Save My Marriage From Irrelevance: Reverse Prop 8

My wife and I just left a movie theater where we saw Sean Penn's vital, vulnerable, brave, complicated performance as Harvey Milk.

For those who haven't seen the movie, a taste ...

Rather than use this space to mourn Harvey Milk's assassination or dissect the political lessons of his determined rise to elective office or review the movie or recommend one of my favorite books ever, I'm just going to follow Harvey Milk's example by being real and sharing a thought that's been clanking around my brain for a few weeks now.

The thought is simply this: While my relationship with my wife is going strong, my marriage has never seemed less important. For all the bigoted blather about how gay people undermine the true meaning of marriage, I -- on a totally non-political, human level -- feel exactly the opposite. My growing indifference to the institution of marriage grows precisely from my everyday experience in the company of gay and lesbian couples who embody the true meaning of marriage. Denied the right to marry, our friends nonetheless

Yes, I didn't finish that last sentence. Two of our friends showed up at the cafe where I was writing. I closed up my laptop and we all went to dinner. The friends are a longtime couple -- wonderful women who we and our kids love spending time with. I realize this seems fake, that the blogger in the middle of writing sterile words about his "everyday experience in the company of gay and lesbian couples" couldn't possibly have had his blogging interrupted by going to dinner with a living, breathing lesbian couple. But, people, we live in a world where Rod Blagojevich is real! In our post-Blago world we should recall what sportswriter Red Smith wrote in 1951 after Bobby Thomson's shocking, pennant-winning home run: "The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again." See, Red Smith warned us about Blagojevich. He warned us about the interruption of my writing. Right? Anyway, back to what I was saying ...

Denied the right to marry, our friends nonetheless give each other all the care, love, honesty, loyalty, support, shelter, and shared laughter that marriage is all about for me. You can't spend much time around couples who accomplish all that in their daily unmarried lives without realizing that you don't need a marriage to love each other well. My marriage begins to seem about as essential as my appendix. Vestigial.

Look, I realize everything I'm writing here could be used to fuel the canard that straight people get their brains poisoned by being around gays and lesbians. Oh, that poor heterosexual husband! Being around those bad lesbians in Seattle made him question the unquestionable importance of marriage. Being around those bad gay parents in Hercules, California made him think he'd still be a good dad even if he didn't have a marriage license. Bad. Bad. Bad.

Well, whatever. Like people who build sandcastles too close to the incoming tide, people whose ideas are doomed to be washed away by history tend to spend a startling amount of time shrieking at unstoppable, inevitable forces. So get mad at me. Get mad at my friends. Yell yourselves hoarse. Wittingly or unwittingly, well-intentioned or vicious, you are the heirs to the fire-all-the-gay-teachers bigots depicted in Sean Penn's movie. The fleeting silence of your hoarseness will be golden.

The tide of history has been bearing down on the defense-of-marriage sandcastle for years -- since before "defense of marriage" became a catchphrase, since before legalized gay marriage became a remotely plausible goal. The tide of history has been bearing down in small ways and big ways. In person and on film.

The 1993 movie Philadelphia was ostensibly about AIDS and justice. But in telling us the story of a dazzling lawyer wrongfully fired by his firm because of an illness, the Oscar-winning movie also quietly showed a relationship between a Tom Hanks character and an Antonio Banderas character. Their relationship looked an awful lot like a marriage. Some might find that insidious. But no amount of shrieking at the tide can change the fact of those scenes Hanks and Banderas shared.

The sandcastle is further doomed when millions of moms around America watch as the nice young man who gives them interior decorating advice shows up on the screen with his friend Oprah, looking shattered because he just lost his male partner in a natural disaster.

Empathy, ultimately, is what dooms the defense-of-marriage sandcastle. Not radicalism. Not militancy. Not marches. Not boycotts. Those things are fine. They can be cathartic. People are free to do them. But simple empathy will eventually decide this.

What remains to be seen is how the decision will come down.

Will empathy eventually give us an inclusive institution of marriage?

