Bay Windows - May 13, 2004
Andrew Rapp, arapp@baywindows.com.

It will be a change for the good for Massachusetts. Our state is living up to its reputation for leading the way to free and equitable governance for all citizens. Families will be strengthened, and marriage will be strengthened by the addition of the many couples who will chose to partake in its rights and responsibilities.

But many are concerned about whether this will be equally good for our community. Forged by a shared experience of alienation and difference, the GLBT community's very identity is inextricable from the discrimination we've faced. As these defining hardships dissolve, will our uniqueness and vitality dissolve as well?

Those in our community who marry will have access to legal rights, but they will also have access to aspects of American culture that were previously denied to us (and that we often spurned). Marriage is a broad social practice. A state marriage license is like a ticket to a world of registries and showers, ceremonies and receptions, engagements and anniversaries, separations and divorce.

Navigating these passages form the plotline of our straight peers' lives. Just last week over 50 million Americans tuned in to see how the roller coaster of Ross and Rachel would end. These two characters, with their "Friends" castmates, lived a New York lifestyle unknown to most Americans. But seeing Ross propose to Rachel several times and marry her at least once (I ran out of patience reading ten seasons of plot synopses) entranced Americans. These characters' travails were compelling because they, like the viewing audience, were playing the game of marital coupling.

More and more we share the rites of passage familiar to our heterosexual peers. We go to proms instead of hanging out with the drama club. We become elders and deacons in churches where we only dared to direct the choir or play the organ before. Once just aunts and uncles, we've become moms and dads ourselves. Once roommates, companions, lovers, or partners, now we will simply be spouses.

This last, most crucial integration into society, some say, will be the death of gay identity. It will erase the differences that set our community apart, along with the cultural uniqueness which made gay life fulfilling to so many.

But the news of our demise as a community is greatly exaggerated. The desire to be unique is enduringly human. Pack us in cubicles and compact cars, house us in lifeless subdivisions and still we find ways of asserting our individuality. We pack our cubes with action figures, put irreverent bumper stickers on our cars, adorn our houses with a flag for every holiday or sports team that catches our fancy. We as gay people share this impulse, and we will still have shared idiosyncrasies that mark our subculture.

But there is one idiosyncrasy critical to our community that we ought to safeguard. The fantasy world of "Friends," where couples marry, separate, and marry while their social lives remain constant (right down to their favorite coffee shop), was a greater fiction than the world of "Sex in the City," where society was strictly divided between "marrieds" and "singletons." Carrie Bradshaw and her friends anguished over the deadening effect marriage can have. Marriage, as heterosexual society has defined it, tends to have a chilling effect on adult friendships.

As strangers to marriage, gay people made friendships a hallmark of our community, and these friendships in turn made our community possible. They made it safe to come out, brought us through the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic, and united us to seek equal treatment. Those marrying have a special responsibility to uphold our culture of supportive friendships and not succumb to the isolation that besets so many married couples.

This social responsibility is paired with a civic responsibility that cannot be forgotten. We have a state constitutional amendment to defeat next year. A federal constitutional amendment is gaining steam. And our success here in Massachusetts is overshadowed by the 38 states that have preemptively banned same-sex marriage.

Each couple that marries should remember their responsibility to the community that has made this possible. No one would be marrying on May 17 were it not for the work of GLAD, MassEquality.org, the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus and the multitude of other organizations who brought us this far.

Give to these organizations in an amount consistent with what they have given our community. Your $35 marriage license obviates the many hundreds or thousands you would have spent on attorney's fees to gain similar legal protections. Consider donating the difference in these two sums. And skip the silver chafing dish, list these organizations on your registry instead.

The coming change for our community is historic. The commitments we have long made to one another will now receive the full legal recognition they deserve. It is now the responsibility of all who take this historic step to remain committed to the culture and community we share.

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