Today has been kind of a discouraging day for me on the marriage equality front.  I have found that I am really not a good phone banker.  Not only am I uncomfortable and handle rejection quite poorly, I just don’t have what it takes to whip people up into a frenzy about marriage equality.  And honestly, that kind of sits with my personality.  I am not flashy, I don’t draw attention to myself (usually) and would prefer to fly below the radar.  We hosted a phone bank here today that was very sparsely attended and really didn’t get much accomplished.  I called probably 15 numbers, the vast majority of which were not at home and the two people I actually got bitched me out.  I suppose I can understand that.  I hate the phone as much as the next person, but I try really hard not to be mad at people who call for causes because 1) they really believe in them and 2) they are human beings with feelings.

It’s going to be a shit-fight in January when the legislature reconvenes.  I have been trying to talk myself out of believing that, but it will happen. Even if the people by and large have stopped caring about it, the legislators and politicians have found a hot button issue to rally the troops in an election year.  It WILL be an issue, no matter how much I want to delude myself that it won’t be.

People always ask me why I care.  I’m not gay, I don’t have any gay relatives and didn’t really even know any gay people until the last few years.  I don’t have an easy answer – probably because the answer is complicated and steeped in a lot of my own life story.  But when it comes right down to it, I think the reason I care about LGBT issues in general and marriage equality specifically, it’s because we’re all people.  And while people can be real shitheads sometimes, most of the time, they’re not and they just want to live their lives.

Musician Darren Hayes posted on his myspace blog a picture of him and his husband in Paris last November.  It was right after Prop 8 passed and as a gay man, he was emotionally affected.  He wrote the following which, while not entirely accurate (there was no attempt to change the U.S. Constitution), the sentiments still ring true.

We’re married.
Some folks in California decided to change the American Constitution to legislate
that this right should not be given to gay people in California.
Presumably because of what gay people will do to the definition of marriage.

Just so we are clear, this is our definition of marriage:
We want to grow old together.
We love each other so much that we want to share our lives together, forever.
We are monogamous. We’re faithful. We’re in it for the long haul.
Sometimes we argue over who’s turn it is to make a cup of tea, but for the most
part we are soul mates.

If, God forbid, one of us should fall ill, one of us will take care of the other one.
If,, God forbid, one of us should pass away suddenly, we would want our estate to go
to the one of us who survives.
We’d like other stuff too, like, you know, the same tax breaks as other married couples
and the civil rights you would extend any other committed couple in the free world.
And to be able to be respected and receive the same rights that everyone else has.

But mostly, we just want to grow old together.

We’re really lucky that the country we live in allows for same sex partners to receive
all of these things. But some folks in California recently decided that some Americans
did not deserve this same respect.

So for those people who voted to ‘ban’ gay marriage; to take away a right and permanently
discriminate against a minority group – I wanted to share this picture of Richard and I.
It’s us, tearing down the fabric of good society and the sanctity of marriage in Paris.
Lock up your children!

I have always loved that picture and meant to blog it on my other blog but then the ship sailed and it seemed stupid to do so.

Today, it seems worth repeating.

I read a piece this morning in the San Francisco Chronicle, however, which gave me a little tingle.  It reported that the federal judge presiding over two California couples’s lawsuit against Proposition 8 will take the case straight to trial, and the SFC listed some of the concerns the judge has, and exposes what sort of examination he will make of the case. His greatest concern seems to be, “Is there discrimination against gays and lesbians?”  This is what the prosecution is claiming, that gays and lesbians are being denied Constitutional rights to equality under this ballot initiative.  When the attorney for the sponsors of Prop 8 said there’s no discrimination, past or present, because gays are free to marry, so long as it’s to the opposite sex, Walker (the federal judge) had a built-in response in his order: 

Walker said in his order, however, that past discrimination is relevant in evaluating a law that limits the right to marry.

A related issue, he said, is “whether the availability of opposite-sex marriage is a meaningful option for gays and lesbians.”

He said opponents of same-sex marriage may also need to present evidence to justify their arguments that children are best raised by a married mother and father, and that allowing gays and lesbians to wed “destabilizes opposite-sex marriage.”

