Everything was fine until July 20, 2005. I’d
come to accept the realities that came with living outside the institution. Without the ceremony or the formal commitment,
I could rationalize that my relationships were more inclined to end when things
got tricky. No obligation, no incentive. We were free to be fickle.
But then Canada enacted the Civil Marriage
Act, the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. I could
propose or be proposed to, I could elope or have a big wedding, I could get a
fancy certificate, shop for a ring, plan a honeymoon. But ever since that
remarkable enactment, I’ve had a pronoun problem. Always I, never We.
The possibility of marriage remains nothing
more than a vague hypothetical. And I’m okay with that. As much as I’ve whined
and pined, wanting to fall in love again over the past dozen years, marriage is
not a goal. Once I stopped imagining marrying Karen Carpenter, there wasn’t a
wedding equation in which I fit as a variable during my years growing up. In my
mind, the best I could hope for when I came out in the late 1980s was to fall
and love with a guy and have neither of us die of AIDS. Gloomy, but such were
the times.
 |
| Of course, I have neither blond nor brown hair. |
The first time I heard a gay man lobby for
the right to marry, I thought he was a shit disturber, a mere agitator who
created a distraction from legitimate, viable issues such as increased funding
for AIDS research, legislation to make gay bashing a hate crime and protection
from employment and housing discrimination. Two grooms on a wedding cake? Don’t
be silly.
I remember the possibility of same-sex
marriage being readily repudiated by gays and lesbians as the marriage “joke”
started to grow legs. Why would we copy the heteros? Look at the divorce
rate…why push to be part of a failing institution? Why be conventional? Shouldn’t
we create our own culture and traditions?
But enough of our “community” kept pushing.
Maybe “No” served as a motivating force. Maybe gay and lesbian couples that
were deeply in love actually wanted a wedding. Heaven knows we’ve bought enough
waffle irons and gravy boats for straight couples. We’ve attended plenty of
receptions where we’ve watched dance-challenged masses pantomime “Y.M.C.A.”
So the definition of marriage has changed. I’ve
had the right to marry for eleven years now and Americans just marked the
one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision recognizing gay marriage. That’s
great in terms of a step toward equality, understanding and acceptance. If I
were to fall in love again with a guy in his fifties like me, I doubt my
partner would have dreamed of marriage during his adolescence and after coming
out. Idle time was better spent imagining living on Mars. (Is that still in the
works? I don’t get it.)
So, yes, I have the right to marry. I do. I
also have the right to raise chickens in my backyard, assuming I could ever
afford a home with a yard in Vancouver and assuming I develop a constant
yearning for “farm-fresh” eggs. Both rights remain the flimsiest of
hypotheticals. Truth be told, they are also beyond my control.
But I think I should work on getting that lemon vanilla triple berry cake. All mine.
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