The American People Aren’t Furious!
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt
It all started with our wedding: the be-medaled uniforms on one side, the prochoice buttons on the other. … Nope, nope, it started with the intervention, the dinner at which my friends planned to confront the self-delusional rationalization that I, the leftwing columnist, had surely contrived for accepting the proposal of a Marine. A Marine colonel, no less. Problem was, it turned out they liked him.
And he met my political litmus tests: He’s prochoice, figures sexual orientation is irrelevant in battle, and actually gives thought to California’s unbridled ballot measures. Our marriage proceeded, and we’ve been playing house ever since, despite occasionally cancelling out each other’s votes.
Then, in 2008, Prop. 8 passed 52 to 48 percent, resulting in a state constitutional amendment that restricted marriage to opposite-sex couples, effectively prohibiting any new same-sex marriages in California and denying recognition of those from other states and nations.
My response was to staple a sign to our front gate above the Marine Corps welcome mat — “I DO Support the Freedom to Marry” — with heavy-duty staples, every other inch. Having lost a car window to someone peeved with the bumper sticker in it, I was determined that my next opponent would have to work a lot harder to remove my message.
My husband came home, and the conversation went something like this:
“See the sign?”
“Yep.”
“I’m keeping it up until same-sex marriage is secured for California.
“Yep.”
“Maybe all fifty states.”
“Yep. Want to go for sushi?”
As our collective social circle now says, he’s not bad for a Marine and I’m not bad for a liberal. We’re both pretty tolerant. Oh, he might wince when he brings Marines home to dinner, but he’d never ask me to take the sign down, and I always discretely seat our conservative guests with their backs to the liberal artwork on the dining room wall. Wouldn’t want to give them agita.
Then, a couple weeks ago, when Judge Vaughn Walker struck down Prop. 8 as unconstitutional, I contemplated what my next gate message might be. And when he announced last week that his temporary stay on the decision would be lifted August 18 (barring any interim action by the Appeals Court), I was vacillating between saving the 14th Amendment right to citizenship for children of immigrants and protecting Afghan women from Taliban brutality.
But an email from Brian Brown of National Organization for Marriage hit my inbox and squelched my hopeful ruminations.
He claimed “the American people are furious” — furious! — with Walker, that his decisions have “ignited a firestorm.”
I did a quick check outside, because I live in Southern California and fires are not to be taken lightly here. Turns out Brown was misstating the situation. There wasn’t even a whiff of smoke in the air. However, he also reiterated NOM’s message that the purpose of marriage is procreation.
Now, this made me wonder, because my husband and I had both been to the Yankee Clipper prior to our marriage, which means we don’t meet NOM’s procreation criteria.
I mentioned this to my husband, and the conversation went something like this:
“Honey, according to NOM, you and I should not have been allowed to marry in California because we can’t procreate.”
“According to who?”
“National Organization for Marriage, NOM. They say the primary purpose of marriage is procreation.”
“They some kind of commies or something?”
“I love you, Honey.”
“Yep.”
In the end, I figure it’s like this: A Republican Marine and a Democratic feminist can agree that marriage is a civil right, to be enjoyed by everyone, and we’re just not that unusual. Remove the angry rhetoric from the debate, the fearful propaganda, and most folks will eventually join us.
Yep.
Love,
K-B
©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt
Crossposted at the Progressive Post and Soulforce.
I like it.
Oooh boy … I see another round of “I’m scared” commercials from NOM with the paid actors.
So what is NOM’s stance to longtime married, hetero couples such as my hubby and myself when we quit procreating 30ish years ago? Love you honey but I’m outta here? Can we still have conjugals? Not to mention filing the joint return! Now I’m scared!
Not to worry. They don’t bother to check the logic of their arguments, so we probably shouldn’t either.
Yep!!!
According to the NOM, I don’t exist: all my reproductive organs were removed at 24 years old because af PID (pelvic inflamatory disease) and possible endemetriosis leaving me childless, in the human sense, for life and going through early menopause. Soon after, a man says to me, although clueless of my surgical reality, “women’s primary purpose is to birth children”. Oops, where do I fit in. Well, I found a fit, fighting for women’s rights emotionally, physically, spiritually and any ‘ally’ that I choose. I have a supportive husband, two beautiful 4 legged kids, friends and family I love and love me. The bottom line is: choice. Let each of us decide who fits in our life’s journey.
Yep, indeed!
A very belated congratulations on your marrriage. My bride has been with me for 34 years — she the Dem, me the Rep. What makes our marriage work is open-mindedness and moderation.
Yep, that’s what makes lots of good stuff work.
Hooraay for cancelled votes; it really is about participation after all, not prescribed outcomes! May the power of true illumination guide your union. Insofar as the NOM conundrum is concerned, at the end of the day, nations stripped of their institutions (and by extensions their laws) reveal fragile episodes of a humanity aspiring for a self-sustaining perfection. Sometimes we are able to decode that which extends our existence, other times we fail miserably. Contextually, the American project is in the eye’s storm of the global shifting. But it will only be through experimentation and corrective self-diagnosis that we can move forward. Multi-optical visions fed by the likes of a loving Semper Fi make us all a better human collective, more human, who we are. Meanwhile, while the men in robes (in Vatican City and in the circuitous courts our own beloved Rome) try to pontify and structure the privileges of procreation, it is the pregnant disorder of love that (at least to me) seems to shine brightly.
Hmmm, yep! … I really like your phrase, “the pregnant disorder of love” — wonderful!
Once again K-B you take on a big issue and cut it down to bite size pieces for all to comprehend, keep writing! You are such a gift to our community I love you!
Lis
PS Gam and I are down on both counts: the NOM’s procreation verdict and that just recently, maybe four decades, interracial marriages were allowed, so thank goodness for people that have the courage to defend our rights to wed and bed.
Nice article and so true that the government shoud stay out of our bedrooms and restrict itself to those powers given to it by the Constitution. Removing the anger and the rhetoric of both sides would be refreshing. Should Marriage be a church or religious term and civil unions for everyone??? Perhaps that would be a place to go and debate?
Please, please, please protect Afgan women from Taliban brutality. That highlights what America does, and along with Prop 8, will not destroy our country. However, misinterpreting the 14th amendment on the other hand……………………
Nice aricle.
Semper Fi.
Jack
How about civil unions for those of us who are civil and whatever you want to call it for those of us who aren’t?
Yeah so yesterday I was navigating my way out of a parking lot and noticed a bumper sticker. I always notice bumper stickers. This one said, “Restore Marriage. Vote Yes on 8″ DAWG! Where had I been that I missed it? Someone had stolen marriage? From the store? Like the young folks do in their sorority and frat pranks, they stole marriage?
I’m so hoping whoever stole it will restore it. My wife and I have a 44 year investment in the institution!