In California and
beyond, we’re marrying for love. Our time has come.
We will not be denied.
Four years ago,
when the mayor of San Francisco made history by marrying
gay folks down at City Hall, his fellow Democrat Dianne
Feinstein voiced her displeasure in no uncertain
terms. “Too much, too fast, too soon,”
was the way she put it, and the ice water in her veins was
almost audible. The senator’s 26 years in the
national spotlight had been launched by a homophobic
assassin, yet she still found a quarter of a century
“too soon” for the full establishment of gay
civil rights.
How much more
time had she needed, for God’s sake? For years
Feinstein had seen the full-blown horrors of AIDS and
watched same-sex love in action -- sturdy, unwavering,
unconditional love -- as LGBT families cared for the
dying. She knew as well as anyone alive what we’d
endured at the hands of a callous government and
organized religious hatred. She had lived through
Matthew Shepard’s crucifixion and scores of other
antigay atrocities. When exactly, I wondered, would it be
convenient for her to stand up for a constituency that
had consistently returned her to office?
Maupin (left) and Turner wed in Vancouver in
February 2007. They plan to remarry in California.
The sad truth is
that gay rights has always been the disposable card of
liberal politics. The very fact of our existence is still
“controversial” even to those who make a
noise about being our friends. We’re still the
fly in the ointment, the “divisive issue” that
can lose an election. Just look at the weak-kneed
response from the Clinton and Obama camps when the
California supreme court made its landmark decision
overthrowing the ban on same-sex marriage. Both
candidates hid behind a campaign spokesperson and both
reaffirmed their “separate but equal” policies
of civil unions, thereby assuming a stance that would
keep them in comfy solidarity with John McCain come
November. The problem, of course, was that California
court had just ruled that separate was NOT equal and never
would be, so Clinton and Obama both ended up looking
like -- there’s no other way to put this --
pussies. Faced with a major milestone in American civil
rights, the Democratic contenders could offer neither
congratulations nor condemnations. Like Dianne
Feinstein four years earlier, they’d been
completely upstaged by the decisive action of braver and
wiser souls.
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Maupin is on tour for the paperback edition of his
ninth novel, Michael Tolliver Lives, Photography
courtesy Armistead Maupin.