Citing the plaintiffs’ argument that Prop. 8 was motivated by antagonism toward homosexuals, Walker also said he may want to take a look at campaign ads and ballot arguments to establish voters’ intent.

Anyone who read the Iowa Supreme Court brief in Varnum vs. Brien with any attention should start seeing familiar verbiage appear.  These are the same concerns raised in our state’s legal challenge to discrimination, and our non-partisan Supreme Court came down unanimously in the favor of gays and lesbians.  Not only is this precedent set, but also all arguments, witnesses, and testimony used here is public record, and therefore easily available to the prosecution attorneys in the Prop 8 case.  Those attorneys, by the way, are the same attorneys who argued for Bush and Gore in the 2000 election.

When we think of Decision Day here in Iowa, we think of the joy and pride we had for Iowa families that were, after such a long time, finally validated.  But we should also think of the families in other states, too, because it will forever be our state’s landmark decision which will help frame the arguments for future cases for equality.  The court of public opinion may be easy to manipulate, but these briefs and rulings echo long and loud in the world of law.  Time may not remember Iowa with the glory that we would like to, and two hundred years from now Iowans may be discovering our pioneering lead in LGBT rights with the same surprise some of us now are discovering our early adoption of human and civil rights for African Americans and women.  But rest assured that the law will not forget.  

And in a way, such a quiet, no-fuss revolution is very Iowa.  Don’t you think?

(Full story here)

What I love most about this story is that it’s very unlikely that this young man is able to fully identify his own sexuality yet, which means that this is much more about doing what he feels is right than protecting a peer group.  If you listen to his speech, you’ll hear him speak of police brutality against gays, and he asks how he is supposed to trust police officers if he knows that they can do this to a group.  Yes, he has some nine year-old reasoning and arguments in his speech, but it isn’t what he says that is so powerful; it’s that he is so young and so moved to speak at all.

In part because of how we have raised her, our daughter is already a fierce marriage equality advocate.  She has a One Iowa t-shirt which she wears proudly (usually to bed because it’s a bit oversized at this point), and if she hears I am attending a rally or volunteering for One Iowa, she asks to go.  She was very disappointed when she went with me to the last hours of our shift at the Story County Recorder’s office on Marriage Day and no couples came through for her to welcome.  When I told her that we had a picnic date with two of the “moms” who picked up licenses that day and their children, you would have thought I told her we would be dining with celebrities.  To Anna, LGBT rights should be granted without question.  To Anna and many of her peers, it is difficult to grasp even why LGBT persons would be shut out from the law.  

Ethan and Anna are of a generation which will grow up for at least for years with an African American President of the United States.  They have been told this is a significant step, but to them, it will simply be normal.  For a minimum of four more years, marriage equality will be the law in Iowa.  In four years Ethan McNamee and my daughter will be thirteen and eleven, respectively.  They will both be on the cusp or leading edge of puberty, and regardless of what their own sexualities might be, they will be discovering, by pure law of statistics, that some of their friends are or might be LGBT.  They will have seen more and more LGBT couples and stories about them.  For them, unless adults tell them otherwise, it will seem very odd that people who have been marrying since they were in elementary school suddenly can’t, if anyone tries to push such an amendment.  Children who are eleven and thirteen now will, in four years, be finishing high school and beginning college.   They will be very near to voting age as well, and will have seen even more clearly how normal and natural LGBT persons are, and how very many they number among their peers.  It will seem even stranger to them to deny their friends rights that they had witnessed in their culture all through middle school and high school.

On May 30th, One Iowa is hosting a Grassroots Power Summit in Des Moines.  Once again, One Iowa is leading the way with positive, proactive education and information, not to wage a war against “the enemy” but to continue to build a bridge of understanding between the LGBT community and all Iowans.  I’ve already put in my reservation to be there, and I hope you will, too.  I want to help continue to make Iowa the leader in civil rights and equality.  I want to help keep Iowa a place where all the Ethans and Annas, regardless of their orientation, can be not just proud, but safe, to be whoever they need to be.  I think it’s wonderful that Ethan McNamee feels so passionate about equality, and his actions hearten me.  But as the adult that comes before him, it only makes me want to work harder so that when, in nine years, he becomes a fully legal adult in our society, he and all his friends find that they are full and legal citizens of the United States, free to love and marry whomever their heart tells them is right.

