On Marriage

Despite the red equal rights pictures flooding my Facebook feed, I was in a funk all day yesterday. Little things annoyed me. Like the woman walking too slowly in front of me on the sidewalk. And the man walking too quickly behind me, almost right up onto my heels.

When I called my mom on the way home, I asked her if she'd been following the news on the Prop. 8 case. She hadn't. She'd been so sick with the flu she thought Monday was Sunday when I'd called her the day before.

"No," she said. "What's happening?"

That annoyed me.

My mom almost never annoys me, so I knew I was in a bad mood. I told her the case had been argued that morning.

"And how do you feel about that?" she asked, going straight to the heart of what I'd been avoiding all day.

"Well," I said, steering myself around another pedestrian. "Actually... you know what, I'm kind of annoyed."

"I bet," my mom said.

It's not that I don't think yesterday's Prop. 8 case or today's Defense of Marriage Act case are important. It's that I think the questions in the cases are so important they shouldn't even have to be asked.

In the time that my partner Tiffany and I have been a couple, most of our straight friends have married. Some of them have divorced. Others have stayed together, had children, and celebrated wedding anniversaries.

I first told Tiffany I loved her eight years ago, on the way back from breakfast on the streets of Brooklyn Heights. But we couldn't get married in New York at the time. When I convinced her to spend a summer with me and my mom in Missouri, a constitutional amendment prevented us from getting married in that state. We moved to California next, but we couldn't get married there either. Then the court said we could, and everyone said we better hurry up and do it and...then voters passed Prop. 8 and we couldn't get married again.

I continued to carry my paternal grandmother's diamond ring from one apartment to the next while Tiffany and I loved each other, while we considered what it would even mean to be married in such a confused world.

Eventually, back in New York, we decided we wanted to celebrate our commitment to each other in front of the family members and friends who have been celebrating our commitment to each other from the very beginning. We hope to do so soon.

Which is why it feels so annoying that any decision is left to be made at all, let alone by voters, or legislators, or the nine members of our nation's highest court.

The way I see it, I only needed one person's permission to marry the woman I love.

And my grandmother's ring is on her finger.