What Marriage Equality Means to Me

In support of a local organization fighting to keep equal marriage rights in Massachusetts, I wrote this:

I am a white, healthy, educated, able-bodied woman. My parents are still married, and both have post-graduate degrees. I went to a Christian church throughout my childhood, and belonged to Christian youth groups in high school. I grew up knowing that I was privileged, and that I was lucky to not have to fight for basic respect, dignity and my own human rights. My family came to the United States on the Mayflower. I had no first-hand knowledge of what it means to be a minority. I was taught that the Constitution protected my rights, and everyone else’s, and that civil rights were something that had been fought for and won by other people, but were something I had always and would always have. So when, in my mid-twenties, I fell in love with a woman, I was thrust into a whole new world. A world that suddenly believed I was not worthy of the basic human right to marry the person I loved. Suddenly, the girlhood dream of a glamorous wedding was shattered as I realized that any wedding I had would be merely a ceremony. My marriage would not be legal. If I got hurt, my parents would still be considered my next-of-kin. If my partner and I decided to have a child, we’d still have to battle a slew of red tape and bureaucracy to ensure that ‘the law’ viewed us as equal parents. Suddenly, I was not a whole part of ‘The People of the United States of America,’ as the Constitution could no longer ensure that my rights as a human being were the same as everyone else’s.

Around the same time that I was discovering what this all meant to me, a nationwide debate began about whether or not I could get married. Because, after all, that’s what the debate is about. It’s not about this separate group of people. It’s about me. It’s about your cousin, your sister, your brother. It’s about each person who is in love with someone who happens to be of the same gender. I wondered why, at a time when our country is at war, when millions of Americans are in poverty, when millions of Americans can’t get adequate healthcare, why is it so dangerous for me to marry the person I love? Why does it even matter?

Massachusetts has decided that, at least while I’m within the borders of this state, I am a full human being. Now, everyday, I read in the newspaper about whether or not I deserve the right to choose whom I should marry. Everyday, I see politicians, whose salaries I help pay, debate and fight with each other about whether or not my rights matter. I am made to believe that I should feel grateful for the Supreme Court’s decision for marriage equality. In other states, I wouldn’t have this right. In this state, it could be taken away.

I don’t feel grateful because it seems that my rights should be indisputable. I still believe that I deserve ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ I am as much a human being, as much a citizen of Massachusetts and the United States as everyone who chooses to marry someone of the opposite gender, am I not?

Marriage equality means to me that the government acknowledges my civil rights, as a citizen of the United States. Marriage equality means that I can continue to believe, as I was taught, that the United States is founded on principles of equality and dignity for all people. The Constitution was not meant to deny my rights, but ensure them.

When you are deciding whether or not to support a Constitutional Amendment to ban marriage equality, and when you are deciding whether or not this question should be put to a vote, I beg you - consider my rights. Would you want to let the general population decide whether or not you should have the same rights as everyone else? Don’t you deserve the same rights as everyone else? Can you look me in the eye and tell me that I don’t?