Now having said that, life has been a whirlwind around here.  There have been the standard things to get caught up in – the school year is winding down and we’re also getting ready to take a vacation.  But it’s been more than that.  Over the last 10 days, we have witnessed a dear friend of ours go from being merely sick, to being hospitalized, to being moved to ICU and finally put on a ventilator.  The reasons for this are not entirely clear, and after a tense week, she is well on the road to recovery.  Youth (she is significantly younger than me) is definitely on her side and she has a fighting spirit that will see her through this and the path to a complete recovery.

It was during this time that I realized why marriage really matters.  Her husband is considered next of kin, and with that came the authority to make medical decisions for his wife when she was unable to make her own medical decisions.  Not even her own mother could override the decisions that he made.  Legally, he had the final say.  It got me to thinking about how were he her boyfriend or even her fiance, that assignment would not immediately fall to him.  Without the legality of  a marriage, he could have easily found himself on the outside looking in, while decisions regarding the woman he loved were made, possibly without his input.

Now, of course that is overdrawing it for effect, but is it?  What I was really surprised by was how much those of us who have been afforded the luxury of being married before April 27th really take all that for granted.  Because the history of HIV and the ensuing AIDS epidemic is of such interest to me, it made me think about how many gay men were denied the right to simply be with their dying partners because they were not family, at least not in the legal sense.

So to those who would deny the LGBT community these simple rights, I would ask them to honestly think about how they would feel were they were overruled by their spouse’s immediate family in making health care decisions.

In the meantime, marriage equality will have been the law of the Iowa land for three weeks tomorrow.  Miraculously, the sky is still there.  Life has gone on.  But don’t get complacent.  Things may be quieter now, but this is but the eye of the hurricane.  With 2010 a gubernatorial election year, the entire Iowa House and half the Iowa Senate up for re-election, you can bet that this is only the beginning.  Keep on fighting and most importantly, walk the walk.

So what’s happened in the seven days since marriage equality became the law of the land in Iowa?  More than 450 couples have applied for and been granted marriage licenses.  Couples from Minnesota and Missouri have come to Iowa to be married, even though they know that their marriages will not be recognized in their home states.

But what’s more interesting is what hasn’t happened.  The apocalypse has not arrived.  The sky has not fallen.  The world has not stopped turning.  People are continuing to go about their daily business.  But for a certain segment of the population, that business now includes having the same basic rights that I have taken for granted my whole life.

Seven days later, the world is still, more or less, the same.  And this is despite what some of the most angry and vitriolic members of the other side predicted.

There will be more posts this week, I promise.

This article, also from The Des Moines Register, sums up both sides rather well, I think.  It reports same-sex couples feeling relief that the legal issues are resolved and enjoying the validation, and then you have statements like this: 

“We just feel this type of judicial decision not only doesn’t reflect what most Iowans believe, but it’s also harmful to our state and to our country,” said Kurt Korver, 42, an Orange City doctor. “If a neighborhood is filled with homosexual couples, you wouldn’t want to have kids in that neighborhood. The purpose of government is to restrain bad behavior for the good of society.”

As outrageous as this statement is to any marriage rights advocate (and hopefully to many who identify as neutral/undecided as well), it is worth examining because it illustrates the most difficult hurdle ahead of LGBT rights and peace among Iowans in general on this issue. There is absolutely no logical or practical leap between a change in legal status for couples already living, working, and parenting in Iowa and a sudden state of neighborhoods “filled with homosexual couples.”  And if we were lucky enough to have this happen, we know very well we would soon see our neighborhoods either looking very much the same except that we’d be inviting over Jane and Sara or Bob and Dave instead of Jane and Bob and Sara and Dave for barbeque or any other boring, normal everyday events.  But this isn’t how the opposition sees the LGBT community, and nothing short of living through decades where they realize their fears have not come to pass will convince them it has not, but even then they might find it hard to let go.  

