As I write this a group of men and women that I’ve never met are taking a vote on whether or not I deserve the right to do something that nearly everyone else has the right to do. They will have agonized over this decision not because there is empiric data or credible evidence to suggest that giving me this right will endanger the rights of anyone else, or that it will hurt our state economy, or that it will do anything but reinforce committed relationships, provide financial and legal benefits for loved ones and their families, and offer stability and protection to the children of loving homes, but simply because they want so bad to believe that we are not like them.
The truth is, we’re not. But not in the ways they think.
I mean, how can I possibly conceive of marriage in the same way as someone who grew up knowing that marriage was not only a possibility but a foregone conclusion? I can’t. In my life, asking me if I hoped to get married someday was like asking me if I hoped to jumprope on the moon. In that sense, it’s true: we are not like them.
And how can I imagine to know what it feels like to be secure in the fact that my partner will be able to make a life-or-death decision for me in the hospital without being treated like a common friend? I can’t. Which is why I have an insanely detailed legal document that I spent hundreds of dollars to make so that my legal “family” might be prevented from taking control of my health and my estate and so my real family — the people I love and who love me — will know exactly what my wishes are. In this way, too, we are not like them.
I’ve also been thinking: How might the dynamics of my current relationship change if, all of the sudden, marriage were an option? It’s hard to say, but the majority of Senators would be hard-pressed to fathom the situation: In their world, you meet a nice boy or girl, you date them, and if you manage to stay together for a year, someone starts to hint that it’s time. But in my world, that time never comes. I’ve been committed to my partner for five-and-a-half years because I love him, and not because it was time to settle down or because — fuck! — we made those vows in front of all our friends. Every morning, I just wake up and look to my right and see him and think, I don’t want to spend today without you.
That’s the funny thing about all this. Those who have agonized over New York’s Marriage Equality bill have agonized over the so-called sanctity of marriage. But that sanctity is a lot like the old value-of-a-dollar lesson: My parents always used to say that if they just gave me a dollar, I’d throw it away on candy, but if I worked for it, I’d learn to actually appreciate it — that I’d really understand its worth and use it wisely.
We are not like them because we have been fighting like hell to get access to this very important thing that they have simply taken for granted. I’ll never know what that’s like.
