Write to Marry Day
Today is Write to Marry Day. The purpose of this day is for "bloggers around the country and around the world on Wednesday, October 29 to blog in support of marriage equality for same-sex couples and against California’s Proposition 8." It’s being spearheaded by Mombian, a blog dedicated to Lesbian moms.
This blog post is my contribution to Write to Marry Day. But as a resident of Arizona, I have a more personal interest in Arizona Proposition 102. While I fully acknowledge the significance of California’s Prop 8 (namely, that what’s at stake in California is the removal of marriage rights people already have, as well as the fact that, as our largest and arguably most influential state, the survival of marriage equality in California will hopefully pave the way for marriage equality across the U.S.), the marriage amendments in Arizona and Florida are usually mentioned only as footnotes to the California story, if at all. Somebody needs to speak for Arizona too, so today that will be me. But even though the specifics of the amendments are different as are the political battlegrounds, overall the struggle is the same.
First, a bit of background about me. My husband Jeff and I were married in a dream-come-true ceremony in Mesa, AZ on August 13, 2005. (Mesa, by the way, is home to the largest concentration of Mormons outside of Utah, and to at least a third of the major donors to the Yes on 102 cause.) The wedding had everything you would expect (well, besides the fact that there were two grooms): a minister, vows, rings, music, readers, flowers, dinner, dancing, a toast, a fabulous wedding cake with two grooms on top, a signature cocktail we created just for the occasion (the "Prickly Pair"), and about 70 guests - about half gay and half straight (although nobody really seemed to care about that). There was only one thing missing - a marriage license.
Five days later, on the third day of our honeymoon, we were in Vancouver, BC, getting married again. This time, it was just us, two wedding planners (and lovely people) from "Two Dears and a Queer" and a warm, caring, and beautiful wedding officiant named Ann Moore, in a beautiful rose garden in Queen Elizabeth Park, with champaign, boutonnières, and wedding cupcakes. This time, the wedding came with a marriage license. That piece of paper means a great deal to us; maybe someday it will mean something to the state of Arizona and the United States government.
We are married in the eyes of our Creator, our families and friends, and most of all, our selves. No church can take that away or stop it from taking place in the lives of other loving, committed couples. I feel it’s important for same-sex couples to have the same ceremonies and use the same language as opposite-sex couples in our everyday vocabulary, because this establishes how we regard our marriages and how we expect to be treated - that is, equally.
Why is this important? First, it’s important to us, as gay and lesbian people. There are still many people in our own community who have yet to wrap their heads around the idea that we can (let alone should) get married, just like the straight people do. For decades, we bought into the construct that straight people get married, gay/lesbian people just form relationships. Straight people have husbands and wives, we have "partners" or "lovers." We need to convince ourselves that we are entitled to full marriage equality. In the immortal words of Mahatma Gandhi, we must become the change we wish to see in the world.
Second, it’s important for our quest to achieve equality in the hearts and minds of straight people. Most straight people (many more than you might think) are genuinely thoughtful and fair-minded people. But they, too, have been raised in a society in which the norm is that only straight couples get married, and gay/lesbian couples (if they even know of any) form relationships or "play house." They have not been conditioned to think of same-sex marriages as being on an even par with opposite-sex marriages. This doesn’t mean they are bigoted, it’s simply a new paradigm for them. As we demonstrate this new paradigm by living our lives openly every day, it is inevitable that more and more of society as a whole will view our marriages as non-threatening, meaningful, beautiful, and most of all, equal.
From June 27, the day I learned that a marriage amendment would return to the Arizona ballot (thanks to a desparate and shameful 11th-hour act of deplorable rule-breaking by our Arizona state senate republicans), my life has been an emotional rollercoaster. More often than not, I have remained optimistic that we will defeat this once again. But some days, it has seemed like it could pass. Arizona Mormons have received the same directive as those in California: give of your money and effort, as much as you are able, to defeat this. A videotaped message from Bishop Olmstead was played in every Catholic church. The Yes side raised over $7 million, the No side will be lucky to raise $700,000. But many things have happened to keep me optimistic:
- Every major paper in Arizona, and some smaller-town papers, opposed Prop 102, including the East Valley Tribune, based in Mesa. No papers that I am aware of has editorialized in support of it.
- The voter guide produced by the Secretary of State and mailed to every Arizona voter contained citizen-submitted statements opposing Prop 102 from the mayors of Phoenix and Tucson, the President of the University of Arizona, the League of Women voters, NOW, ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and nine clergypeople from five mainstream faiths. The statements in support of Prop 102 came only from unknown individuals.
- We know we can count on every straight person in our circle of friends to vote No. Some even donated.
- Jeff's trainer told him he voted No, just because of Jeff and me, and Janet and Trisha (two good friends of ours who go to the same gym). Several other gym acquaintances told Jeff they are voting No. One, the proud father of a young gay man who is about to marry a Canadian man with both families' full support, even donated $750 to Arizona Together to pay for two TV commercials.
- A Native American man at Jeff's gym said that the Gila River Indian Community is overwhelmingly against it. They don't like what they know the right wing will do next after this passes.
- A friend told me that she was talking to a very conservative co-worker of hers, who said that he is voting No, because he doesn't feel that this sort of thing belongs in the constitution. He said all of his friends feel the same way.
But more than that, the fact is that the people who will vote against amending the constitution to limit marriage to only heterosexuals have arrived at that position because they know gay people and gay couples. They have come to understand that we present no threat, and that we want to get married for exactly the same reasons they do. Only two years ago, the passage of anti-equality marriage amendments was considered a foregone conclusion until we defeated Prop 107 in Arizona. Today, we have good reason to believe that we can defeat all three (but it's still far too close). In the next few years, as we strive to undo the damage that has been done in so many states, repeal DOMA, and hopefully see the day when we achieve marriage equality throughout the land, the single biggest thing we can do is to share our lives with those around us more openly and proudly than ever before. We need to share our stories and talk about why marriage is important, and what we miss out on by being unable to legally marry. (Most straight people, even our most supportive allies, have no idea what rights we don't have, because the rights they enjoy are as invisible and taken for granted by them as the air they breathe.) We need to keep building these bridges to better understanding continuously as we go through our lives. By doing this, we will win over the hearts and minds of the majority of our society, and build a better, more equal future for all of us.