why I officiate weddings
Well, firstly, because people whom I love asked me to do so.
To date, I have officiated three weddings and legally solemnized those marriages. The first and third were for dear friends (the first, the one that required all that rigmarole of becoming clergy in the first place and registering with the State of Minnesota as such, was for one of my dearest friends in the world), and the second, for my eldest nephew.
I love these people, so of course I would officiate at their wedding. How could I not? It's a simple enough gift, isn't it?
Isn't it?
This Saturday, I'm officiating my fourth wedding. I won't have to act as a representative of the State of California--they wed legally yesterday, at San Francisco City Hall. I'm there to preside over the ritual of it all, for their family and friends, their community. In fact, that's at the heart of the ceremony I've written for them--that marriage is not an act for two alone, but for a community entire.
I believe that.
This is the first wedding I'll perform where I do not love the couple being wed. I like them a lot, and the bride is best friends with one of my dear friends, and these are people who are going to be on the edges of my life for the rest of it, through that mutual dear friend, but I do not love them.
The simplicity, the obviousness necessity of my gift... isn't. I don't need to do this out of love, or for money, or because no one else can or would.
So why am I doing it?
Why am I helping another straight couple marry (and never mind that the civil part has been taken care of; I would have signed the certificate) when queer couples, by and large, cannot?
How do I reconcile that, as a queer man who demands his full dignity under the law?
Why do I participate in the celebration of a privilege I am refused? Not even just participating in celebrating it, but using the weight of my talent to write a ceremony that's true? How is that not a quisling act?
This past Sunday was Pride Sunday here in San Francisco. I went to the parade and took hundreds of pictures, as I've done for a few years now. There was a contingent in the parade from the folks with the National Marriage Boycott, a group which describes itself as "a youth-led movement determined to usher in a national culture of acceptance by pledging not to marry until we achieve full federal marriage equality."
And something about that group just pissed me the hell off.
Oh, yes: privilege.
That would be it.
Yes, NMB, I understand that you're trying to help. I understand that your straight members believe that you're making a sacrifice in order to help. Hell, some of you might actually be making a sacrifice, because you have found the person whom you'd like to marry, but have chosen not to because you believe that by doing so, you'd be fostering inequality. However... most of you, odds are, given how you're all youth-led and as a society, we're marrying later and later, aren't. You're grandstanding. You're taking a privilege that you have, that you have no use for at the moment, and you're trying to make political hay out of it. You're buying a ring--literally; they sell "equality rings"--you can wear so you can feel righteous about social justice.
The thing is: if you're straight, you still have the choice of marrying the person you choose, even if you've chosen not to.
Your heterosexual privilege: intact.
Privilege isn't something you can actually renounce, people. It's something society bestows, it's the community acting.
I understand what NMB is trying to do. I think it's ridiculous, sidesteps the real struggle going on by allowing people to focus on a symbolic action that does little to change the status quo, and is markedly unexamined and ill-conceived. I think it will achieve little, generating some heat but precious little light.
That they mean well and are probably completely sincere about it doesn't change any of that.
(See privilege, Intact.)
I would like to believe that it will achieve something grand, catalyzing a sea change, and that we, as a society, become something rich and strange, and more just, because of it.
But I don't. Even if the folks who started this movement come from my own alma mater, Stanford, with all its attendant privileges and issues, and that I know full-well that Stanford kids can harness a lot of that massive privilege into useful things.
I don't believe it, and it still pisses me off.
Why does this piss me off so? Aside from all the privileged behavior, and that I don't think attempting to give up privilege works, and that just as I don't think Rosa Parks would have sparked a revolution had she been white, I don't think that straight people can win this fight for us, it pisses me off because I believe in marriage.
I believe that people can come together in love and create a new family for themselves, in and part of their community, that strengthens their commitments to each other and to society, too. I believe that people can do this without marriage, too, but in this society, we extend the married many, many privileges and rights and responsibilities, and that if we have any pretense to justice as a society, these must be extended to everyone who wishes to avail themselves of them.
I believe that our society is shaped by ages and ages of traditions, carried on our backs and transmitted in our minds, and that being social animals, we need these traditions, and that whether or not marriage is the best possible outcome for uniting people, it is the one that we have, that means so much, that people recognize what you mean when you say "spouse" or "wife" or "husband."
I believe in marriage.
Even if I am denied its privileges, its rights, its responsibilities.
I am a member of this society, and I know what it means to love, and what it means to want to have full dignity under the law.
I believe that I am part of the community, and that my act of not just witnessing, but of officiating, of affirming, of celebrating this wedding is part of my engagement with my community. I am here, and I am one of us, and I will not stand apart. I will not renounce what agency I might have, but rather, I will use it, communicate it to everyone in my society.
That is why this Saturday I will officiate a wedding for a straight couple I do not love.
Because they love each other. Because they wanted to make sure that their wedding was about their marriage, and that their marriage was about their community and their place in it. Because they asked me. Because I can.
Because it's a simple gift, and because if need be, I can love them for believing, too.
