Marriage Project
Jill is lately married to a former radical-cheerleading, performance artist, addiction counselor who makes the best risotto on the planet. It was a Day-of-the-Dead affair.
This is a series of journal like posts made between xxxx and xxxx where I explored the feelings around the marriage equality act and …
We had five infant boys at our wedding, and one of my favorite photos is of Heather and our friend, L., who is visibly pregnant with her daughter. They are both looking at Heather’s newborn with perfect adoration. These two gorgeous ladies, who can’t look away from this gorgeous child. That photo captures the point of weddings for me. Love and community. Simple. Meet my guest for today’s Marriage Project:
Marriage is the baring of a couple’s united soul in front of their friends, family and loved ones. Back in the day, I used to declare I would never get married and never have kids. I didn’t believe either was something that would work for me. We all know how well I stuck to that.
I’ve heard those who are against the choice of two consenting adults to marry unless it is defined in some tattered old book written at a time when women, and people, were property. It’s unpleasant, to say the least, because they pick and choose their morality. This coupled with the splattering of media hype of such folks as the Kardashians, etc., I am sorry … but I don’t think two women or men pledging their love threatens the sanctity of marriage. I think what threatens the sanctity of marriage is those who don’t treat it with its due love and respect..and those qualities are not gender-specific.
I’ve heard people insult the gay community, claiming them to be frivolous and promiscuous. Yet when the gay community asks to be married, they are denied. So they can’t get married, so they must be frivolous and promiscuous. I call bullshit on this. It’s a vicious cycle with no exit sign. At least, until recently. (Thank you Washington!)
I cried many tears at my friends’ wedding, not because of my recent childbirth, but because my heart was raw in feeling the depth of their love and devotion to each other. “Will you feed me ice chips on my death bed?” still haunts me to this day. They are an extraordinarily beautiful couple, and I would defend their right to love each other as staunchly as my right to love my husband. There is an ease, and a natural beauty to their relationship with which I cannot imagine anyone could find fault. And I know there are so many couples out there, waiting with bated breath for the law to recognize their love as legal. Sad part is, they shouldn’t have to wait.
I look forward to a day when the concern is what it is in our hearts, and not so much what is between our legs, or what some feels offends their religious agenda. These same couples that those types feel shouldn’t be allowed to marry also work, pay taxes, many have children, and are very much contributing members of society … so to hold back their right to marry is dehumanizing.
Love is love, no matter whose body it possesses, and it’s time to love, and let love.
Heather Youngs
Spokane, WA
You don’t have to believe in marriage to believe in equality. That’s what equality is: the opportunity to choose. You can sneak same into that sentence if it pleases you, but for me opportunity is a big enough word. There’s room for all of us. Meet my guest for today’s Marriage Project:
They say every little girl dreams of her wedding day, but I was never a very good little girl. Perhaps it was my feminist mother’s insistence that I remain independent at all times, perhaps it’s the fact that between the two of them my parents have nine marriages in all. Either way, I never dreamed of getting married. I dreamed of motherhood, a good education and one day owning my home.
All these seemed like goals to work toward whereas marriage always seemed like nothing more than a good idea, a nice suggestion. I like the idea of finding that one person in your life who will always be there. I like the idea of building a history with someone, but finding that relationship seems like magic to me, a lightning strike maybe to someone lucky enough to be standing in the right spot.
I look at my friends who have been struck, who have found that magical relationship and committed to it. Two women who have been together going on 30 years, who have raised children together and stuck together through the decades, or two new fathers who after decades of just the two of them have taken that next step and adopted a child. They have achieved an amazing amount of history to me. It’s quite an accomplishment.
Despite my early insistence as a young girl that I was never going to get married, I did once get engaged. We had the culturally approved mismatched genitalia, but we were also horribly unsuited for each other. If I had followed through with the marriage our mistake would have been legally sanctioned and it would have ended shortly after, I’m sure.
I’m not sure what makes a marriage last, but I know people who have failed at it and people who have thrived in it. I want everyone to have the legal right to try, cause you never know who’s going to get it right. And when two people do get it right it’s completely awe-inspiring. It gives even a cynic like me hope that maybe I too could try.
