I’ve wanted to write a response to the passage of New York’s marriage equality law, but I figured it was best to sort out my feelings first. Nearly three weeks later, they still aren’t entirely sorted, but I’ll try to place them here in as orderly a fashion as possible.
In November 2004, Georgia voters approved a referendum that amended the state constitution. This amendment prohibited both same-sex marriage and civil unions in the state and the recognizance of such marriages and unions performed in other states. (Even though the language on the ballot mentioned only the part about prohibiting same-sex marriage, a fact that led a Superior Court judge to strike down the law. It was shortly thereafter reinstated by the state Supreme Court.)
Going into the vote, I knew the referendum would be approved, which bummed me out. But when the ballot results were released, I was taken aback: 76 percent of voters had approved the measure. I hadn’t expected, or probably I just hadn’t wanted to expect, that my fellow Georgians would be so united in this belief: that we needed to alter the state’s fundamental legal document simply to prevent gay people from marrying each other. Which was, by the way, already illegal.
I understand better now that this measure and others like it were, for many in power, a way of getting Republicans and social conservatives to the polls in a presidential election year. That lots of people didn’t know exactly what they were agreeing to. That many of those who did were trying to protect their way of life and their beliefs.
That 76 percent figure still bothers me, though. And back then it just plain sucked.
I had come out as bisexual to my friends and family about a year earlier, and it had been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. Going into it, I was pretty sure that everyone would be cool about the news—and then they were! I was actually disappointed when I ran out of people to come out to. I was hugely fortunate to have such an easy time of it, and the whole thing ended up being a sort of conclusion to a more general, terribly cliche process of self-realization, one which ultimately led me to New York to try and become a writer.
So. Why did a gay marriage ban passed a whole year later upset me so much? I had no plans to marry, gaily or otherwise. I wasn’t even gay, as such. And I was planning on leaving the state regardless.
Because a law like that, no matter the intentions of those who wrote it or voted for it, is a big “fuck you” to every gay, lesbian, and bisexual person in the state. Because it codifies the notion that such people are essentially incapable or unworthy of the type of deep commitment, love, and responsibility we as a society associate with marriage. Because it’s not even “separate but equal”; it’s just “separate,” forever.
And because if even I, someone who felt no practical impact from the law, someone who could pass for and was in some way straight, someone had just about the easiest possible coming out experience shy of being raised in Portland by two dads, felt attacked by that 76 percent, imagine how a lesbian teen bullied at school or a deeply closeted man in rural Georgia would feel. Still feel.
That’s why New York’s marriage equality law means so much to so many people. Apart from its legal consequences, the law is implicitly an acknowledgment, a solemn, civil agreement, that a person’s sexuality does not diminish or enhance that person’s capacity for love. Or selflessness. Or honor. Or the pursuit of any of those.
That acknowledgment is most of what I or any New Yorker “gets” from this, aside from maybe a wedding invitation or two, but, for me, with the memory of 2004 in mind, that alone is plenty. It’s not 76 percent of the electorate, but it’s a majority of their representatives, it’s a governor we elected by a large margin who campaigned on marriage equality, it’s four Republicans making the difference in the final vote. It’s the opposite of an attack; it’s about as close as we, a civil society, can get to an embrace.
Additionally, right now, it’s a push.
I’ve been in a loving, committed relationship with my girlfriend for three years. She’s known about and been completely accepting of my sexuality since our fourth date (traditionally, the sexuality clarification date). And, though I am sometimes a bit fancy, I think, to most people, I come across as straight—especially since people generally tend to think of such things in binary terms of gay or straight.
So, it’s easy for me to allow people to assume the latter. And in 95 percent of human interaction, it doesn’t matter. People assume all sorts of things about you and then you never see them again. Even most of the people you see regularly have no business knowing what your sexual identity is, unless you want them to know.
But then there are other times. Where you’re among friends who don’t know, and you’re talking about something related, and you could say something. But you don’t. When you’re worried what someone will think, and you could say something. But you don’t. Because it’s uncomfortable. Bisexuality, especially, is pretty weird. And you’ll say something next time.
It’s cowardice, essentially. A very small, excusable cowardice in any particular instance, but over time it becomes a pattern of behavior, a consistent refusal to acknowledge something meaningful.
So this is me, saying something.
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