My Married Life Post Marriage Equality

For some time now, my spouse and I have been bickering over where we should live in our retirement years. She, being a child from the South, and me, being from the North, well, we have our tensions.

I have jokingly dubbed them our “Mason-Dixon line feud.”

We are not stretching our imaginations much when we say we feel the same concerns our enslaved ancestors must have encountered as they considered the free states up North. My spouse is tied to the weather of the South—a moist, subtropical climate with sultry summers. I like the four seasons of the North, but could live in autumn all year round. During particularly heated battles, I have questioned if her desire to live in Georgia was worth living in a state that didn’t recognize our marriage. Our marriage would be de facto dissolved.

Our ongoing exhaustive argument gained a new complication (in my mind, at least) with last week’s historic Supreme Court ruling—Obergefell v. Hodge—that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was once again the swing vote on this tough ruling. Kennedy wrote all recent decisions protecting LGBTQ rights, including the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas—which struck down sodomy laws that targeted gay men; and the 2013 US v. Windsor—recognizing and providing federal benefits to same-sex married couples in states where their marriages were legal.

His argument last week was Loving v. Virginia (1967) redox, showing how these two historic struggles for marriage equality are interconnected.

Of course, I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision. It would have been both wrong-hearted and wrong-headed to rule otherwise. But with victory comes backlash. This change in law will not come easy. A movement is already afoot with a 50-state plan to pass “Religious Freedom Restoration” acts to roll back progress. As the country battles this issue on a new front, we should hold on to Thomas Jefferson’s words about how change is required for progress:

“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But . . . laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.”

Same-sex marriage is of our times, and it’s democracy at its best. I understand democracy to be an ongoing process, where people are part of a participatory government working to dismantle all existing discriminatory laws truncating their full participation in society.

But democracy can only begin to work when those relegated to the fringes of society can sample what those in society take for granted as their inalienable rights.

The right to marry regardless of a couple’s sexual orientation or gender identity is now one of them. How wonderful to know that a same-sex couple in Mississippi has the same right to marry as someone here in Massachusetts.

Back to the challenge in my home: My spouse is all smiles now with this new ruling. She has been doing what I call “nicey nicey,” which is her way of using charm to wear down my recalcitrant stance on issues. In celebration of Obergefell v. Hodge we went out for drinks at Legal Sea Foods in Harvard Square.

While enjoying the evening summer breeze, my spouse said we could have this experience all year if we moved to a milder climate.

I snapped back and said, “I ain’t moving to Georgia!” And that’s what marriage equality looks like.

Photo via flickr user Jo Christian Oterhals