Today We Celebrate

Fall 1988. One of my most important college mentors asked me this question for the first time:

Do you support same-sex marriage?

(Yeah, he was way ahead of the curve on this one.)

We were asked to stand on one side of the room for a “yes” answer and the other side for “no.”

I was with a group of campus leaders on a weekend retreat. I lament to admit that I lined up with the “no” crowd on that occasion, even though I had been through my one and only serious male crush the year before.

I don’t really remember exactly when I came around to supporting the idea, but I do know that that first discussion stayed with me, and I know that I eventually realized that I had no good reason on which to defend my answer.

I do know that I went with two friends to the March on Washington for gay rights circa 1992, wearing two buttons, one proclaiming me “straight but not narrow” and the other titled “Minnesota #8.” Minnesota had recently become the 8th state to pass a law prohibiting employment or housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. It was probably the first time I experienced being a minority as a straight person.

I remember being intrigued when Holland became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001.

I remember shedding tears when I listened to Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin address Parliament in 2005, calling on his fellow ministers to pass C-38, the law that eventually made same-sex marriage legal in that country.

I remember members of my extended family and work community coming out and understanding what a crazy and evolving patchwork (love and hate, legal support, and obstacles) faced them as they explored and then formalized lasting relationships that have every bit as much significance to them as my own marriage does to me.

I imagine that millions of small conversations such as the one that group of leaders almost 30 years ago have happened, millions of people discovering that they knew was a different color on the rainbow … this is how change happened.

This battle is won, at least here in the United States.

There, of course, will be new issues, new ways to keep the “others” (however you might define that) down. There is a lot of progress to be made elsewhere in the world. (I think, especially, of the atrocious anti-gay laws recently enacted in Russia and various African countries.)

Today is a day to celebrate. Good things have happened here.

Tomorrow we will fight new battles.