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Like most gay Americans I felt my whole life that being discriminated against was a matter of fact. You could call it apathy or you could call it patience, but I was aware that we were not equal, and it was not nagging at me nor keeping me awake at night. Perhaps it is because I work in the media and have watched as representations of our lives have slowly -- but, mind you, surely -- changed people’s minds. But I had also unwittingly denied myself a lot of things. I never wanted to get married, and when the marriage fight became the central focus of the LGBT movement, I was not 100% sold. While I felt that anyone who wanted to get married should have the fundamental right to do so, I didn’t feel that this was where our efforts were best spent. I rejected the argument that gay people are just like everyone else. In fact, I was celebrating the very things that made us so different from everyone else, that had allowed us to question what monogamy was, what marriage was, what the nuclear family ideal added up to.
I was shocked, truly shocked, when the California supreme court ruled in favor of us in May. I never expected it to happen. I was elated when it did come to pass, but as I watched everyone get married all around me, my first reaction was cynicism. I thought, How interesting that so many people have fought so hard to be like the rest of America. I thought, Is my relationship now going to be judged by these newly married gay Americans? and for the first time experienced a mother asking if marriage was in my future. I went to all my friends’ weddings, and though I was jealous of the happiness they found, I was not jealous of their entering an institution with all these rules and regulations, so much cultural baggage of who you were as identified by that title: married. Even as I entered a long-term relationship with someone who I knew was my complete other half, I didn’t generally think that we would one day get married, and if I did, I thought about it in the abstract, far, far in the distance and certainly not as something of critical importance.
But as cynical as I was, I was sure the battle over marriage was over. I was sure that after that ruling this could not be taken away from us. And now I think it is safe to say a lot of other Californians did too. We saw Ellen and Portia on the cover of People magazine. We watched thousands of other couples marry. We saw the polls tipping in our favor on this issue. Hell, even Kevin and Scotty were wed on the season finale of Brothers & Sisters. This was an issue whose time had come, and for those for whom it was important, I thought they were finally secure.
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