“We Do”

It is true that our upcoming July wedding will not change the bond between the two of us or between our loved ones and us. But it will change the connection between us in a surprisingly moving way. Right now on tax forms, on health insurance forms, and at rental car counters, we appear to be two single women.

In many times and places, the laws of the land have not recognized the full humanity of everyone in the society. Just as the law expanded to recognize the voting rights of women, the civil rights of African Americans, and the end of apartheid in South Africa, Massachusetts law has now expanded to legitimate the love of lesbian and gay couples. Not only these couples find their relationship with the state transformed by this change, but also everyone in Massachusetts who now live under a less repressive government.

Some point out that legalizing marriage for gays and lesbians will not end all the many harmful forms of homophobic discrimination, violence, and social stigma, and that it could be a distraction from working to eliminate these problems. But we hope that in a generation or two, a tradition of legal same sex marriages will, in fact, create a safer and more accepting environment for all LGBT people.

In the past, I have watched as the arguments raged. The Government, the Labor Party, and even the Christian right variously have said that this was not about “attacking gays and lesbians”, but about “protecting” marriage and the family, the bedrock institutions of our society. But no one ever explained how my marriage would threaten theirs, or what exactly they needed protection from.

But it’s not really about protection; it’s about exclusion. Why have private clubs throughout history excluded black people, Jews, women? They exclude them because they believe, and want to show, that those people are in some way lesser, and that their club will become “less than” if they let them in.

Some people equate “gayness” with experimentation in sexual freedom or lifestyle innovations, and see gay marriage as assimilation into a repressive society of cookie cutter families. To this I have two responses:

First, middle age happens; with or without legal marriage, many LGBT people are, like Laura and me, already focused more on mortgages, health care and children than on lifestyle experiments. Secondly, old age and death happen; and with them come concerns about survivor benefits, hospital visitation, inheritance and end of life wishes.

If we are in fact settled and faithful, why not let our marriage be as recognized as it is for straight couples?

Feminists who came of age during the 1970s looked at marriage as the embodiment of women’s subordination. And it is true that marriage at one time meant that women were property, wives obeyed husbands, and women lost the right to own assets.

We, like other committed couples, will be there for each other in disability, unemployment and old age as best we can. That doesn’t eliminate the need for public safety nets like Social Security and Medicaid.

Not all benefits associated with marriage are absurd. A committed life partnership should guarantee hospital visitation, not testifying against each other, automatic health care proxy, survivor retirement benefits, immigration rights, second parent adoption rights, and presumed and untaxed inheritance. There’s no other reason BUT homophobia to deny these to same sex couples. Across the United States and around the world, most still can’t have them.

Social conservatives have every right to be threatened by gay marriage. It doesn’t threaten families based on love; but it does however, threaten their ideal of compulsory female subordination. All women will feel more freedom when gay marriage is a universal option.

It’s not just those nitty-gritty rights we want, but the intangible recognition that goes with the word “marriage.” We are, by luck and the grace of God, an extraordinarily well matched, happy couple and we have earned the right to legally marry.

I hope you all have a wonderfully prosperous week!

~Cee~