GAY MARRIAGE IS A QUESTION OF LOVE
Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment
on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which
rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the
balance on this issue, from coast to coast.
Some
parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about
politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a
personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of
one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal
stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that
still pervades their lives.
And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible.
Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics. This
is about the human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.
If
you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the
sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do
not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a
time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over
here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your
option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take
anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little
less alone in the world.
Only
now you are saying to them—no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe
something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much
trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights—even as
you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world
around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying,
no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you
couldn't marry?
I
keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage. If this country hadn't
re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people.
Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal in 1967.
1967.
The parents
of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in
nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to
lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined"
marriage, some black people still couldn't marry black people. It is
one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of
slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were
slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband
and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not
"Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part."
Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.
You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are gay.
And
uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by
society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages
of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing, centuries of men and
women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who
have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other
lives, of spouses and children, all because we said a man couldn't
marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The
sanctity of marriage.
How
many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they
increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term,
meaningless?
What
is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of
love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The
world is barren enough.
It
is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few
and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only
stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how
hard you work.
And
here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that
work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in
the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against
people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do?
With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this
is what your conscience tells you to do?
With
your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing
field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is
what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You
want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he
represents? Then Spread happiness—this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain
of happiness—share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything
from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand
against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement
and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as
you would have them do unto you."
You
are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand
on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question
of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or
straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of love. All you
need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate.
You
don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to
fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because
while it may at first look like that love is between two people you
don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to
know. It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow person
just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts,
too.
This is the
second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all
things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.
But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:
"I
was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet,
Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge. It appealed to me as the highest that
I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the
hearts of all: So I be written in the Book of Love; I do not care about
that Book above. Erase my name, or write it as you will, So I be
written in the Book of Love."
Recent Comments