is the worst form of intolerance and the purest form of stupidity. Marriage is about granting equal rights and creating security. When a person isn't allowed to take care of the one he or she loves after a lifetime of devotion because the government forbids it, then society hasn't just failed on a political level, but on a human one as well.

This extends to children as well. There are those in the government who feel they are the best judges of fit parents. There are those who believe that children are better off with divorced parents than with two dads that love each other. Apparently it's okay when a couple gets divorced and a son loses a mom, but a son isn't allowed to have two moms who want to take care of him. The government will go so far as to give money to single moms on welfare who marry the father of her children. Politicians believe they have the power to create a family, although they have no interest in emotion, thus creating a loveless household. Love makes life worth living, gives purpose and motivation, and allows a person to grow emotionally and mentally to amazing heights. The government is absurd to discourage that type of environment.

It is impossible to grasp just how powerful love is. It can never be prevented, deterred, or destroyed. Neither an individual nor an institution, wholly lacking force comparable to love, can control who falls in love with whom. It is eternal, and throughout life we can only be happy for those who have found it as we ourselves, each with our own reasons and hopes, search for love. Cupid will do as he pleases, and the only thing any of us can do in response is love, and let love.