I originally posted this piece at Radioactive Quill on August 10th.
Back in '03-'04, the radically radical and unelectable Howard Dean was all kinds of vilified for standing up for civil unions. Everyone gets the same rights, he said. If states want to expand the definition of marriage, that's their business.
And I admit it: I repeated the talking point. Later in '04, I repeated it for John Kerry. It made sense to me politically. Hell, it made sense personally; the gayest gay activist I knew was still bad-mouthing gay marriage during the 2006 elections, and even though I had come around, I wasn't about to tell him his life.
By early 2007, though, I was throwing down the gauntlet. I took a class called "Philosophy of Law." For the final, we were divided into teams and asked to make the case (in a sort of pseudo-moot-court setting) for or against gay marriage from the point of view of a randomly selected philosophy studied in class. I don't remember which philosophy we drew. I do remember that I, not my gay teammate, was the one who wrangled the five straight dudes and got everyone on board for unapologetic advocacy of gay marriage.
So what changed between 2003 and 2007? The world shifted politically, it's true. Maybe the wars fading from consciousness allowed social issues to take a more prominent role; I certainly remember feeling, in '03, that many things could be forgiven for a candidate who opposed invading Iraq. I wasn't feeling so generous when the primary season for the 2008 presidential began.
I do feel that the personal changes I went through during those years were more important than the political changes, however.
When you're young and starting college, if you're like me, you're straight with gay friends, and the gay friends seem exactly like you. They are puttering around and dating the wrong people and questioning the society they are about to join as full adults. They don't want to get married, because they haven't found anyone they want to be married to. I totally get that; I didn't want to be married, either, because up until I met FH, an empty and lonely life seemed preferable to all likely candidates. The thought of marrying someone other than FH still seems perfectly ghastly.
But at some point, a girl you know moves in with another girl. And maybe they adopt a cat. And maybe it happens slowly, or maybe it's a lightning bolt, but eventually you realize that they are going to spend their lives together. From deep inside you, from a place of empathy and love, comes the realization: "That's a marriage." And at that point, the idea of denying anyone what you yourself want to have some day seems so fucking cruel that it immediately jumps to the level of Litmus Test.
This isn't precisely the story of what happened to me. Honestly, I don't remember exactly who or what influenced my progression. I remember that it was like I just described -- that one day, the defenders of "traditional marriage" just seemed so mean and stupid and offensive that I wasn't willing to cede ground any longer. No one gets to dictate to others what the best and most meaningful way to love is, least of all someone like Rick Santorum.
In short, I grew up a little, and realized that, in the adult world, marriage matters a lot more than it did to me when I was a baby student.
I'm in a slightly different place now. I'm getting married three months from Friday. Getting married has made me a fiercer advocate for marriage equality. Just as I wouldn't join a restricted country club, I can't participate in an exclusionary institution without making extra-loud noise about how unfair my privilege is. My love is no better -- no purer, no more moral, no truer -- than the love of someone else, and I am deeply offended that anyone would presume to tell me it is.
By an accident of genetics, I'm a woman attracted to men. By an accident of genetics, FH is a man drawn to women. We are not champions of a traditional ideal and make no claims on that heritage. What we are is two adults in love who believe very strongly that our privileges should be extended to any and all two adults in love. If our marriage stands for anything, let it stand for that. Let us stand on the side of love.
