A Few Words about Marriage

I just need to say a word about how proud I am that California is (finally) offering all couples the chance to have their relationships legally recognized as legitimate. The paper is full of pictures of couples who are so happy to get married after 20, 30, 40 years together!

A short note on how my thinking has changed about the institution of marriage. When we got married, I felt first of all that it was ridiculous that our commitment needed to be voiced publicly and legitimized by a stranger at the county office. It seemed to me that those promises should be a private and personal matter. I also felt ashamed that I was benefiting from the privilege granted to me by the fact that my love and I were of different sexes. I had said before that I wouldn't marry until everyone could marry, but then when it came down to going in the Peace Corps together, I threw my principles out the window for personal advantage.

After getting married, I slowly came to appreciate the institution, the idea of a publicly understood and defined relationship. Being married meant that my friendliness would not be misinterpreted as romantic interest in others, I was "out of circulation". Being married meant that people understood that my relationship was deep and permanent, we were not merely playing with each other until something better came along. My marriage has been the most permanent thing in a life that has involved a change in job or housing, often both, at least every year for the past 14. Being married has given me a sheen of respectable normalcy to people who are otherwise baffled by my life choices. These are all about the public face of being legally married, using terms like "husband" and "wife", wearing a wedding band.

I can't say for sure about how those outer trappings of marriage affect the inner life of our relationship. I would like to think that the love we have for each other would keep our commitment to each other and the relationship strong regardless of social recognition, like those couples who have been together for 40 years, waiting for the chance to be legally married. I don't know. I do know that if we had to keep our partnership secret, if in a million little ways on paper and in conversation our relationship was seen as not as legitimate, not as real, as other people's, I would be deeply bitter.

Marriage has taken many forms across the globe and over time. Generally, it has been about giving social legitimacy to a sexual relationship. Many (most?) of those forms have not been about two people choosing each other as equals in a lifelong partnership; however, that is the ideal in our culture here, today. I am happy to be part of a society that is moving in the direction of greater equality, one which recognizes the importance of love in the creation of healthy, lasting relationships of all kinds.