Bil told me he has been waiting for me to respond to the court ruling legalizing marriage for gays and lesbians in California, so after a week, here I am. I certainly don’t wish my silence to be misconstrued as apathy toward the subject matter; rather, it’s difficult to articulate exactly what I’m feeling right now. But I’ll try.

Right. So about last Thursday. Half of the TVs where I work during the day are tuned to CNN, and when I saw the initial reports about gay marriage being legalized in a certain part of the world, the location was ambiguous (the sound is muted, so all I had to go on were the banners), so I assumed it was another European country that had made the ruling. In fact, I was in the middle of my usual speech about how California, while not explicitly legalizing gay marriage, has the most liberal domestic partnership laws in the nation, when it became clear that it was, in fact, my home state that had overturned the ban on gay marriage passed in 2000. But I didn’t cheer. Maybe I should have. Instead, I stood with my hand over my mouth and wondered why the hell I ever left to begin with.

I’ve thought that a number of times since coming to Chicago, but never more strongly than a week ago. An illogical emotion, truly, as I have been single for many years and thus ostensibly have less at stake than others, but this fact notwithstanding, I wanted to be there in the thick of it watching history happen in front of my eyes instead of on the television screen. I also wanted to see the religious nutcases’ collective heads explode — particularly my father, whose defining quality is never taking a hard-line stance on anything for fear of alienating his congregation. And I’m sure he isn’t alone, either.

“There goes the neighborhood,” I said to my mother on the phone on Sunday while walking home from work. By this, of course, I mean that when the most populous state with a larger economy than most countries chooses equality for all, it’s a reasonable suggestion that the nation isn’t far behind. Look at Canada: Ontario is an even more extreme example than California, and by the time the entire nation had legalized gay marriage, all but two provinces had legalized in within their own borders. Such, I feel, will be the case for us as well.

It’s a victory, sure. But it’s a victory in a war I largely have not fought in. It was not my generation that accomplished this feat; the victory belongs to the generation of Harvey Milk. Stonewall. Matthew Shepard. Divine. And the innumerable masses that preceded them that were forced into lives and marriages of convenience in order to fulfill the phantom writ of society. For anyone like myself who has largely been shuffled through untouched, this is a time for reflection and respect.

I share Bil’s cynicism, although not quite for the same reasons. I’m cynical because what I’ve seen of the gay approach to relationships doesn’t exactly give me much faith in the gay approach to something much more solemn.

As I said earlier, I can’t wait for the appeals. I can’t wait for the religious nutbags to work themselves into a good faint over this development. I can’t wait to hear those precious, precious words “activist judges” again. Because this time, dear friends, those words were never more hollow. Take, for example, what I wrote on June 5th, 2006:

Over a year ago I found myself involved in a rather heated exchange concerning legislation governing same-sex marriages, as well as the morality of homosexuality itself. In my final rebuttal, I wrote the following:

“The choice whether or not to legalize gay marriage is one that every single American will have to make, and when that time comes I hope you have a damn good reason for believing whatever you do and are willing to defend it. This issue has gone to the Supreme Courts of over a third of the states in the Union, and if you’ve been paying attention to what’s been happening in San Francisco over the last few months, California is not far behind.”

By “not far behind,” I assumed within the year, and had no way of knowing how immediate the debate would become. To my surprise, four months later my wonderful home state of California became the first in the nation to successfully pass a measure legalizing same-sex marriages through both houses of its Legislature — predictably killed by a gubernatorial veto.

What this judge has done is make manifest what could have happened three years ago. What should have happened. And while the day-to-day of Massachusetts may have slipped quietly enough under the radar, we will all watch this social change play out, writ large, on the stage, so loudly that not even Ann Counter can spin the facts.

I always imagined what my response would be, and my calmness has surprised me. I think perhaps what I’m witnessing is the difference between freedom and license. I already knew I had dignity. I already knew my capacity to love and be loved was a valid and sacred one. So I’ve always had the freedom to pursue a lifelong committed relationship; no judicial body can rob me of that. So this ruling in California doesn’t make me feel any more valid. What it does make me feel, however, is immensely humbled and grateful. Not to the judge whose ruling set this Rube into motion, but to countless individuals who fought tooth and nail — some with their own lives — to see this become a reality. I feel ashamed to lay claim to the spoils, and thus it is all of our responsibility to keep the memory of the revolution alive and well.

Keep the wound open until this fight is over, friends.

Filed by Trevor at 11:22 pm under Politics, Activism, Love