Frankie Ortega
Houston, TX
I love this description of sexuality. Meet my guest for today’s Marriage Project:
One night, about two years ago, I went out to the bar with a couple of friends. We met a couple of guys and ended up hanging out with them for a while, sharing beers and cracking jokes. I was having my birthday party the next weekend, and invited them, half joking. Before they left for the evening, one of the guys asked for my number so that he could call for directions to my party later. My friends and I left to go dancing at a different bar, where I met a lady. She and I danced and kissed for an hour or so, and I invited her to my party and gave her my number too. I really wanted her to call me, but she didn’t. Instead, the guy called me a week after we met, took me out for Ethiopian food, and we sat by the river in the sun and talked about quantum physics. I began to fall in love then and there.
Sexuality isn’t this thing that is chiseled into our DNA, that we are forced to follow because our genes tell us so. For me, it is like a river, bending this way and that. I am attracted to people, not genders. There are times that I am infatuated with a woman and want to be with her in all ways, and others that I am equally as infatuated with a man, but it is because of who, not what, they are. It also rises and falls and there are times that I feel like a wild, ravenous being and others that my sexuality is barely a trickle and I feel like I could go for years without being touched. I am at peace with this part of myself.
I am not an exciting person by any means. In fact, when you boil it down, we are all pretty damn boring. I have formulaic ways that I respond to certain things — I curl up like a caterpillar in my sheets and cover my head when I want to ignore my partner; I get mad about the dishes not being washed; I pretend to brush my teeth so that I can watch myself cry in the mirror. Having found someone who can laugh at me, with me, and also take me seriously when I need it has been fulfilling, frustrating, and satisfying.
What if instead of finding him, I had found her? What if we had fallen in love, and like my partner now, we were planning on getting married? What if we were our most boring selves together? There would have to be some kind of “coming out” to my family; my friends would have to learn to take my relationship seriously; I would have to endure weird sex questions from people; my wedding might be considered to be pretend because it would not be legal, and this is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head at this moment. It sounds exhausting. A few of my couple friends, who happen to be gay, have the most loving and stable relationships of anyone I know. I think that it is partly because they had to endure a barrage of ridiculousness, and if you can bear that together, then by God, you can deal with anything.
In our nation’s very recent history, a black person could not legally marry a white person. I told this to my oldest daughter and she responded with absolute horror. The idea of two people not being allowed to marry based on the color of their skin seems preposterous and barbaric to most of us now, and even a child can see how insane it is. This is not to say that racism does not persist, and that interracial couples are widely accepted because they aren’t. They are, however, legally allowed to join to each other for as long as they see fit and no one can argue with that. One day in the not too distant future, parents will tell their children that people used to be unable to marry because of their gender, and their children will respond with disbelief. A child knows that we all have the right to love, that we should be allowed to burn for whomever we want to without shame. It is your right to be boring with whomever you choose, for as long as you are both right for each other.
Marriage equality is not only important, but essential for our society to move forward. Equality is not something that you should have to ask, beg, and plead for. The fear of not being accepted should not be like a lead sweater you put on every morning, that try as you might, you just can’t seem to get used to. Marriage equality is not going to make everyone accept love in all of its forms overnight, but it is a promise that it is going to get better and that makes my heart sing.
Whitney Jacques
Spokane, WA
This is the first story to mention the fact that being married feels different. It does. That’s the privilege, the feeling of being married, the thing we’ll never capture in civil unions and domestic partnerships. What’s being denied us is a status that other couples are allowed to enjoy as though they’d earned it. You don’t earn privilege, but you can certainly withhold it. Meet my guest for today’s Marriage Project:
I believe, that as human beings, we are innately sacred and that love is our divine gift. I believe in the sanctity of marriage, as it is defined by the individuals involved, the union is sacred. Through the ritual of marriage, whatever that ritual is, we are making the ultimate gift of our love. In marriage we bind our lives together through a sacred promise with our partner to strengthen each other with our love, to honor our love, protect it, cultivate it, and to build our lives on its foundation. When we share this ritual with our friends and family we are there to share our joy, celebrate our love and declare that we are dedicated to one another and committed to our union. There is power in this declaration. We find added strength in our community through the acknowledgment and respect they give our union and their support of our love.