Yesterday I volunteered at the Story County Recorder.  I was there to pass out information from One Iowa and Lambda Legal, to answer questions, and to provide moral support.  The Story County Recorder was absolutely, one-hundred percent supportive.  They had no “gay agenda,” but they did have a human agenda.  Nine same-sex couples registered in that office yesterday, and one opposite-sex couple, and they were all treated exactly the same.  The staff were helpful and patient and took time to answer all questions.  They smiled.  They made reassuring eye contact.  They were not over-eager.  They made no judgments of any kind.  They looked, in fact, often very pleased to be helping people get married.  I suspect that’s a high perk of that job.  They were even patient with the press, allowing them back behind the counter to get better photographs of the event.  

The couples themselves were, overall, quiet, eager, and happy.  Some were very nervous. Several applicants had children.  One couple was Mark Kassis and Terry Lowman, whom I know from Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames, and because of their high community profile and long-term status, came with high media coverage and a full cadre of supporters, though they were there mostly to finish the paperwork they hadn’t been allowed to finish in 2007. 

One woman was slipping over on her lunch break at work and was simply picking up the paperwork, as her partner was still in Kansas City and would be moving up in May.  She came into the administration building and bee-lined for me, asking, “Are you with One Iowa?”  She was a competent, professional woman, but she was clearly glad for support at this moment.  She was excited to move her family to Ames, hoping to find a house for their four foster children, eager to be married and make their union legal.  This was all.  She had no designs on anyone else’s marriage.  She had no desire to rewrite anyone’s belief systems.  She just wanted to get married, get a house, raise her children, and love her partner with full legal security.

A lawyer who works nearby kept popping over to “get the news” and see how the day was progressing, and she summed the day up best.  “It’s all so very normal,” she said, a smile spreading across her face.  And she’s right.  When I look at the online photos, I see the couples going to register, and it is so very normal.  There’s nothing special about it, because they’re just people in love like everyone else.  It’s so Iowa. 

I think a number of marriage opponents in the Midwest fear is that cultures they see and imagine from elsewhere in the world or even in time will somehow appear in their backyard.  I think they imagine narrow, shadowy shades of gay nightclubs, painted from bad news reports and their own imaginations, and they mix it in with carnal, delicious and terrifying ideas of what bathhouses must be like.  So much of this, still, is about sex.  The midwest, more than anywhere else, is a place where we don’t discuss sex, and for the most die-hard marriage opponents here, there is no erasing the image of gay men as anything but Sodom and Gomorrah in the worst possible Biblical interpretation.  It doesn’t matter that this image was never true, or that even when it has been, it has been so in small, isolated places, and was often born out of backlash of prejudice and discrimination.  It doesn’t matter that every single couple who registered yesterday was completely interchangeable with any couple registering on any other day except that these couples were made up of same-sex couples.  There is a mental programming of what “gay” means in the minds of many, and it will be long, hard work to make it go away.

Mark and Terry were married yesterday.  They were, in fact, married in 2007, and they have been more married than most of us have for a long, long time now.  They have been business partners and parents for decades.  They are friends.  They are lovers.  They are everything that all of us wish we could have when we dream of being partnered in a relationship.  They are prominent members of a community.  They are leaders.  They are examples.  They are devoted, but they are, of course, Iowans, so they really aren’t showy about it.  They are practical.  They are kind, and generous, and human.  They are, in short, just like the rest of us, except to be honest they do a great deal of it better than most of us, because they’re one of Those couples, for whom it just comes so naturally.  And yet Mark and Terry and the countless other Mark and Terrys, visible and invisible in Iowa, are not enough to stop comments like the one I cited above, which goes to show us that very little will be able to stop them except time and patience.  Even despite commentary like this, you have but to read the comment section to see it falls on deaf ears.  Those who want to believe gay marriage is a threat will accept nothing but the threat, even when it doesn’t materialize.

Iowa has had its two days in the sun.  We will get a bit of spotlight again during the next caucus cycle, but beyond this, it is over.  We have had our days as civil rights leaders, and we are now a little higher on the international Cool Index.  But I have news for Mr. Korver, and Mr. Hurley, and all the other people panicking and waiting for the rain of fire to begin: it won’t.  The lawyer was right.  Iowa is, as ever, pathologically normal.  Even when we are the third state to legalize same-sex marriage, we are still normal.  We will still be the butt of corn and pig jokes.  We will still be told there is nothing to do here.  We will still have weather that is too hot and too cold and usually in the same week.  We will still eat too much of Things On Sticks at the Iowa State Fair, and it will still be so hot you nearly pass out while we do it.  There will still be chronic construction on Interstate 80.  There will still be morel mushrooms in the spring, which someone will pick off your land before you have a chance to get out there yourself.

