Yesterday the Supreme Court struck down DOMA and California's Prop 8. It's probably not for me to say where this decision fits on the timetable of Major Events in the Gay Rights movement in America; perhaps it's too soon for anyone, regardless of sexuality, to place it. But it is fair to suggest it's a biggie. And the movement towards greater social equality is only going to get stronger in time. My kids' generation will likely not think it's important how one identifies oneself sexually, and I hope that that means that fewer kids who are just entering puberty now are going to try killing themselves -- be it literally, or long-term via depression/substance-abuse/self-loathing/etc. -- because they are queer.
I'd rather reflect on my own take on the subject, where I've changed, what I think now, etc.
In the seventies, in my schoolyard, I saw two girls -- fourth-graders, I think -- dressed up in communion dresses and get "married." It was all play, though of course I have no idea where these two girls are now. I don't remember seeing them before or since. It was show, spectacle. I remember hearing the chants from the older boys: "lezbos! lezbos!" That was funny to me, at twelve, like a lot of stupid shit. Homosexuality was something that was in the cultural air, but generally, a source of ridicule, especially gay men. But there were some more nuanced portrayals scattered about, like Billy Crystal's character on Soap -- still played for laughs, but not always going with type. (Jody Campbell was an ambivalent representation -- even though he was openly gay, he had a heterosexual relationship that led to a pregnancy. But when he fought for custody rights, his response to her lawyer's nasty question "are you a practicing homosexual? is burned in my memory: "no, I don't practice, I do it very well, thank you!" Crystal struck a perfect blend of petulance and righteous indignation.
I had homophobic teachers in high school, some of whom I'm sure are stunned at what's happened in the past thirty years. I'm sure a few kids were bullied and namecalled with anti-gay language, even if the bullies weren't even addressing the question of their victim's sexuality. At college, there were more openly gay students, and I recall a major anti-discrimination bill that would have been an important landmark had the city council had the nerve to pass it. (And I was told by an ultra-lib prof that shortly after this council vote, the university president's daughter, something of a ditz, commented that one of the reasons she liked our city was because "there were no gay people here, not like in New York or San Francisco.")
I've spent most of my adult life in New York, with all those gay people the prez's daughter didn't think existed in her city. I've lived through the passage of civil unions and now legalized marriage for same-sex couples. I've lived through the epidemic of AIDS, and saw tons of activists who helped to bring awareness and help. And I hope the sacrifices others have made generations before I was born -- I was a baby at the time of Stonewall -- will be appreciated by all future ones.
Under the Clinton Administration, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act. During that time, one of the central concerns gay rights activists had centered on health care. Married spouses could get health insurance, but gay couples could not do the same. There are other legal protections marriage brings that domestic partners are not entitled to, even heterosexual partnerships (but if you live with someone of the opposite sex long enough, you can be considered a common-law spouse, not the case if you are homosexual.) I used to give a glib comment on such matters: if the United States had universal healthcare, would it matter who got married to whom? In my time, opportunistic marriages became more about health bennies than anything else!
I also had something of a libertarian streak on the matter: if marriage was going to be defined as something "sacred" and related to some kind of covenant between Man and God, well then that smacks of State Religion, expressly prohibited by the First Amendment. If you're gonna tell me that marriage is a religious practice, then the state has no business recognizing any marriage. That also means that the state cannot provide any extra privileges to married couples. The state could set up civil unions that provided protections and then each local government might rule on defining those, but stay out of the "m" word.
Of course such a suggestion is not practical. There are too many intricacies pertaining to martial economics that would collapse into an indecipherable mess, especially if civil unions are not uniformly defined across state lines. This is why marriage equality matters. I no longer have an ambivalence on the subject. I won't even make the jokes in the Dangerfied/Youngman tradition suggesting that perhaps homosexuals might want to reconsider getting married if they knew what it was like. My marriage is not under threat because my queer friends are now married too.
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