To those who say marriage is the foundation of our society, that marriage strengthens our society: I ask what is the foundation of marriage? While I think a huge part of marriage is commitment, ultimately, love is the foundation of marriage. It really is all about the love. Love strengthens and unifies us therefore marriage strengthens and unifies us, and it does, until churches and politicians decide to put exclusionary limitations on the marriages of consenting adults. The argument over marriage equality is only dividing us as a nation; it separates us as citizens, and breeds hate among us. It shouldn’t be an argument at all. We have an inalienable right as human beings to love whomever we love and to express that love through marriage: it is vital to our pursuit of happiness; it is integral to who we are.
I believe in religious freedom as a right in this country. If a person’s religion defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, they have a right to believe that, and practice that right in their own church, in their church community. They do not have the right to force the rest of society to conform to their interpretation and they have a responsibility to not allow that belief to spread bigotry and hate. I have the right to question the sanity and validity of such a belief and to not adhere to that church’s laws.
Our government has absolutely no right to adopt this religious belief as the basis for their definition of marriage. The definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman excludes not only our LGBT community but any person practicing a religion that doesn’t agree with this narrow definition. It infringes on our freedoms, undermines our individual liberty and muddles the line between church and state. The government’s role in marriage should have nothing to do with defining it, only protecting it and the parties involved. Marriage laws that were initially designed to protect our children, our rights and our property have been twisted into laws that pardon discrimination. Laws that promote and defend bigotry. Where is the love?
My husband and I have been married for fourteen years. Before we married we lived together for three and a half years. Other than finally having access to the full legal benefits of a military spouse I didn’t really expect much to change when we married, but it did. The shift is difficult to fully describe, you just feel it. It’s subtle and strong and reassuring. Pure joy in the possibilities of a life together. It’s a feeling everyone should be free to experience; it’s something to be shared by all of us. We must allow the love, the commitment to that love to spread. To allow it to live and breathe and grow, in the open, unrestrained. It’s all about love. How is that not beneficial to us all?
Shannon Schwehr Korrell
Fort Worth, TX
It’s fair to say that I’m susceptible to beauty. And so this story hurt me. Meet my guest for today’s Marriage Project:
I am a naturalized Texan. A damn Yankee who found her home and heart in the most unlikely of places: Houston, Texas. Nearly 1,700 miles from my Long Island birth and worlds away from the culture(s) I was raised in.
The first time I heard Blanche Dubois’ liquid lilt, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” I was sure I would never understand such helplessness. I am decidedly not a southern belle, geographical choice or not.
But my lack of legal standing does just that — it makes me depend on the kindness of strangers. Something that is only sweet and charming in fiction, if there. I had to depend upon the kindness of strangers when the love of my life had a partial mastectomy and I had no legal standing that would allow me to sit with her in recovery. I touched her face as she came in and out of consciousness, sharply aware of how tenuous that moment was. We have all sorts of legal paperwork “stop-gap” solutions but ultimately, if our relationship is not legally recognized, we are terribly vulnerable to the prejudice or ignorance of the people in power around us.
I can’t imagine our world operating on the kindness of strangers, though I believe most strangers are essentially kind. We learned as a nation that it was not enough to think: Well, no one would make small children work in factories! Everyone would agree that it’s in society’s best interest to protect and educate the children! Just pitch in. Taxes should be paid on the honor system and divorces granted fair and equitably without any legislation! We learned that it was not enough because it didn’t work. I’m not interested in arguing Libertarian views here. If we were all motivated to help the poor, build new roads and follow a universal code of ethics, we wouldn’t have had the disastrous stories that prompted the laws governing fairness and equity.
So I want to marry this woman with whom I have shared 25 years of marriage. Raising children, buying a home, developing careers, paying taxes, and all the other blissful and mundane things that marriage entails. All that and the incredible happiness and occasional grief that weave through most of our lives. But as far as my state and country are concerned, we are just two unrelated people who bought a house together. If the police come to our door because of a crime or emergency, I must depend on their sense of fairness when it comes to letting us ride together in an ambulance. I must hope that their sensitivity and diversity training had taught them to respect our relationship. But we are not guaranteed anything because our “relationship” doesn’t exist within the legal world.
