I don't think anything has made my entire circle of friends automatically post on Facebook as much as Judge Vaughan Walker's ruling that Prop 8 was unconstitutional. In my own happiness over the decision, I made a comment which I think was misunderstood by some people and which I wished to elaborate on.
As someone who was living in Los Angeles in November 2008 and who knew so many people actively campaigning against the measure, I can honestly say that the euphoria surrounding Obama's election was heavily tempered by Prop 8. A few years before I wouldn't have cared, but knowing and befriending so many members of the LGBT community through Emerson, the film industry, and St. James in the City made me share in the outrage...particularly when, writing a short essay as a contribution to a pro-gay marriage website, I discovered 1,138 legal rights which are denied to gay couples because they are not married. There's a reason I am happy today to call myself a regular contributor to the Human Rights Campaign.
However, my attitude towards gay MARRIAGE has undergone an evolution. The spark came from the Wise Old Man, my great octogenarian friend and dining and drinking campaign from L.A., who told me he didn't vote against Prop 8 because he asked all of his homosexual acquaintances what marriage would change for them and nobody could give him a good answer. I remembered that a few weeks ago on the day of the Chicago PRIDE parade, when one of the ministers at St. Paul the Redeemer in Hyde Park gave an inspiring sermon. An openly gay man, he preached with emotion and resonance on why it is our Christian duty to fight for equal rights for gays and lesbians, but he was very reluctant about fighting for gay marriage. The trouble, he said, is that same-sex couples are trying to assimilate to a straight norm. Why not, he asked, embrace what makes them unique and come up with a procedure of commitment which isn't called marriage? The great advantage is that by celebrating and emphasizing their differences, they make straight people look harder at their own differences, their own separateness...and hopefully what values they bring to the changing institution of matrimony and how they can better commit to them.
Hearing a clearly outspoken member of the gay community speak like this was enough to make me think. As a committed Christian who believes in Christ's decree that we love one another, I myself rejoice in the diversity, dignity, and individuality of my fellow human beings, and I wonder if there should be something a little different, some new procedure, new ceremony, new guidelines, so that same-sex couples and heterosexual couples don't have it exactly the same way, that their unique places in the world can stay unique. Don't call it marriage. I don't know what you'd call it...as long as, in accordance with the Walker verdict, those 1,138 rights can apply to them.
Because in the end, a word and a process are not as important as a sentiment. As being able to love and commit to and work at a relationship with your partner without ANYONE contradicting you, without ANYTHING you should be sharing denied to you. That, and not the semantics of marriage, is why I celebrate the blow against Prop 8 and human inequality.
(And by the way, as the New York Times pointed out, the brilliance of the opinion is that it is rooted in quantifiable fact as much as law, which will make it a bit harder to argue against. Well done!)
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