Sirens magazine did a wedding issue, and asked me to write something aboutmarriage equality:
On a more personal note, not a single one of San Francisco’s or Massachusetts’ weddings marred my wedded bliss one bit. I was more upset by those using my marriage as an excuse to deny others their right to equal protection under the law.
San Francisco’s weddings made me remember my own wedding day, and the wedding days of some dear friends: thrown petals, good wishes, sufficient champagne, a bridesmaid snogging one of the groomsmen. They made me happier to be married, the joy of those couples reflected onto the rest of us, showing us how lucky we were to witness that kind of love.
Which is a roundabout way of giving my belated congratulations to the beautiful women ofWe Do Too, whose wedding photos made me cry and laugh and, at a time when there’s so much dark and so much crazy, remember that the reason we’re not doomed is that people will always be brave, whatever else is going on.
A.
The Book of Love
Stephen Merritt/Magnetic Fields
The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It’s full of charts and facts and figures and instructions for dancing
but I love it when you read to me and you can read me anything
The book of love has music in it
In fact that’s where music comes from
Some of it is just transcendental
Some of it is just really dumb
but I love it when you sing to me and you can sing me anything
The book of love is long and boring and written very long ago
It’s full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes
and things we’re all too young to know
but I love it when you give me things and you ought to give me wedding rings
I love it when you give me things and you ought to give me wedding rings
Amen.
Thanks for the link. What a lovely story. It made me think of my sister and her partner(gone these ten years), who were more married than lots of het couples I know. Everyone should have the kind of love they shared – boxes of love letters mailed even though they lived together, a comfort of self that I’ve rarely seen, and an unbridled sense of adventure. I strive for that sort of union in my own marriage. I don’t see how anyone else’s marriage (or relationship) is a threat to mine, and I never have. If that logic is followed, then everyone else’s divorces are a threat to my marriage, too, and so far (14 years) that hasn’t proven true.
Actually it was marrying my wife that caused me to take the issue more seriously. It had always been an abstraction to me, what 2 people do is none of my concern and all that. Before we met I had known only a handful of gay men and I cannot remember any of them ever bringing up the issue, but through my wife I met a couple that have a long term stable relationship. Together these two men owned property, shared everything and had all the trappings of marrage except that one little peice of paper that conferred all the same rights my wife and I would later have. Since I met the 2 of them and my wife it has outraged me. How are our friends any different than my wife and myself? Only in the most private of ways are we different, but our relationships are no less caring, deep, commited and vital to our existances than the other. This isnt about those hypothetical “2 people” to me anymore but about how the government, MY government is engaged in nothing more than rank BIGOTRY. I can’t be put more simply than that.