There are two men who are semi-regular customers at my store. They often come in together with a few teenagers and work on projects in our backroom. For a while when they came in they were a topic of discussion among some of us employees who were just curious about who they were. A couple of theories were passed around, one that they were a couple with adopted children, and the other that they were involved in some sort of "Big Brother" like program and mentoring the kids.
One day when they had been shopping with us for a while we found out. One of the men had come in by himself and was working somewhat secretly on a project. I say secretely because he had been asking one of the managers for advice, information but he wouldn't tell her what his project was or give her much information to work with when trying to assist him. When I came into work about an hour later he tentatively approached me for help on his project. It turned out that he was working on a wedding invitation for him and his partner and needed ideas. We discussed a number of options and eventually he went on his way. I don't think I've seen him or his partner since so I haven't really thought about it much since then until yesterday.
As most of you know by now I volunteer for an organization named Action Wisconsin, which is a statewide advocacy group for the LGBT community. Right now a major focus for them is the proposed ammendment to ban same-sex marriages or any equivalent in the state of Wisconsin. Last night I got an email highlighting a new educational campaign that they are running. The idea is for lesbian and gay couples to send out "Engaged till it's legal" invitations to their friends and family with a blank wedding date, stressing the fact that gays and lesbians are not afforded the same rights to marry as straight couples are.
This whole campaign came about as the result of one couple's idea. Can you guess who that couple was? Ding!! It was the two men from my store. I didn't come up with the idea, or do the majority of the work on their invitation, but I'm still a little proud that I got to help with something that kicked off a great promotion for equal rights like this. It's just one of those things that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
On the another side of this issue... David and I have been debating gay rights lately. I love to debate, it's one of the reasons I seriously considered law school for a number of years. I especially love to debate with people who don't mind playing devils advocate or who can be passionate without having to worry about hurting someone's feelings and David and I have gotten very good at this. I have been mostly been playing the part of "ultra-PC-I-love-everyone-gay-people-should-marry" while David has been playing the Devil.... Err... Devil's Advocate ;)
I was doing pretty well until I hit a wall over the following issue... We had been talking about religion's roll in marriage and I, of course, was saying that while people should feel free to marry within their religion of choice, the rules of any one religion should not hold any sway over the states' or federal government's definition of marriage. And if you truly take away any of the stigmatism of same-sex marriages in catholic churches you're not left with much of a reason to discriminate against same-sex couples in the legal definition of "marriages."
David rebounded with the question of where it all ends. If you can't discriminate against same-sex couples, does that mean you should also allow polygamy, etc? I didn't honestly have an answer to that then. I believe in same-sex marriage because I personally have known good number of same-sex couples, many of them even raising wonderful children together. I've seen it all with my own eyes and I can say that it's a good thing. I haven't personally known any polygamous couples so I can't really judge them on that level. But there is a reason I think that they're different and the reason is this: a same-sex marriage still involves two equal partners. When you throw a third person into the mix what you generally hear about is a man who "has two wives" or for equalities sake, a woman who "has two husbands." I never hear one of the two wives say that they have a husband and a wife, they say that they have a husband and he has another wife. The power-scheme is all screwed up because one person has proportionally more power in the relationship than the others. And I don't want to sit here and say that if someone consentually chooses to give up some of that power in their personal relationships than I necessarily think it's a bad thing, but when you're talking legally then I do. So if three people want to go have a wedding where they each vow to be husband or wife to ALL of the other parties then that's fine with me... but if you have a man or woman just picking up extra spouses whenever they feel like it, then I'm not sure that that should be recognized as a marriage.
Which brings us to our last "argument." Whether the government should be in the business of marrying people at all. The system is certainly broken and perhaps instead of the government trying to regulate it we should just scrap the whole thing and let everyone decide who they want to spend the rest of their life with on their own. If their religion has marriage ceremonies then let them be married in the eyes of their god, but let it have no legal meaning in the eyes of our government. If two people want to share their house and their money and their children they can draw up powers of attorney and wills and what-have-you. Of course there are problems with this too and the major ones I see are this: we as a people LIKE getting married, and I don't think we'd be happy to have that taken away from us. Secondly, while you can draft up all the legal documents you like, when you're in the hospital and your life partner is in critical condition and split-second medical decisions have to be made, will there be time for doctors to verify your right to make those decisions? And if not, will you lose them? And even still, if you draft those documents in one state, will they be legally binding in another?
I feel silly ending this post with so many questions and not very many answers, but I would say that changes will have to be made some day. I think that those changes should be made slowly and carefully and always with the goal of including people, not discriminating against them. I am disappointed with our state for reacting the way it has to the issue of gay marriage and I hope that others are as well and that their disappointment will be made abundantly clear when we next elect our representatives.
This is a time to move forward, not backward.
