I don't often blog about current events. In fact, I can't recall EVER writing a column about anything that didn't involve books or something silly. So this will be a first for me, but I feel I need to comment on events transpiring in this United States.
THE SUPREME COURT HAS LEGALIZED SAME-SEX MARRIAGE!
Bang your drums and crash your cymbals, everyone! It's time to celebrate!
I've been married for around 13 years, to a wonderful man. We have two children and are immensely happy. So when I say that I'm bisexual, it doesn't mean I'm intimate with anyone but my husband. But we're wired how we're wired, and once upon a time, I liked girls AND boys.
I didn't think this ruling would affect me. I'm happily married, after all. I don't plan to date a woman let alone want to get married to one. Of course I was happy about it. Overjoyed, actually. But it really had very little to do with me, so I didn't expect to be so emotionally invested.
When I heard the news, something was triggered in me. And it took me several days to identify what it was. There was something off with me, something was happening that I didn't understand. I finally put my finger on it this morning, and when I told my husband about it, I cried.
The thing is, that I finally belonged.
Although it wasn't technically illegal (any longer) to be gay or bi or trans, it may as well have been. The laws told us we didn't have the same rights as everyone else. We couldn't get married, we couldn't claim the basic civil rights we would be allowed if we loved someone who was the opposite gender as ourselves. We were inferior in the eyes of the law, and therefore America. I've lived in this country for my entire life and everything about the laws have been telling me one thing: I shouldn't exist. I'm wrong, they seemed to say. The way I was born wasn't allowed and I would never be able to be myself. It gives you a sense of dis-belonging. A feeling of being the puzzle piece that will never quite fit. It makes you uneasy and it makes you angry and it makes you just a little desperate to find a place in whatever way you can.
It makes you an outsider.
I had never identified this feeling within myself. I was who I was, and it didn't matter if some people didn't like it. But it does matter. Because those people telling me I shouldn't exist? They were the people making the laws. They were the people telling me I was evil and needed to be Saved. They were the people making me an outsider.
Not anymore.
That feeling that overwhelmed me when I heard SCOTUS's ruling was pride. Not PRIDE, as in proud to be LGB or T (though I am, make no mistake). I was proud to finally, after living all my life as an outsider, have home. The United States of America was at last, after 38 years, my home. It was where I belonged. After searching for so long for a place to be, a place to exist, I had found it and it was where I had been all along.
I exist. And I'm finally proud to be an American. Because girls and boys like me are going to grow up not knowing what it was like to be an outsider. They will be able to marry whomever they love, no matter what sort of biology is involved.
I'd call that progress. I'd call that victory. I would call that justice.
THE SUPREME COURT HAS LEGALIZED SAME-SEX MARRIAGE!
Bang your drums and crash your cymbals, everyone! It's time to celebrate!
I've been married for around 13 years, to a wonderful man. We have two children and are immensely happy. So when I say that I'm bisexual, it doesn't mean I'm intimate with anyone but my husband. But we're wired how we're wired, and once upon a time, I liked girls AND boys.
I didn't think this ruling would affect me. I'm happily married, after all. I don't plan to date a woman let alone want to get married to one. Of course I was happy about it. Overjoyed, actually. But it really had very little to do with me, so I didn't expect to be so emotionally invested.
When I heard the news, something was triggered in me. And it took me several days to identify what it was. There was something off with me, something was happening that I didn't understand. I finally put my finger on it this morning, and when I told my husband about it, I cried.
The thing is, that I finally belonged.
Although it wasn't technically illegal (any longer) to be gay or bi or trans, it may as well have been. The laws told us we didn't have the same rights as everyone else. We couldn't get married, we couldn't claim the basic civil rights we would be allowed if we loved someone who was the opposite gender as ourselves. We were inferior in the eyes of the law, and therefore America. I've lived in this country for my entire life and everything about the laws have been telling me one thing: I shouldn't exist. I'm wrong, they seemed to say. The way I was born wasn't allowed and I would never be able to be myself. It gives you a sense of dis-belonging. A feeling of being the puzzle piece that will never quite fit. It makes you uneasy and it makes you angry and it makes you just a little desperate to find a place in whatever way you can.
It makes you an outsider.
I had never identified this feeling within myself. I was who I was, and it didn't matter if some people didn't like it. But it does matter. Because those people telling me I shouldn't exist? They were the people making the laws. They were the people telling me I was evil and needed to be Saved. They were the people making me an outsider.
Not anymore.
That feeling that overwhelmed me when I heard SCOTUS's ruling was pride. Not PRIDE, as in proud to be LGB or T (though I am, make no mistake). I was proud to finally, after living all my life as an outsider, have home. The United States of America was at last, after 38 years, my home. It was where I belonged. After searching for so long for a place to be, a place to exist, I had found it and it was where I had been all along.
I exist. And I'm finally proud to be an American. Because girls and boys like me are going to grow up not knowing what it was like to be an outsider. They will be able to marry whomever they love, no matter what sort of biology is involved.
I'd call that progress. I'd call that victory. I would call that justice.
No longer may this liberty be denied. No union is more profound than marriage for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.
~Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
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