It’s the wee hours of the morning and I’m tired. My husband, who has been suffering from insomnia and fever for days, is sleeping (I hope) in the other room, and our two cats are curled around each other on the back of the couch behind my head. I am locked in battle with my eyelids. I hear the siren call of bed, but my mind is racing with a pugnacious mix of anger, dismay, yearning, and determination.
.
The First Ring
I have been married for 18 months now, and the hammered white band I wear has worn a comfortable groove into my ring finger. I rarely take the ring off except to hand mix a dough or my (not-very-)secret hamburger recipe. When I do remove it, my finger bears its imprint like the mark of a transformation so fundamental that the body itself cannot help but yield to it.
I am awed by this change. Every day I am altered. My husband’s needs become mine, and mine become his. I dislike milk, but I buy it for him because he loves it. He wears earplugs to bed because sometimes I like to stay up and watch late night TV. My self-conception is shifting under my feet. Sometimes, for example, I simply cannot wrap my brain around the fact that I am now a Home Owner. I didn’t buy this house. My husband bought it before we were even engaged. Nevertheless, this imprint on my finger signifies that this is, indeed, OUR house, OUR security blanket.
And unbidden, amidst the warmth and the quiet, the panic and bile rises in my throat, because I know how easily it could have been otherwise had I fallen in love with a woman.
It was always a possibility. I’ve known that since I was a teenager. I could have ended up with a woman. I could have fallen in love and thought, “Yes, finally, SHE is The ONE.” I have that ability, that inclincation, that power. I like to think I have a bionic heart. Some adorable, caustic, and nerdy person walks by, male or female, and my heart goes all puffed up and chest thumpy, cranking out corny Six Million Dollar Man exertion sounds like Steve Austin wrestling a Sasquatch.
Today, although it fills me with loathing to akcnowledge it, I have to say I got really fucking lucky that my One turned out to be male. And that’s just not fair. I didn’t do a damn thing to deserve to wear this ring, or get any of the rights that come with it. Not a damn thing.
.
A Kick in the Teeth
When the results came in frome Maine last night, I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Every time the validity of someone else’s relationship gets put to a vote and loses, I feel the validity of my own relationship teetering. I did nothing to deserve my rights, so what justifies my having them? Nothing. There is no justification. It may as well be completely random. I say this not to point out how horribly oppressed I am by the fact that other people’s rights are being taken away, but rather to point out how deeply ashamed I am that I am given these things because of an accident of fate or timing or whatever it is that brought me a man instead of a woman. If it feels like a kick in the gut to me, it must feel like a kick in the teeth to those still waiting for those rights.
When we lost California, I was horrified and confused. The possibility of losing there never really felt real to me. Reeling and in shock, I could do nothing but cry and rant and ask why. This loss in Maine feels different to me. Maybe it’s just the last straw, the final back-of-the-bus moment, but I’m tired of this shit. I’m angry. I’m determined. I want to make this right.
I’m not doing enough. I need to do more. I need to talk about it more, even with unfriendly audiences. I need to write more letters. I need to make more phone calls. I need to give more of my resources and time to organizations who fight for equality, and organizations who offer support to GLBT citizens, young and old. I need to make my advocacy visible. I need there to be no doubt to anyone with eyes or ears where I stand on what is surely one of the great moral struggles of our time.
The Second Ring
When I married my husband, I made a promise to walk with him. Today, I make the same commitment to you, my GLBT brothers and sisters, that I made to him:
Your dreams will be my dreams
Your destination, my destination,
And we will find the path together.
I will lean on you with faith,
And support you with enthusiasm.
I will treasure our differences,
Knowing that they will lead us to places
We could never find alone.
You are the compass of my heart.
Earlier today, I purchased a plain sterling silver band and placed it on my other ring finger as a mark of commitment. It is a small gesture. It cost all of $15. But, I take it every bit as seriously as I take the ring on my other hand, because it is a reminder of what I need to do and why.
It is my hope that other people might choose to do the same… not as an empty symbolic gesture, but as a true commitment to doing whatever it takes to right this wrong. Symbols are nice, but work wins elections.
So yes, today I bought another wedding ring. I will wear it every day to remind me to get off my ass and DO something to change the world. I will tell every person who asks exactly what it is and why I wear it, and I will say it proudly and loudly. I will wear it every goddamn day until my fellow GLBT citizens share in every single right that I am given as a matter of course, because I will be GOOD GODDAMNED if I will continue to sit back and accept that this shameful inequality is anything less than a fundamental issue of human rights, and anything less than a referendum on who we are as a people.
I am as committed to this as I have ever been to anything. Yes, brothers and sisters, I will marry you. Or, by God, I will die trying.
Quick Update:
I’m surprised and humbled by the response I’ve gotten from this on Facebook and elsewhere. I’ve now set up a Facebook group for those of you who would like to join me in “marrying” yourselves to doing whatever it takes to making marriage equality happen.