We will still have floods and famines.  We will still have tornadoes.  We will still have fires and crises and calamities and sorrows.  And we will still, as we have always done, help each other through them.  We will volunteer and bake things and have fundraisers.  There will still be jello with fruit in it at every church function–even Unitarian.  The only thing that will change because of yesterday will be that, slowly, quietly, and probably with a bit of Iowa hesitation, straight people will begin to notice that there have been loving committed homosexual and bisexual couples around them all along.  Which, once they get over their surprise, they will realize means that there is more community, and because everyone is recognized, it is a stronger community.

So normal.  So very, very normal.

If you are heading to an Iowa County Recorder today, congratulations, and best wishes!  Be sure to look for One Iowa volunteers and staff for support, or at least an extra cheer.  Also remember to visit One Iowa’s website for helpful tips and guidesheets.  I recommend especially Lambda Legal’s FAQ sheet, as it has extensive discussion of issues such as out-of-state/leaving state issues and discusses deeper, less exciting but still important legal aspects of marriage as it relates to same-sex couples. The Chicago Tribune also has a nice blow-by-blow/summary of what is needed to receive a license today.  (Makes me wish I were in more of a border county!)

There may be protesters today, and there will be people viewing today as a fearful, dangerous event.  There are prayer protests planned, which, so long as they are for understanding and love, I’m all for.   But remember that not everyone feels that way, and that a good number of these allies are in religious institutions, too.  Remember, if you’re near Des Moines, come to their celebration tonight at Des Moines Social Club.  If you’re not, find one in your area, or make your own!  Whatever you do, enjoy today.  Don’t let anyone else’s fear or uncertainty bring you down.  Today is an historic day.  Enjoy it to its fullest.

And say hi if you register in Story County!  I’ll be at the courthouse from 9-3.

I love how NOM released an ad to stir things up in Iowa and it became a national sensation.  I love how the lies and misrepresentations have been deconstructed, reconstructed, and essentially undone. But I love this one because it is a positive message.  And I’m still in love with the One Iowa ad: may it stay on the air for a long, long time.

In a more perfect world I would have written this post on Easter Sunday, but it feels, in a way, more appropriate today.  Easter was a nice day, but this day is even better. The temperatures were in the 80s (but it wasn’t humid!), the sun was shining, and a sturdy but still gentle breeze whipped in through the open window screens.  I took the opportunity to scrub down our screened in porch, and now my family is enjoying a warm spring evening there.  My daughter is playing “town” with some blocks, and my husband is reading on the laptop.  Soft music is playing in the background.  The ledges are filled with plants (and cats), and a feng shui fountain burbles quietly in a corner beneath a string of fairy lights.  And on today, a warm spring day, it is only four days until one era ends and a new one begins in our state.  Yes, I think today is a much better day to write about death and rebirth, even though Easter might have initially seemed to have been more appropriate.

Tim & Sean (Ames)

Tomorrow county offices are closed for a furlough day, which means that the “death” has already come.  Today was the last day only male-female couples were allowed to apply for marriage licenses. On Monday Iowans (and visitors to Iowa) may go to County Recorders in any of our 99 counties with their partners and apply for a license to marry, and on Monday it won’t matter if those couples are comprised of men and men or women and women or women and men.  Partner As and Partner Bs will fill out forms all across Iowa, and soon after we will begin to see and hear a remarkable, wonderful first for our state: civil and sacred marriages for same-sex couples.  Today was the last day for discrimination; Monday is the first day for equality. 

