Hearing Wedding Bells
When I was very young, my age in single digits, I once declared that I would marry my best friend. Said friend, of course, was also a boy. In those days parents did not get hysterical at the idea because, then as now, young children always say this and it is an announcement that really bodes indifferent about the future. I'm sure my parents said something like "That's nice, dear, I'm sure you'll be very happy" and moved on.
Sometime later, about the time that I was figuring out that I really would like to marry another boy I started to realize that boys did not marry boys. We didn't have laws against it in those days, it just wasn't done.
Now we have laws against it and it is done. That's a curious situation, don't you think?
The battle over marriage equality, a battle manufactured by religious zealots who seem to feel that they are taking their last stand defending their omnipotent god (who evidently needs a great deal of help from his christian soldiers) from the great homosexual insurgency, has been heating up for a number of years. I can still remember the first shot fired across the bow in Hawaii. Unfortunately, we do live in interesting times.
And now look what's happened. There is marriage equality still standing in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Iowa, and it appeared briefly in California and Maine, where it is currently in abeyance. From my perspective, looking at the march of equality in recent US history, it's easy to be insouciant and know that marriage equality shall be ours, perhaps very soon.
Until this week the notion that Isaac and I might get married was a lovely thought that didn't seem quite real nor urgent. I could make an honest man of him in Iowa, a state I'm fond of from living there during my undergraduate years, or in Connecticut, where I started graduate school and where we have a friend empowered to marry us, or any of the other possibilities. And yet, it still seemed a somewhat distant notion because we'd have to plan and spend significant money to travel, and other such impediments.
No more, of course, since the City Council of Washington, DC decided that gays and lesbians should be able to marry their chosen in their administrative district. Now the possibility of being married is just a few miles from our house. After nearly 18 years should we elope?
We were thinking on it. Some of my Facebook friends noticed that my relationships status (and, congruently, Isaac's) changed from "In a Relationship" to "Engaged" during our recent big snowstorm. It wasn't really because we were stuck in the house and bored, but it gave us time together for me to work up the nerve to propose, and for Isaac to accept. Well, it actually only took about a minute.
And then this week the notion, a pleasant but largely abstract and symbolic notion, became oddly real and present.
Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D) said Wednesday that effective immediately, and until challenged in court, the state recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere and that Maryland agencies should begin affording out-of-state gay couples all the rights they have been awarded in other places.
[Aaron C. Davis and John Wagner, "Md. attorney general: State to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere", Washington Post, 24 February 2010.]
We knew this was in the works, since he was "asked the question" going on a year ago, and it was generally expected that he would find, as he did, that Maryland should recognize valid marriages performed elsewhere. It was no real surprise either that he should release his opinion right now given the proximity of events, temporally and geographically, in Washington DC.
Now, what's interesting is this. First reports were that Gansler had released his longish opinion and found that Maryland should recognize valid marriages performed elsewhere. At first the press and most of us watching thought, well, that's nice that he thinks so but so what?
The "so what?" answer arrived only a few hours later when Gansler clarified that his "opinion" actually operated as legal direction for all state agencies effective immediately, as noted in the Post article quoted above.
I was interested to read this analysis from Chris Geidner (Law Dork) who explains that, in effect, Gansler is putting himself on the correct side of history for when the inevitable cases come to court.
So, to the extent that Gansler decided that there was room for “argument” on either side of the issue, he clearly took the policy position that he wouldn’t wait to be the defendant of a lawsuit seeking out-of-state recognition — which would, technically, pit him against the LGBT community — and instead chose that he would rather be the defendant of a case challenging the state’s recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages — which would put him in the role of defending the LGBT community. This makes all the more sense in light of his position supporting marriage equality.
[Chris Geidner, "What’s Up in Maryland", Law Dork, 25 February 2010.]
As the "defense" of the Prop-8 trial in California recently demonstrated, "defending" what is speciously known as "traditional marriage" is not a position sensible people would want to be in.
And now, suddenly, what do we have, Isaac and I. We have our home state ready and willing, right now, to recognize our legal, valid marriage should we decide in a few days to drive into DC and get hitched. That's pretty real and immediate. We'd had the romantic idea of getting married when marriage equality finally arrived in Maryland, as we're sure it will, but it would see churlish to deny that we can have it now.
Quite unexpectedly I feel a sense of urgency. True, there's urgency because we know that the religious zealots will still do everything they can to sour the deal for as much longer as they can manage, and there may be a brief window during which we can establish this now desirable legal status. But the real root of the urgency seems to be an undeniable, visceral feeling of reality: that something so far beyond my reach when I was a child should be so close to my grasp now. Our grasp. You can't tell from my typing but it makes me feel a little emotional right now. Well, more than a little.
Next week, on 3 March, DC is expected to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Efforts by the zealots have so far derailed. Time and history rush ahead and now we've only a few days before all this is possible.
It's such an unexpected quandary.
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Saturday, 27 February 2010 at 16.01
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I want to say something profound and intense, but, really, what I want to say is "Go For It!" Shalom & Cheers. And, invite me to the wedding!
on Monday, 1 March 2010 at 00.38
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I'm happy for you and Isaac, that you're getting your chance for what you want and for fairness. Like Joe said, go for it. Let your married relationship be another nail in the coffin of ignorance and bigotry — the unwarranted notion that somehow the two of you being wed somehow endangers traditional man-woman marriage. The more evidence to the contrary, the harder it should be for other jurisdictions to deny basic fairness for fall.