I officiate weddings because I believe in loving people.
To date, I have officiated three weddings and legally solemnized those marriages. The first and third were for dear friends (the first, the one that required all that rigmarole of becoming clergy in the first place and registering with the State of Minnesota as such, was for one of my dearest friends in the world), and the second, for my eldest nephew.
I love these people, so of course I would officiate at their wedding. How could I not? It's a simple enough gift, isn't it?
Isn't it?
This Saturday, I'm officiating my fourth wedding. I won't have to act as a representative of the State of California--they wed legally yesterday, at San Francisco City Hall. I'm there to preside over the ritual of it all, for their family and friends, their community. In fact, that's at the heart of the ceremony I've written for them--that marriage is not an act for two alone, but for a community entire.
I believe that.
This is the first wedding I'll perform where I do not love the couple being wed. I like them a lot, and the bride is best friends with one of my dear friends, and these are people who are going to be on the edges of my life for the rest of it, through that mutual dear friend, but I do not love them.
The simplicity, the obviousness necessity of my gift... isn't. I don't need to do this out of love, or for money, or because no one else can or would.
So why am I doing it?
Why am I helping another straight couple marry (and never mind that the civil part has been taken care of; I would have signed the certificate) when queer couples, by and large, cannot?
How do I reconcile that, as a queer man who demands his full dignity under the law?
Why do I participate in the celebration of a privilege I am refused? Not even just participating in celebrating it, but using the weight of my talent to write a ceremony that's true? How is that not a quisling act?
This past Sunday was Pride Sunday here in San Francisco. I went to the parade and took hundreds of pictures, as I've done for a few years now. There was a contingent in the parade from the folks with the National Marriage Boycott, a group which describes itself as "a youth-led movement determined to usher in a national culture of acceptance by pledging not to marry until we achieve full federal marriage equality."
And something about that group just pissed me the hell off.
Oh, yes: privilege.
That would be it.
Yes, NMB, I understand that you're trying to help. I understand that your straight members believe that you're making a sacrifice in order to help. Hell, some of you might actually be making a sacrifice, because you have found the person whom you'd like to marry, but have chosen not to because you believe that by doing so, you'd be fostering inequality. However... most of you, odds are, given how you're all youth-led and as a society, we're marrying later and later, aren't. You're grandstanding. You're taking a privilege that you have, that you have no use for at the moment, and you're trying to make political hay out of it. You're buying a ring--literally; they sell "equality rings"--you can wear so you can feel righteous about social justice.
The thing is: if you're straight, you still have the choice of marrying the person you choose, even if you've chosen not to.
Your heterosexual privilege: intact.
Privilege isn't something you can actually renounce, people. It's something society bestows, it's the community acting.
I understand what NMB is trying to do. I think it's ridiculous, sidesteps the real struggle going on by allowing people to focus on a symbolic action that does little to change the status quo, and is markedly unexamined and ill-conceived. I think it will achieve little, generating some heat but precious little light.
That they mean well and are probably completely sincere about it doesn't change any of that.
(See privilege, Intact.)
I would like to believe that it will achieve something grand, catalyzing a sea change, and that we, as a society, become something rich and strange, and more just, because of it.
But I don't. Even if the folks who started this movement come from my own alma mater, Stanford, with all its attendant privileges and issues, and that I know full-well that Stanford kids can harness a lot of that massive privilege into useful things.
I don't believe it, and it still pisses me off.
Why does this piss me off so? Aside from all the privileged behavior, and that I don't think attempting to give up privilege works, and that just as I don't think Rosa Parks would have sparked a revolution had she been white, I don't think that straight people can win this fight for us, it pisses me off because I believe in marriage.
I believe that people can come together in love and create a new family for themselves, in and part of their community, that strengthens their commitments to each other and to society, too. I believe that people can do this without marriage, too, but in this society, we extend the married many, many privileges and rights and responsibilities, and that if we have any pretense to justice as a society, these must be extended to everyone who wishes to avail themselves of them.
I believe that our society is shaped by ages and ages of traditions, carried on our backs and transmitted in our minds, and that being social animals, we need these traditions, and that whether or not marriage is the best possible outcome for uniting people, it is the one that we have, that means so much, that people recognize what you mean when you say "spouse" or "wife" or "husband."
I believe in marriage.
Even if I am denied its privileges, its rights, its responsibilities.
I am a member of this society, and I know what it means to love, and what it means to want to have full dignity under the law.
I believe that I am part of the community, and that my act of not just witnessing, but of officiating, of affirming, of celebrating this wedding is part of my engagement with my community. I am here, and I am one of us, and I will not stand apart. I will not renounce what agency I might have, but rather, I will use it, communicate it to everyone in my society.
That is why this Saturday I will officiate a wedding for a straight couple I do not love.
Because they love each other. Because they wanted to make sure that their wedding was about their marriage, and that their marriage was about their community and their place in it. Because they asked me. Because I can.
Because it's a simple gift, and because if need be, I can love them for believing, too.
I officiate weddings because I believe in loving people.