Or will empathy eventually lead more and more people to where I find myself now?

Where I find myself now, my message for all those "defenders" of marriage out there goes like this.

Have "marriage."

Take "marriage."

If the word "marriage" is so fragile that it needs to be protected from the loving couples I'm privileged to call my friends, go lock the word up in a pretty box. Keep the locked box in your church. Share the blessing inside the box only with those you deem worthy. Let only those worthy ones be called "married." Refuse to recognize the legitimacy of gay weddings or secular straight weddings or devout straight weddings held within the walls of churches that interpret God's words differently than you do. Expect those churches to look with the same disdain on the so-called "marriages" of your faithful.

Pick a new name for the civil contract I have with my wife. Give it a clunky name if that will help you stomach laws that grant gay civil unions and straight civil unions the same set of rights now enjoyed only by married heterosexuals. Give it a name like an IRS form. I simply don't care. No name can change what my wife and I have with each other.

We don't need your blessing.

Stay out of our lives.

Huffington Post blogger David Quigg lives in Seattle. Click here to visit the blog where he's gradually posting his entire first novel. Click here for an archive of his previous HuffPost work, including -- most recently -- some holiday gift advice.

Comments

[etouchette]

Thank you for the thoughtful writing. My husband and I have been talking about this very same thing, though we are not as articulate. It is nice to have a voice out there like yours.

[jglatzer]

one of the nicest blogs ive seen in a long time

[Mexjewel]

When I find someone that I want to share my lovelife with, where do I go to make it official and public? To the Baptist church down the street, to my Mormon temple? No, to the County Registrar for a "Marriage License". Even atheists and Catholics marry. It's a CIVIL procedure that need not involve religion at all. Why are the Fundies so upset (rhetorical question)?

[mercury613]

Because in order for there to be an "us", there has to be a "them" in the eyes of the Religious Reich.

[aaglaas]

Dear David,

I am very thankful that there are citizens like you who truly care about whether America honors its declaration to the world of being dedicated to ensuring equality for all people. I have a blog that I'd like to share with you about this subject as well. It's at:

http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/page/Aaron%27s+Story

Please keep writing... you are one of the people who illuminates our nation, rather than darkens it.
Thank you so much.. Aaron (aaglaas)

[David Quigg - Huffpost Blogger]

Many thanks to aaglass and all of you who have left such supportive comments. Thanks for taking the time to consider my ideas.

The link Aaron provides here is remarkable. I'm impressed, among other things, with Aaron's willingness to beat his head against a wall. I just don't have it in me.

If you're interested in reading one guy's quest to bring dissent to the Fox News site, please follow Aaron's link above.

Thanks again.

[aaglaas]

:-) ... David, you truly honor me man. Thank you!!

[mercury613]

All I can say is WOW. My hat is off to you for writing with such authority and eloquence, especially considering whom you were addressing. I would not have had the patience.

Your words inspire. Thank you, and please keep writing.

Jeff

P.S. Here's a link to a great speech about the Treaty with Tripoli. It should quickly shut up anyone who operates under the mistaken notion that our Founding Fathers intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation.

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/buckner_tripoli.html

[aaglaas]

Jeff.... thank you so much. I definitely will save your link for future use in this most recent growing-pain within our country's maturation.

[SUIGENEROUSLA]

Beautifully written David. I think we'd all like to have dinner with you and your wife.

[DavidOnTheMedia]

Hi David,
Thanks for a good article. I believe religious people are still going through their "terrible 2's".
2 co-dependant on obvious lies about separation, 2 belligerent to think they may be wrong, 2 angry to see the damage they cause, 2 hypnotized from birth to see reality. And on and on . . .
I find it telling that almost every article one reads about "a church" is some situation where they are bashing away. They have serious perfection issues and are way out of touch with reality. They damage our culture beyond belief. I have compassion for their psychosis, yet like rocks and mud being hurled into a peaceful lake, I have anger that they dump their psychosis endlessly on the calm and common public. As we evolve, I think it will become apparent, they will have little left to tread on very soon.

