As much as I'd sometimes like to sit comfortably in my ivory tower, glowering down on mere mortals in vulturous disdain, as I liberally evaluate others' ignorance and mental putridity, I can't. It turns out that I am the one who so wholly lacks self-awareness that when I read the transcript of the Proposition 8 closing remarks to the court trial, I realized just how foolish I've been for the last half-century.
As a child of the 1960s (not the very cool metropolitan hippie, but a traditional boy from the mountains), I was reared with the unspoken, or perhaps, at times, spoken, discrimination toward gay folk. As a gay child in that era, I knew they meant me. My coping mechanisms were fairly sophisticated for someone so young. I learned to adapt to the disrespect, ignore it, and live my life within the boundaries provided. The truth is, I've never given a damn what people think of my homoamorosity. Sure, when I was in fifth grade and my classmates called me queer, homo or sissy, it stung. My tools were to develop a great sense of humor and a caustic tongue with which to come back at my aggressors. As I said, I adapted.
That early training took me a long way in my life. I reared my five children as an openly gay man. I've worked in the office of the State Health Director as an openly gay man. I've taught school as an openly gay man. I had my religious wedding ceremony to my husband in 2006 as an openly gay man. With all of these success, in the recesses of my heart, I had tacitly accepted at some level the fact that I was not afforded the same rights as my heteroamorous friends to marry the man that I love.
Don't get me wrong, I've written blogs about acquiring the right to marry. I written letters to the President of the United States and Governor Schwarzenothing about this very topic. Yet, today, as I was reading this amazing 164-page document, that can be found at the EqualRightsFoundation.org website, I suddenly woke up from a nearly-51 year slumber. My eyes shuttered open to my own words:
"You are asking for permission to do something that most everyone else takes for granted, from people who never had the right to keep it from you in the first place!"
The truth is I was appalled at my lack of insight into my own true feelings about this. I am hurt, and angry, and utterly disturbed by this new light in which I am both basking and baking.
As I read the words on the screen from the defendant-intervenors' (Pro-Prop 8) attorney, Mr. Cooper, I felt as though I had traveled through time to the courtroom of Loving v. The State of Virginia when interracial marriage was being debated, or to the bar where Brown v. The Board of Education was decided. As we look back on those times, most of us realize how hateful those cruel laws had been. In the eras that they originated, however, they made perfect sense to the authors, as Mr. Cooper's words made to him. He began by quoting E. J. Graff, a same-sex advocate, from Brandeis University:
"'If same-sex marriage becomes legal, that venerable institution will ever after stand for sexual choice, for cutting the link between sex and diapers.'
"That really goes to the heart of the concern of many people, that redefining it will -- will effectively divorce the institution of marriage from its historic core procreative purposes.
"The second point, Your Honor, in addition that redefining it would inevitably change it, is that it is not possible to predict with certainty and confidence what that change will beget. It seems simply undeniable that a change that is as profound as this one, I would submit undeniably would be, would have some consequences. (www.equalrightsfoundation.org, 2010, p. 137)"
For a moment, I thought these were the closing arguments of Chicken Little in Little v. The Sky. "Marriage is falling! Marriage is falling!" It makes no sense. My marriage to my husband is strong enough to withstand almost anything that comes along. If someday, God forbid, it ends, it will be because we have chosen for it to end or one of us dies. It will never come to a close because anyone else got married. Others' marriages didn't prevent us from getting married in the first place. It is ludicrous to think that two men or two women getting married will change anything but the legal definition of a powerful word to be more inclusive.
Marriage, in its purest form, is what two people agree it is. Society has general guidelines, but an actual, day-to-day marriage is chosen by two individuals.
When I married my now-former wife, we didn't marry specifically to have children, although we had several. We actually had a daughter before our nuptials. We chose to wait to make sure we were marrying each other for reasons that had to do with the two of us rather than those related to our child. It was a good decision. All together, we were married for 14 years.
It was for similar reasons that my husband, David, and I married. No one dictates what our marriage is but David and me. We do not dictate how others should manage their marriages, although my children may suggest that I've wanted to do otherwise from time to time. The most important factor is that no one prevented us from marrying one another in ceremony. Although it was not sanctioned by the State of California, our spirits were united in love and dedication in full support of our community. Our marriage has amplified the best in both of us and in our connection with our village. We have a domestic partnership and a twelve year history together, but I have to wonder how our lives would be different if we could actually marry in the same way my mother and father did? I know that there would be a new sense of first class citizenship in our state. I know that we would not have to explain what our relationship history has been.
"Well, we registered as domestic partnership in 2005 and had our ceremony in 2006, but we didn't get married when it was available because we wanted to wait until everyone could marry."
Mom and Dad just said, "This is my husband/wife." That's it. Everyone understood. Everyone accepted it as it was. No questions, no explanations. How lovely would that be?
As I sit at my desk, likely closer to death than to birth, I look at the calendar and read, "2010." We have meandered our way through millions of years of history on this clod of soil and water and we are only now wondering if every adult, without exception, should have the right to marry? How is that even possible?
So, to my children and grandchildren, and to those who have looked to me for guidance over the years, I ask forgiveness for my lack of clarity on this particular issue. If I had been a better example, you would have seen me sell my belongings to march in Washington. I would have taken a leadership role in this fight. I would have followed in my valiant father, Floyd Glica's footsteps in addressing this issue. It's not too late.
To whom do I owe my happiness? To whom do I ultimately answer for my actions? The answer I taught my children was, "To your God and to your mirror... preferably in that order." We answer to the community for actions only in that we are responsible for behaving in ways that are, at best, loving, and at least, not hurtful. When we take our last breath, however, we are only responsible in those two most important places. We must live and die with our choices.
In the tradition of the Twelve Step Program, I must now make amends to my society by taking appropriate, remedial actions for my failures of the past. I have learned from my path and now my path has changed.
I am making a new choice. I am adding my voice and action to this important movement of change. First, as I've said in a previous essay, I will no longer refer to myself as homosexual. I am homoamorous. This is about who I love, not with whom I have sex. My sex life is none of anyone else's business. Second, my focus will be to ensure an inclusive definition of marriage. I am no longer fighting for my right to legally marry. I am now on a course to remind those in power that I already have that right (see my photo below). Lawmakers are now obligated to fix the laws to reflect our inalienable right to marry in the pursuit of our happiness.
This is my voice. This is my pride. This is our time.
____________________
References
(2010). Transcript of Closing Arguments. Perry, et al., v. Schwarzenegger, et al. Retrieved from http://www.equalrightsfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Perry-Vol-13-6-16-10. pdf, p. 137
Candito, Nicolas (2006) [Glica-Hernandez Wedding]. Photograph used by permission of photographer.
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