A Wedding

I don't expect everyone to understand how important it was to be in Massachussetts to see good friends who had spent 22 years together get married over the weekend but, for me, it was magic. I remember marching around for many years in the 1990s (much more than I do today) which also included speaking out publicly before school boards and anyone else who would listen and support the idea that civil rights don't stop at a particular group of people. They belong - or should belong - to all of us.

I know the biases that many people cling to that get in the way of their better selves and their better judgment. (I'm sure I have plenty of my own on a wide variety of issues.) When it comes to opposition to same sex marriage, I am convinced that - at its root - is a range of misconceptions of how many of us live and what we really want.

I am already in a loving, 16+ year monogamous relationship. I don't need a legally recognized marriage to keep me from behaving any differently. I don't need wedding gifts. (Cards are nice, though.) I don't need a cake with two little plastic guys on top of it. I don't need my church to sanction the marriage. All I want is the same choices that you take for granted.

Years ago, I was asked by someone (I wish I could remember who but it doesn't matter) why I would ever want to "copy" what opposite sex couples have, particularly when 50% of marriages end in divorce. My general reply back then was that I had no interest in "copying" anyone. I was also asked if I would run out and get married as soon as it was available to me. I recall saying something along the lines of "no, but I wouldn't drag my feet for very long if my partner and I decided together it was what we wanted."

Back to the bias part. There are still a lot of straight guys (and a few women) who simply cannot get past the sex part because they believe that one person must be 'submissive' and believe that real men are never submissive or do anything that seems submissive. I'm sorry to tell you that if you have ever done anything off your wife's Honey Do List, you have been submissive. When I go to weddings between straight couples, I do not imagine what they are going to do on their wedding night. As far as I know, marriage does not come with a brochure with rules on how to be intimate. If it matters that much to you, consult your religious leader. I already know the answer that I would get.

In my humble opinion, you should all be honored that what you have is valued by those who cannot do what you can so easily decide to do. If the couple down the street gets divorced, I hope you don't sit at your kitchen table and say, "honey, the Smiths just cheapened our marriage. Maybe we need to get divorced, too." If the Smiths are gay and unmarried and decide to part ways, I hope you don't breathe a sigh of relief and say "thank goodness they weren't married. Otherwise our marriage would have been damaged."

I am pretty convinced that those conversations don't happen. Opponents of same-sex marriage think that they are protecting the institution of marriage, not their own. The "institution" of modern marriage as we understand it today is relatively new. In the 19th century and for a couple hundred years before that, single, unmarried women were largely doomed to poverty, even if they could own property in their own names. Back then, married women traded their independence (if you could call it that) for financial security and in the process literally became the property of their husbands and could no longer own anything in their own right. The term "rule of thumb" grew out of Western European common law that held that a husband had every legal right to beat his wife with a stick no larger than his thumb. Marriage between straight couples has obviously changed.

When I am feeling angry about this issue - pretty rarely but less rarely than 10 years ago - I actually value my own unsanctified 16 years as being superior in some important ways to a modern marriage. Along with marriage comes an expectation that the community around you should help to support your union. I have the support of family and friends even without marriage but we lack the support of our laws which are mostly designed to keep married people married.

Having none of that on my end and still having a relationship longer than almost all of our straight friends sometimes makes me feel superior to you. What would you do if you forgot your papers that permitted you to see your partner in the hospital? What would you do if your partner died and perfect strangers that happened to be related to your partner could decide how and where to bury your partner, enter your home and take things from it without your consent? I could face that someday, but it doesn't mean that I would or could walk away from my relationship to spare myself that kind of humiliation. I get fewer rights and much of what my partner and I have done has been on our own, without the kind of support you get. That is when I think (rightly or wrongly) that I'm tougher than you are and that the love I have for my partner is stronger because it has to be.

I remember being asked many years ago if there were a medical breakthrough that would make me straight, would I take advantage of it. I said "no". I still say "no". I am no less a person than anyone else. I am, despite what I have already said, no better, either. I would rather spend some time persuading others that I and people like me pose no threat to your religiously-based, state-recognized marriages. Jane Austen novels were never really my thing, but I have read all of them anyway to make sure that my mom thought I was well-read (go ahead, make a joke that I am a mama's boy - guilty as charged) and have seen the film versions. If I want to marry Mr. Darcy (why are they are always called Mr. Darcy?), and you weren't there to see it, how on Earth could it matter to you? It cannot be true that your devotion to your wife or husband is diminished one iota because of a choice I might make. If I am wrong, please tell me why.