Why marriage equality is better for everyone

As I drove up to Provincetown this afternoon to join in the celebrations I thought a lot about why it matters. To me specifically, how is this possibly relevant? Because of course there is Katie and Brenda and Lori and Ellen and Arlie and Julie and really the list is too long of people I know and love for whom this has a direct and immediate impact. Those people all happen to live in states where their marriages (or potential marriages) were already legal, but it's not like they never went on vacation. Do you really want to have to keep track of which states you can visit so that if you get in a car accident you can assume you'll be granted medical decision making for your spouse? Of course you don't want to, so why should you force them to?

All of that is second hand though, isn't it? Why should I, as someone with no interest in marriage for myself, care how the rest of society defines marriage? Because when society only has one very narrowly defined - if widely conformed to - idea of what an appropriate relationship should be then everyone who doesn't fit that definition is being told their relationships are less valuable. So if marriage is only "one man and one woman for the purposes of procreation" then there are a whole lot of people who are less than ideal. The gays were so non-conformist that their relationships couldn't be legally recognized at all. But what about all the M/F couples who couldn't have/didn't want/got married too late for kids? They spent the last 11+ years listening to people make arguments that boiled down to "we'll let you get married, but until you pop out a few kids we think you're faking it."

And if the epitome of the socially acceptable relationship is children then where does that leave me? I'm never having kids. I have no interest in the kind of relationship that could lead to kids. That's not who I am. As a result none of my relationships could ever be deemed valid. I do not fit the narrow definition of what society says we should all be striving for. How sad for society. How sad and stilted and unimaginative for a community to think there can only be one way to love a person, one kind of person to love, one way to have sex. That's not a society I wanted to live in, and today because of the supreme court decision that is not a society I have to live in.

We are ALL better off when all of us are allowed to be who we are. Statistically speaking the vast majority of marriages are M/F+kid(s), and this is better for all of them as well. Because those people might conform in that way on this issue, but I do not believe there is nothing about them that makes them unique. Today uniqueness got a boost.

So I went to Provincetown to be part of the historic occasion. I knew it would be a happy place. 11 years ago this town hall was the first in the nation to issue same sex marriage licenses. I was 45 minutes away, I couldn't miss it.

Here, have some photos of the celebrations.