I do not swoon and go limp when people ask me why I think I should have the right to marry … hoping for their kind support. I’m not interested in kindness or generosity or tolerance. I am interested in my rights. I am interested in equality.
Also published here: http://www.epiphenita.
Thank you,
Enita Torres
Houston, TX
There is so much here. About family. About love. Meet my guest for today’s Marriage Project:
Marriage equality is just too long overdue. American society has changed its thinking on many ideas once believed to be controversial – Women’s right to vote, marriage of interracial couples, the end of segregation and recently the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It is time to grant freedom and choice to gay couples too. And their families.
My father is gay. When I was young, I was truly scared for his safety and mine. Without him telling me to, I knew to be very careful about who I shared information with and only invited a handful of my most trusted friends to our home. Mostly I kept quiet, even when nasty words were scrawled on the Girl’s Bathroom mirror at my High School. I wasn’t ashamed of my family but 25 years ago nobody was talking. The most common reaction when I shared my family’s story was disbelief that a gay man could have a child.
Today it’s not nearly so difficult to share my family’s story, but it is hard for my kids. They don’t understand why marriage has to be a boy and a girl. They have a Grandpa and a Grandpa. I struggle to explain why two people in love, that have always been a part of their lives, cannot marry in the eyes of the State. For now, I explain that a slip of paper isn’t what really matters in love but I am fearful again for my father.
He is elderly now and he and his partner don’t have the same financial protections that many couples do.
They should.
And children shouldn’t need to worry about their parents and grandparents.
Liz
I didn’t know marriage was an exclusive country club when I got married the first time. It’s absurd now to think of the benefits we inherited for ten minutes in a judge’s chambers. (I didn’t even write my own vows. We were like automatons.) I am grateful for people who have approached marriage with more awareness, especially those who have decided to forgo their privilege until it’s a right shared by all. Meet my guest for today’s Marriage Project:
Growing up queer, I didn’t believe in marriage equality. I couldn’t believe in it because it didn’t apply to me. Marriage was something that belonged to a mainstream that I wasn’t a part of and never would be. As such, it wasn’t something I ever had to think about. It also wasn’t something I wanted.
Six years ago, everything I had considered on the topic was suddenly brought into question. I started and finished my transition from what society identified as female to male, I met a women who I loved, and became co-parent to a little superhero. The combination of my gender shift and the presence of a loving long-term relationship forced me into a scenario I could have never imagined – marriage was suddenly a possibility that was within my reach. At that moment, I realized that I had never wanted to get married
because I couldn’t. Because lusting after one more thing that society denied me for my identity would have only been handing them another way to hurt me.
Only when I could have marriage did I have a decision to make.
The irony in my situation was immutable – through loopholes, trans men and women had been allowed by heterosexual appearance to marry for years. While my identity was still equally hated and feared, I could be granted access to the Great Heterosexual Ritual (should I be willing to remain stealth) because my partner and I could look straight. Yes, somehow my appearance alone made me more equal than my friends, family, and loved ones.
Ultimately, I decided not to cross the picket line. Marriage was not something I could personally consider until everyone I know and love could consider it. I was raised on the backs of proud and strong queers both of my knowing and of our mutual history. I could not disrespect them by turning against them. I wouldn’t.
Marriage equality is marching slowly forward. Some members of my queer family, friends, and loved ones are now legally married to their partners, still others are denied. No pair of them loves each other more or less than the others. No pair of them deserves greater or fewer rights than the others. Any difference between them is man-made philosophy in their state of residency.
I support marriage equality because I have a choice to and I believe everyone deserves that choice. I support marriage equality because if a government is going to recognize love and give it benefits, such benefits should not be reliant on the type or quantity of sexual intercourse people partake in, or abstain from. It should not be based on heterosexual ideal or a bible no two people can agree on. Just as a man would not be prevented from marrying a woman he loves because penile cancer took his penis, no woman should be prevented from marrying a woman she loves because she was born without a penis altogether. The absence or presence of appendages, sanctioned sexual orientation, or personal identity does not change the depth, value, and commitment of a love between two people.
