Our Thanksgiving started at 5:15 am. Woke up, got dressed, drove to pick up four of our friends, went to Glide. None of us regularly attend services; we were there that morning to help prepare and serve the 5-7,000 people that would be waiting in line for food that day. After de-meat-ing 3.5 turkey carcasses each, we went home, showered, cooked a dish for our meal that night, then headed to the east bay for dinner with her family.
Last year on Thanksgiving and Christmas we volunteered at the church (which is one of the most positive, accepting places I have ever been in, just like you saw in The Pursuit of Happyness). The year before that we spent a week working with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans, building houses in 95-degrees-at-six-in-the-morning weather. We’ve helped our friends move. We pick up the mail for our neighbors when they leave town. We listen to our siblings when they’re upset. We love each other and the people in our lives really, really well.
And yet according to my girlfriend’s mother and the church to which she belongs, we will not be going to heaven. And, thanks to a good number of Californians and Americans (real, hardworking, tax paying Americans), my girlfriend and I will not be getting married any time soon.
I get confused when I hear people who voted Yes on 8 talk about how “It’s not about civil rights; civil unions are almost the same thing; you have the rights, just leave marriage alone,” or how “We have a few really close friends who are gay, and we love them. We just don’t want gay marriage to be taught in schools”. The sentences don’t work, the pieces don’t come together to form a whole. It’s not about civil rights? Funny that, because actually, it is. You have close gay friends, but don’t want your kids to know those gay friends exist? I don’t get it.
Here’s the deal: You cannot both care about your gay friend (me) as a person (a living breathing caring honest human being), and say that their love (my love) is not worthy of the same status as yours. This is what it boils down to. The worth of people, and the worth of their love.
On the night of the election, I was so proud of America for electing Barack Obama to the presidency. For the first time since I was maybe ten, I wanted to hang an American flag in my window. I felt like this was my country, too, like I didn’t have to change who I was to feel like I belonged here. The country changed. Tens of thousands of people like me created a place where both the tree huggers and the gun lovers will be protected and can be proud.
I have a friend who was very, very against gay marriage. “But Jameson, why would you want to be a part of such a hetero-normative, patriarchal, historically oppressive institution?!” She took issue with our community, our queer-ass, radical, feminist, sex-loving, gender-fucking community wanting to take part in a process that was so very un-everything we were and are. But now? Now he marches with me and my girlfriend for equal rights.
I’m not going to lie. I do want to change traditional marriage. I want to adjust it so that my girlfriend and I can fit inside. I also want to change it so that more people are joining for love and family instead of money and fear. I want to change traditional marriage into something that is more about happiness and less about divorce. I want Marriage to change like America did. I want my flag and my ring, damnit.
and another day begins,
jameson.
So true. Thanks for sharing.