The Essential Guide to Gay and Lesbian Weddings (11 page)

It's looking like, for the LGBT community, the hard work of coming out, being honest and loving and just living our lives as good people, is paying off in a big way.

It's as if there were a group that piled into the same-sex wedding car, not too sure where we were heading, but knowing that we had to start the journey somewhere. Since there was no road map, we made a lot of it up as we went along. And go figure—it's working. Now we feel like the kids in the backseat on a road trip that seems to be taking too long. We keep asking, “Are we there yet?” No, we're not, but there's no doubt that the car is picking up speed. Hang on, and enjoy the ride.

—Tess Ayers and Paul Brown
Los Angeles
February 2012

At some point in our lifetime, gay marriage won't be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black.

—G
EORGE
C
LOONEY
, on California's anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment

O
NCE UPON A
time, there were two women who fell in love. They lived together for a few years, and then one night, one of them got down on one knee (we think it was her left one) and asked the other one to marry her. The following June they went down to city hall and got a marriage license, and then they had a huge church wedding, wearing long bridal gowns with trains. They had eight attendants in matching fuchsia dresses, and three hundred guests. At the reception that followed (paid for by both sets of parents), each bride danced with her new mother-in-law and father-in-law, and both were toasted by various friends and relatives. This was all announced in the “Weddings” section in the local newspaper. Soon afterward, each became eligible for the other's health insurance, and the following year they filed a joint tax return.

Once, this was pure fairy tale; now, thankfully, it is not entirely a fantasy. Although same-sex couples have been celebrating their unions in various ways for centuries, today, the events in this “fairy tale” are happening with frequency all over the country and the world. True, in most states, gays and lesbians cannot get a marriage license, but in some, you can and in others, you may be able to soon. And clearly there's no reason to avoid making a public commitment, as hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples have demonstrated in recent decades.

And while this book is designed to help you plan your wedding, before we deal with the wedding part, let's talk about the issue of why same-sex couples would want to be married in the first place. Anyone can have a wedding, but if you're not legally married, why bother? Does the pursuit of marriage rights reduce us to little more than heterosexual wannabes? And as a heterosexual institution, isn't marriage under attack from all sides? Let's hit rewind and take a look at its history.

It all began with cavemen claiming their brides or stealing them from other tribes, with marriage gradually evolving into its own little cottage industry, and the bride's father negotiating her price. (In fact, this is the origin of the word we still use for the celebration; in Anglo-Saxon society the groom was required to give a “wed” of money, goods, or domestic animals in exchange for a bride. Festive, huh?) Then in medieval times, along came St. Augustine to suggest that mutual agreement just might be a better foundation for a marriage than stealing or bartering. The idea of romantic love didn't really catch on until the eighteenth century, but even then, if the relationship soured, people often stayed married for economic or social reasons—marriages of convenience.

In the twenty-first century a lot of the rules have changed, yet the bonds of matrimony undeniably remain a centerpiece of Western civilization's social structure.

If the Club Won't Have Us as Members, Why Would We Want to Join?

When you add the history of gays into the mix of the history of marriage, and begin to talk about gay marriage, you're sitting on a powder keg, as we have seen in many of the political and religious stands taken over the years. There are several emotionally charged issues at play here, both within the gay community and in society as a whole.

First of all, there is the concept of marriage itself.
There are those who maintain that marriage is a convention that has not weathered well over time, and that the word
marriage
comes with too much baggage, including undesirable and outdated concepts such as “ownership,” and expectations of a picture-perfect existence à la Donna Reed. One can argue that today's through-the-roof divorce rate (hovering above 40 percent in the U.S.) is proof that marriage as an institution has not treated men or women very kindly.

Well, why can't lesbians and gays take the best parts of what marriage has to offer and discard the rest? It's been observed that many gay relationships are more egalitarian than heterosexual relationships; just granting us the right to marry doesn't mean we'll have to lower our standards.

And consider the question of same-sex marriage as a political issue.
Some wonder, after years of being unaccepted (even damned) by society, why gays and lesbians would want to participate in an archaic tradition that has “straight world” stenciled all over it. By entering into gay marriages, are gays engaged in a misdirected attempt to adopt traditional heterosexual institutions for themselves instead of encouraging divergent lifestyles? After all, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have kids together and choose not to get married; why shouldn't gays do the same?

The response to this concern is that gays should fight for marriage laws because they offer a certain road to complete equality. Nobody's saying that if you're
allowed
to get married, that you
have
to get married, but until lesbians and gays have exactly the same legal rights as heterosexuals, we will always be second-class citizens. (As the bumper sticker says, “Separate but Equal is not Equal.”) Gay cohabitation is legal in almost every state; by denying same-sex couples the choice to legally wed, society is encouraging those relationships to be insecure and taken less seriously.

And finally there's the issue of lesbians and gays seeking the right to validate their unions from a
society that is often resistant to change.
The notion of legalizing same-sex marriage challenges the morals and insecurities of the status quo. Acknowledging a committed gay relationship and saying that it is just as valid and acceptable as a nongay relationship just plain scares the hell out of some people. You hear this today in the idea that using the word
marriage
for gays and lesbians somehow diminishes the institution of marriage for all heterosexuals.

Well, even a reluctant social structure can adapt. President Obama's parents could not legally marry in almost one-third of the states when he was born—because they were of different races. Someday, society will find it just as incredible that at one time two people of the same sex were not entitled to legally marry. And, in the meantime, Brad and Angelina are among many celebrity couples who have chosen not to get married until everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.

While there are any number of important political reasons to support legal marriage among same-sex couples, we like to think that straight people and gay people alike get married for pretty much the same reason: love. And love and commitment are so rare in this world that it seems absurd to stonewall them.

So how popular are love and commitment? The Human Rights Campaign estimates that there are well over 3 million U.S. gays and lesbians who are in committed relationships and sharing the same residence. This figure tends to surprise Middle America, because it wasn't long ago that the media depicted a more sensationalized version of gay life. Gays and lesbians were thought to exist mainly at night, in bars and private clubs. As Martin, who had a union ceremony with his lover of six years, told us, “In the old days, there were no role models to hold up as solid gay relationships.” Being gay was something to keep secret. It was “a lifestyle,” and it was always as far away from straight America as possible.

But as Harvey Fierstein has said, “Gay liberation should not be a license to be a perpetual adolescent. If you deny yourself commitment, then what can you do with your life?” After decades of free love and living for the moment, many straight couples are now choosing to nest, as are gays and lesbians. The
C
word—
Commitment
—is on the comeback trail for a number of reasons, including the increase in lesbian and gay parenting and a concern for safe sex. But perhaps the most important reason is that the fight for advances in LGBT civil rights is bringing awareness and newfound determination to many. The result? The confidence to march out of the closet and down the aisle.