Marriage equality has been an important issue for me for as long as I’ve been able to vote; after all, when it became a widely discussed political issue in 1996 it was the reason why several members of my family stopped speaking to each other for three years. Well, to be fair, my vocal support of same sex marriage was the reason why several members of my family stopped speaking to each other for three years. And if we’re really being fair, it wasn’t my vocal support of same sex marriage that was the reason why several members of my family stopped speaking to each other for three years; it was my family’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy (which was voted into effect in some secret, dark room by generations long passed because some older, wiser ancestor knew that he was creating a long line of family who would never be able to calmly discuss politics without making it personal.) Don’t ask about politics, and don’t tell anyone your politics. Never one to follow a rule unless it was clearly outlined (as well as young, belligerent, and bold), I challenged my uncle’s choice of candidate, whose platform was more or less “the gays will destroy family values if we let them get married.” My uncle’s homophobic and hate-filled response destroyed our family a little that day, but I was blamed for the rift. It’s no wonder I didn’t feel like it was prudent to assert my own queerness, which was evolving and fluid and difficult to explain to an empathetic audience, never mind a hostile one.
Flash forward fifteen years. We’re all speaking again, but not so much about politics; my uncle is pro-Obama, my little sister has attended three same-sex weddings, and I’ve just come out to my mother. She’s trying hard to understand what I am telling her (I’ve found myself in love with a woman after being married to a man for twelve years; I was afraid this meant divorce; I was afraid of both divorce and transitioning from living a mostly heterosexual life to a likely homosexual one). And yet, in a misguided but well-intentioned attempt to control the situation, she steadfastly argued that I was bisexual, and since bisexual people could choose whether to be with men or women (we’ll come back to why I hate the word “choice” later), I needed to choose to honor the commitment I’d made to my husband and my children.
Several weeks, months, and conversations about this same topic later (whether sexuality was reason enough to divorce; it’s not, or wasn’t, at least for me, but it was reason enough to drag out all the other skeletons in the closet of our marriage, much to my ex-husband’s dismay, who wanted to make a clean break with a smile, blame our divorce on my sexuality, and get to play the role of the supportive ex-husband who “would have done anything to make it work”). During one of these conversations with my mother, I made the mistake of trying to explain to her that I didn’t think I was able to make the choices she had (i.e. choose to honor the commitment I’d made to my husband and children, no matter what the emotional or psychological fallout of that choice was). I was trying to pay her a compliment, to express how grateful I was that she stayed home to raise my sisters and I, that she made her marriage work so that we could have easier lives, that she chose to continue living close to her mother, my sisters, my aunts and uncles and cousins and fostered strong relationships with them all so that we could grow up surrounded by a loving family. What came out sounded more like a judgment, and she promptly hung up on me after telling me she thought it would be better for her emotional health if we didn’t speak for a while. It was almost a year before she would call me for anything more than a two-minute check in with her grandchildren.
Looking back (and forward) now, I realize it wasn’t my views on marriage equality that were so incendiary for my family; it was my view on marriage, period. Having gotten married at a very young age, and believing I’d done it more for my family’s sake than my own, I resented the institution. I spent most of my marriage trying to redefine it, to make (what I thought was) an obsolete social contract work for me. I don’t doubt that my ex and I would have stayed together as long as we did if we had never bothered to get married; our relationship lasted as long as it did because that was how long it was meant to last. I don’t think the ring on my finger (he’d stopped wearing his before we’d even had kids) or the piece of paper from the state made us work any harder than we would have otherwise. We were working at the relationship because of the relationship, not because of the contract. Because I’d gotten married so young, I never realized how much the legal contract was working for me. My credit was better, my taxes were lower, the cost of car and home insurance was two-thirds of what it would be if I were single, health insurance was less expensive, I didn’t have to worry about who the authorities should contact in case of an emergency, and I didn’t have to specify where my money and belongings should go if something were to happen to me. So, as much as I supported the right for all people to marry, I still didn’t understand why anyone would.
Even so, I was ecstatic (for my friends, for political progress) to hear about the Supreme Court’s ruling on same sex marriage last June, even as my ex and I were finally admitting our own marriage had finally run its course. Two gay friends were getting married that weekend, and I was attending another wedding that weekend as well, and finding it difficult to be happy for either young couple. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to head into New York City the following day for the NYC Pride parade, knowing all the jubilee the ruling was going to inspire. As I grappled with whether to spend the day with my children or go to the parade, my soon-to-be ex encouraged me to go, stating simply, “This is a big year for you.” I laughed wryly, and commented that sure, finally gay people all over the country were entitled to be as miserable as straight people had been for centuries. Because ironically, just as same sex couples were being given the right to marriage that I’d taken for granted, I was forming the opinion that I’d never, in a million years, bother to get married again.
Still, I have to admit that those those that demanded equal rights to an institution that many others assume access to kept moving the country forward, making it a more forgiving place for the rest of us. Those who were brave enough to assert their queerness, whether they were gay, bisexual, pansexual, sapiosexual, or anywhere in between, did pave the way for others, especially those like me. Even if I can’t imagine getting married again (although the cost of car insurance alone might make me change my mind), the fact that the federal government has ruled that marriage is marriage is marriage because love is love is love has made this world a very different one than the one I knew back in 1996, when I was young and naive and still figuring things out for myself.
(mostly) full disclosure 