From the time I was six years old, I knew I would never
marry. I never fantasized about being a bride when I was younger, I never
dreamed about my wedding day or about my wedding dress, and I never identified
with the girls and women in movies who fell in love with and were whisked off
to the happy future by their Prince Charming. I remember the day that I had this realization about my
future. I was standing on the front porch of my house growing up. My mother
made some off-handed comment that I would grow up and get married one day, and
my stomach fell because I knew that she was wrong. Even at that young age I
knew, with a conviction that I can’t explain but felt as deeply rooted in me as
my left-handedness, that such an innocuous vision of my future might have been
appropriate for other girls, but it was not, and never would be mine. Because I
was just not the sort of girl for whom that future was meant.
During
most of my childhood, adolescence, and teenage years. I thought of myself as
broken. Not just because I loathed dresses, the colors pink and purple,
princesses, jewelry, sparkles, bows, and jelly shoes, and not just because I
was a tomboy who would rather have simply been, on most days, a boy (I don’t
think I actually truly wanted to be a boy, though I was unsure about that for
many years), but because I knew, with increasing self-hatred and desperation,
that I just wasn’t the way a girl “should” be. It was like I was plunked in a
room full of girls, except I was alone, looking at the others from behind a
glass wall.
After my mother made her comment about me getting married, I decided two
things:
1) Because I was broken, I would probably only ever
disappoint everyone in my entire life, including me.
2) Case in point: Mom hoped I would grow up to marry one
day. Marriage though was something reserved for real girls. Not for me.
Fast forward a couple of years to when I came out of the closet. For the first time in my eighteen years of life, instead of shame, disgust
and disappointment for my failure to be a ‘real’ girl, I experienced a strange
new sensation. I found peace. I found myself. For the first time in
my life, I no longer felt broken. For the first time in my life, it felt right to be me.
Fast forward another few years. I meet Gina. She makes my
heart flip and my stomach dip and we fall in love. She is my strength, my
solace, my support. She is my heart’s chosen life partner. And
because we live in Massachusetts, and it is 2009, we can do something I never
believed would be part of my life’s path.
We can marry.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Massachusetts.
This is what being able to
marry Gina means to me:
1) Being able to marry whom I love publicly honors and
celebrates that love by allowing me to claim the very word marriage. There is a
reason weddings are thrown for marriage, and not for Continued Committed
Domestic Partnership Tuesday.
2) Being able to marry whom I love removes the glass wall
separating me from the ‘real’ girls. It validates me as a real girl too.
3) Being able to marry whom I love validates my love and my
commitment to Gina as equal to anybody else’s love for a spouse.
4) Being able to marry whom I love lets me live openly,
freely, and fully as the person I am, have always been, and will always be.
4)Being allowed to marry whom I love realizes, acknowledges,
and affirms me as full human who is equal. Not less than.
With the cases before the supreme court yesterday and today,
marriage equality has been forefront in the news, and you can guess what side I
am on. I have heard the debates from those I agree with, and I have listened to
the debates from those I disagree with. Both have honest, passionate cases to
argue. I have my own thoughts and wishes for how the court might decide the
prop 8 and DOMA cases before them. Never before have I felt so personally
connected to such a seminal moment in our country’s history. Never before has
the political felt so personal. I
use the term ‘marriage equality’ deliberately, because from my sensibility,
the issues being debated in the supreme court right now are fundamentally about
equality. Equality in marriage, and equality for all citizens of the United
States. I believe the side I am on will eventually prove to be the right side
of history because I believe it is a cause that strives towards basic equality
in humans. This has always been the forward march of our history. This has always been the forward march of our humanity.