Alexander Jaide
Grand Rapids, MI
One of the interesting things about this story is that a traditional view of marriage is not about gender or politics. There’s room for all of us. Meet my guest for today’s Marriage Project:
I met my spouse almost fifteen years ago. Well, met is a relative
term. We first met in an IRC channel on f-net. For those of you too
young to know what I’m talking about, this was in the late 90s, the
only “popular” place to chat on-line was AOL. And then there was the
place for the true geeks, those of us who could telnet into chat
channels.
My spouse was a friend of my best friend at the time. We lived in
different cities, I in Seattle, he in El Paso. After a couple months
of constant chatting and phone conversations, I flew to El Paso and we
met in person for the first time. Then it was a year of flying back
and forth across the country ending with a cross-country move to
Seattle. Because there was no way in hell I was moving to El Paso.
It took another seven and a half years, but we were finally married.
In a big fancy church wedding, full Catholic Wedding Mass. It was, at
that point, truly the happiest day of my life. And it was perfect.
Even the snafus that every wedding has seemed perfect. I was so
overjoyed to be marrying my best friend and soul mate, I sobbed all
the way up the aisle to meet him. Seriously, the photos of that walk
need to be burned. I looked so horrible. Yet I was so totally
overwhelmed with joy.
We will be celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary this June. Two
months after we celebrate our daughter’s fifth birthday. It’s been
fifteen years of incredible highs and terrible lows. Divorce has been
threatened at the lowest points. We’ve been in couples and then
marriage counseling a few times. We always seem to fight for Us. Even
when it’s so shitty we just want to leave. We don’t. We have to fight
for Us.
I’m “lucky”. My soulmate is a man, and I’m a woman. I’ve always had
the privilege to be able to marry him. I never had to fight anyone for
the right to declare to God and country that he is It. That I will be
with him until our dying days. And honestly, I’m not so sure even
death would be able to separate us. When divorce is threatened around
here, it’s more of a cry of need, of needing more of each other.
Neither of us can imagine ever being with another person. If anything
ever happened to my husband, God forbid, I’m incredibly doubtful I
would ever remarry. Mostly because I don’t think another human being
could measure up to him in my eyes.
But the other reason is that marriage is HARD. I don’t think there is
another human being on the planet I would fight to be with the way he
and I have both fought to stay together. Even at the worst of times,
we’ve known in our souls and confessed in the quiet moments that we
will get through it all.
Marriage is many things. But mostly, it’s something worth fighting for
when you’ve found the right person. I never had to fight for the right
to be married, but I have fought in my own way for others who do not
have this right. When you have found that one person, the one you will
stick with even through the worst of times, the one who can bring pure
joy into your heart, the one who you know you want to be with for the
rest of your life, we should all be able to declare it to God and country and not be forced to defend the state of our soul to those filled with fear and hate.
I am so proud of my State Legislature and our Governor. Making it
possible for couples, just like my husband and me, who love each other
with all their souls, who are willing to fight to be together through
the hard times, who are so filled with joy and peace, to declare to
all what their souls are shouting.
Some think that marriage is just a contract. Just a silly piece of
paper that doesn’t mean anything substantial beyond tax benefits. I’m
not one of those people. Marriage is sacred. It’s sacred because it’s
about our individual soul joining together with another. Souls don’t
have gender. They just are. They are essence. Everyone should have the
right to join their soul with its right and proper mate, regardless of
the body that soul happens to be inhabiting.
I’m thankful that my state finally realized this and I wait, not so
patiently, for the rest of the world to realize it too.
Gwynn Robbins Raimondi
Seattle, WA
The excitement in this story is palpable. I can’t read it without pleasure. Why would we ever discourage love? It’s right here. You can feel it. Meet my guest for today’s Marriage Project:
The almost 7 years that my partner and I have been together are marked with milestones that most couples experience: The first date; moving in together; meeting the family; buying a house; buying another house because you hate the first one; adopting a pet, yet something seems to be missing from the list .…
I can’t help but think that if we were a heterosexual couple, we would constantly be bombarded with the question “why haven’t you two gotten married?” After this long together it’s expected. But to think about the lack of unmarried harassment, a little deeper, is unsettling. The reason we’re not asked the question, is because people know the answer: We’re not married, because we’re not allowed to be married. Our relationship isn’t viewed the same as that of my two brothers and their respective wives, that of my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and every other married couple in the world.