[smithshaw08]

Well David,
I really think you hit the nail on the head. In the minds of every religious person who would deny gays the right to marry..........they believe we are unworthy. Simply because the gay couple does not consist of an innie & an outie package. They have somehow convinced themselves that if gays are allowed to marry, every hetero couple will stop procreating & the human race will end. Or because in their closed mind, we are sinners, unworthy. Their church is bigger than our church, we are unworthy. Their family is more important than our family, we are unworthy. I think NOT!

[mercury613]

"They have somehow convinced themselves that if gays are allowed to marry, every hetero couple will stop procreating & the human race will end."

I believe that they are afraid of exactly the opposite -- that if we allow gay and lesbian people to marry, *nothing* will happen, and that all their fire and brimstone will be reduced to no more than a fizzling match, forcing them to reevaluate their belief systems.

[smithshaw08]

I'm not sure Merc..........they certainly bring up the procreation thing alot. Some procreate a bit to much!

[ButchPansy]

I agree that the movie was good, but I left it feeling we (those of us who are surviving in the age of plague, as well as those not yet born in the 70's, or who didn't become sexually active til after the AZT cocktail) have betrayed those who fought and died for us. We are invisible again in our complacency. I feel disgust whenever i see ads for "str8 acting" men who have sex with other men. Yeah, I like 'em big and butch, but it's imperative that we (gay people) are out and visible. Straight America knows and loves us (most of 'em), but they don't see us because we have become so "mainstream" in the enlightened parts of the world, and so deeply closeted in the hinterlands. Visibility is the first step to equality. Yes, it is a civil rights issue! Keep your religious views on marriage in your own church where it belongs! I, too, want "them" out of my life, and wish they'd keep their blessings to themselves, as well!

[mercury613]

Thanks, David. I'm sitting here at my desk, just a bit teary-eyed from reading your post.

[SpeakWithoutInterruption]

Do two people really need a definition/label to be committed to one another?

[mercury613]

No, they don't, but they do need one for practical things like taxes, insurance, inheritance, etc. And they also need one for human things like being able to visit your loved one in the hospital.

[rocketx2]

No they don't! A marriage license isn"t a right¦it"s a privilege. A marriage license is like a drivers license.
Our society values and protects children so we give men and women who might create those children privileges we don"t extend to everyone. I have lived with my girlfriend for 2 years and we don"t have the rights of marriage either.
We want those men and women that have children to stay together and raise those children to become successful adults so we protect those unions.
Because gay couples can"t have children we don"t extend them the privilege of marriage.

[mercury613]

So I assume that you also don't want to extend the "privilege" of marriage to menopausal women? Or women who have lost their ovaries to cancer? Or men who have low sperm counts? Or couples who simply don't want to have children?

[JustMyWords]

A privilege? Really? What, exactly, do heterosexual couples have to do to earn that privilege? It can't be the "have children" part, because there's no requirement in the laws of any state that says you have to have children to get married. Gee, you don't even have to pretend that you're going to have children.

The fact that you and your girlfriend have chosen not to get married is pretty much irrelevant to the conversation, since the only thing that would stop you is that fact that the two of you have CHOSEN not to marry. Although I think it's kind of funny that when you're talking about gays, marriage is a privilege - but when you talk about you and your girlfriend, it's rights.

[StevenKeirstead]

So would it be OK to deprive gays and lesbians of the right to a drivers license? Get real. That would also be unfair, though less so.

And Loving v. Virginia and Goodridge v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health both affirm that marriage is a right, not a privilege.

[JohnBisceglia]

No, but 2 people need access to the rights & protections that marriages affords. When they do NOT have access to marriage, stoopid, unnecessary harm happens. And society PAYS for it. I've had to rely on WELFARE for years now, when I could have had a legal divorce after 8 years of marriage. Other people's ignorance and hate is actually costing them in tax dollars....in more ways than one.

[carsntrucks]

...which is exactly what domestic partnership laws give them already.