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As I rolled two pairs of
tights over your legs and pulled a knitted sweater dress over your head, I
tried my best to put the enormity of what we were about to see into
perspective.
“You know how our family
believes that anyone who loves another person should be allowed to get married?”
“Sure,” you said.
“Well, did you know that
some people haven’t been allowed to do that? That under the law in this state
and other states, men haven’t been allowed to get a license to marry other men
and women cannot marry women?”
“That not fair,” you said.
“You’re right. And today a
judge decided that it’s not fair at all. The law has been overturned, and so there
are lots and lots of people over at the county courthouse who are celebrating
today by getting their marriage licenses.”
“Oh,” you said. “But why are
we getting dressed?”
“Because we’re going to go
watch.”
“Watch them get married?”
“Well, watch them get their
licenses at least. Maybe there will be some weddings, too. Pretty exciting,
right?”
“Um…”
“Yeah?”
“Daddy?”
“What?”
“That kind of sounds a
little bit boring.”
Someday — someday very soon,
in fact — it will be. But tonight the thing that happened in our state was
nothing short of historic. I wanted to be there. And I wanted you to be there.
Because someday — when gay
marriage is boring — it’s going to be
because of days like today.
Let me back up, just a
little bit:
The final vote I cast as an
Oregonian was in opposition to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
The first vote I cast as a Utahn was the same. I wasn’t on the winning side of
either of those battles.
As it happens, 2004 wasn’t a
particularly good year for civil rights in our country. More than a dozen
states passed constitutional amendments that year defining marriage as an
institution that would only be legally recognized when it consisted of a
partnership of one man and one woman. Many more followed. For years to come,
not a single proposed ban would fail to get a majority of voters to back it.
Whenever voters had a chance to choose between equality and bigotry, they chose
the latter, sometimes by just a little and sometimes by a lot.
But a lot can change in a
decade. It has been nearly three years since a major poll has found anything
but solid support for same-sex marriage in America. And our courts — slow
though they’ve been to get to the issue — have followed suit, finding in an
increasing number of cases that voters don’t have the right, under our
Constitution, to grant legal privileges to one set of people while banning it
from others.
None of this change has come
without a fight, of course. There are still people in this country — many of
them, in fact — who haven’t yet figured out that their personal moral
objections have absolutely no relevance when it comes to other people’s legal
rights.
And that brings us to today,
when a federal judge struck down Utah’s nine-year-old gay marriage ban. In his
decision, Judge Robert Shelby ruled that
the constitutional amendment known as Amendment 3 — passed overwhelmingly by
Utah voters the year your mother and I moved to this state — demeans the
dignity of same-sex couples “for no rational reason” and is, therefore,
unconstitutional.
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By mid-afternoon, hundreds of people were lined up outside the office of the Salt Lake County Clerk. By evening, the county had set a new record for the number of new marriage licenses granted in a day.
The state’s acting attorney
general (a man I know and respect, but who is woefully on the wrong side of common
decency and the march of human history when it comes to this issue) has pledged
to appeal the judge’s decision. As a result, a tremendous urgency hung over
tonight’s proceedings at the clerk’s office. Under a recent U.S. Supreme Court
ruling, the licenses issued today cannot be unissued — but a stay on Judge
Shelby’s ruling specific to Utah’s ban could put any new licenses on hold for
months or years to come.
And so it was that would-be
brides and grooms arrived for their weddings in blue jeans and sweatpants, in
work uniforms and hospital scrubs. Children were carrying school backpacks.
Owing to the season, almost everyone was wearing thick winter coats. At least
in the hour or so that we were present, there were no tuxedos or white wedding
gowns.
They cobbled together what
family and friends they could on short notice. In some cases, other applicants stood
in as witnesses. Photojournalists, rather than wedding photographers, captured
the nuptials. There was no cake. No toasts. No throwing of bouquets to wild unwed mobs.
But there were tears in just
about everyone’s eyes. Because, as it turns out, you don’t need any of that
extra stuff to have a wedding. All you need are two people who love one another
and desire to make a public commitment to each other.
You sat on my shoulders and
watched seven or eight such instantaneous ceremonies before reminding me that
this was, in fact, all still quite boring.
I’m so very glad you feel
that way.
Someday we all will.
Love,
dad
Photos:
Top: My friend and former colleague, Natalie Dicou, and her partner Nicole Christensen, fill out their application for a marriage license. Photo by my good friend Jim Urquhart (over whose wedding I officiated, so I feel no remorse in stealing this image.)
Middle: A crowd of people (including you, Spike) watched as a parade of newly married couples emerged from the office of the Salt Lake County clerk. Photo from The Deseret News.