We’ve taken steps to both celebrate our relationship and to legally protect ourselves. We went to Vegas and had a commitment ceremony 49 days after we began dating. We registered with the Washington Secretary of State as domestic partners after 2 ½ years together, and received “all the rights and responsibilities” of a married couple (in the state of Washington only, and still only after the approval of Referendum 71). All the rights that is, except being able to say “I’m married”. If I use the term married, I’m usually asked one of two questions. The first, “what’s your wife’s name?” or the second, “legally? Did you go out of state?” People either assume that I have a wife, or know that I can’t possibly be married “for real”.
I don’t require public validation and I would like to think that I couldn’t care less about the title put on my relationship, but nothing says love and commitment like the word “marriage”. We’re driven from childhood that getting married is part of life, and without it, we are somehow incomplete. The greatest of true loves in every (non-Shakespearean) story we read culminate with marriage and a “happily ever after”.
Once, I told my mom that my wedding was going to be at my great-grandmother’s house. We would enter down the cast iron spiral staircase into the backyard. The old pond and fountain was to be cleaned up and in working order to be the backdrop of the perfect ceremony. The reception would be on the front lawn next to the rose garden.
I might have been about 6 years old. I’ve been thinking about this for a while.
Now, with marriage equality in Washington State on the horizon, I couldn’t be more excited. We are getting married. Our honor attendees have been asked and all have graciously accepted. Our families have been told of our pending nuptials and a date has been set.
I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the love that my partner and I share than to invite our friends and family to our commitment ceremony civil union domestic partnership registration wedding.
Corey Fortune
Spokane, WA
I cried my heart out at their wedding. Meet my guest for today’s Marriage Project:
I started writing letters to my husband when I was 8, hiding them in a box in my closet, sealing each letter in an envelope with the date. I wanted to share my inner self with my future spouse, a gift I was saving to give him on our wedding day. I continued writing the letters through high school, dreaming of having a spouse, having a marriage. I wasn’t one of those girls who dreamt about the dress or what my wedding would look like, I wanted the marriage not the wedding. When I realized I was gay, I stopped yearning for a marriage, I didn’t think there was a point … I couldn’t marry now anyway. I didn’t know what to do with the letters; I wondered if I should throw them away, get rid of the evidence of my misguided longing. In the end I couldn’t throw them away; it felt wrong, they were intended for my beloved.
I met M when I was 23-24ish and my heart literally stopped … she was enchanting … I felt at that moment that I wouldn’t be the same again; I couldn’t hide anymore. We dated – fell in love and started to establish ourselves as a couple. I remember feeling the happiest I had ever felt, and at the same time the most stripped down and vulnerable. I didn’t come out until I had to. Coming out was difficult for me, the main issue is I’m a Christian – I believe in God and that He created me, my foundation was rocked, I didn’t understand why God would create me gay – why would he play this horrible joke on me. I got kicked out of the church, lost my friends, my family was embarrassed and ashamed of me, I had hate mail sent to my home, and I was completely alone, except I had M.
Our first Christmas together I gave her a ring –and I remember crying, telling her it was a sweet sorrow ring, because we’d never be able to marry (I was a bit of a pessimist). A couple months later I gave her the letters from my closet: she’s my beloved; they belong to her. November 2010 we had a real wedding: a wedding where we were surrounded by our community, people who believed in our love, believed in our commitment; it was best day of my life.
When I think about why marriage equality is important, it seems simple: because marriage is important. Marriage changes relationships; something innate happens when you stand up in front of witnesses and commit yourself to another. There is accountability and recognition of our commitment from our loved ones. They all heard me say I would love and value M more than myself – now I have to honor that commitment. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with marriage. Everyone should have the opportunity to marry the person they love; it seems so terribly wrong and unjust to deny anyone that right. If marriage equality wasn’t an issue, I wonder if future generations would find it less painful and scary to come out. I long to live in a world where people will be free to live the way they were created, a step in this direction is marriage equality.
Becca Opel
Spokane, WA