So I suppose this is a new Easter in a way, and I wish that opponents of marriage equality would use this time not to try to fight death, to resist change, but to mourn the loss of what they believe should be, and try to move on.  I wish they would grieve.  I wish they would sit with, then let go of the hate and uncertainty, and I wish they would open their hearts and see what the rebirth might bring. Because it is a new era we have come to, and I wish they could see that it is a good one, that this change isn’t just positive but necessary, that opening marriage to all committed couples is not a destruction of marriage, but a strengthening.  I wish I knew the way to show, not just say, that their fears are unfounded, and that their anger is unnecessary. I understand they feel this isn’t true.  I understand that from where they sit, this is a death alone, that they see no glorious rebirth, that they see, in fact, a horrible mutation coming before them.  I understand why they feel they must stop this, somehow, possibly at any cost.  I understand all this, but I in no way agree.

Mary & Stephanie (Urbandale)

Because the truth is that what they fear and what they hate is not what they speak with their mouths or even see with their eyes.  They say they fear the destruction of marriage and family, but what they actually fear is the world as they know it undergoing change.  They fear this change will leave them out, or behind.  They see a group which they have been taught should be excluded now receiving rights denied, but to them this is not righting a wrong, this is “stealing power,” and they perceive this power is being stolen from them.  And since many of these people have spent years, even decades fighting with increasing desperation to keep this group from “stealing power,” they now see Monday, April 27 not as a day of liberation and equality, but the day they lose their power, and the day they become the outsiders.  

Jesus & Mary Magdalene

In the Easter myth, opponents of marriage equality in Iowa on Monday will not be the disciples of Jesus but the Pharisees.  I doubt very much they would agree with me, because they will be thinking of a literal interpretation, but from the standpoint of archetype and myth, this is very much what they are experiencing.  And, in fact, if they read more Gospel and less Leviticus and letters by Paul, if they read and considered the stories of and words attributed to the man who should be most opponents of marriage equality’s greatest hero, they would find their spiritual leader and Son of God to have very little to say that isn’t love, that he who hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors and thieves and told stories about Samaritans was living in the Biblical social equivalent of the types of modern-day communities they most despise.  I think, sometimes, this must  be clear even in a subtle, subconscious sort of way, and it can’t sit well.  I think it must only fuel the anger and confusion and the desperate need to, somehow, stop all this madness before it ends the entire world as they know it.

The story of Jesus, particularly his death on the cross, is one of my favorites.  I love the message of unconditional love and sacrifice.  I have always loved the season of Lent and the holiday of Easter because, though many try to spin it otherwise, there’s no denying that the man in that story died for everyone, no matter who they were.  In not one version of his death was there an asterisk or caveat which said that he was, in fact, only dying for those he liked best, or only for the prostitutes, or only for the disciples, or only for people who tithe.  In every Gospel, Jesus Christ, Son of God, dies for the whole world, for all of humanity: for women, for men, for souls of every color and creed, for those born and unborn, for those who know who he is, or those who do not, for those who believe in his message of love, and those who do not. And yes, though the words didn’t exist at that time, for gay and for straight. He forgave those who killed him, those who begged for his death. He loved, even in that dark moment, the whole world.  How could a figure whose entire purpose was to love the whole world and free it from darkness be against love, no matter how it presents itself?

Jim & Bill (Sioux City)

But this is exactly what many churches, unfortunately, have preached, louder and louder over the past fifty years, and now in our state we stand at the tipping point where this lie, at last, must die.  For beginning April 27, 2009, the truth will be shown, and same-sex couples who love each other will make public, legal commitments to one another, and for the first time in history, the state of Iowa will acknowledge those unions.  The union of man and man and woman and woman will occur, and the sky will not fall, the fabric of the nation will not fall apart, and the world will not end.  In fact, our society will, in every way, be stronger, because more people will be married, and more people will be protected by society, and more children will be safer, and more Iowans will be happier.  

On Monday, to be opposed to marriage equality for same-sex couples will not be against the law, but it will be a position running, for the first time, counter to the law.  No matter who you are or what you believe, on Monday we will all be reborn.  On Monday “married” for us means something it has never meant before.  On Monday the world is wider.  On Monday the world is more inclusive.  On Monday many loves and loves which have not yet appeared will be made richer because for the first time they will be equal in the eyes of the law.

Marriage is the ultimate fight for equality, because it has been, no matter what the era of history, the ultimate social prize.  It is not the only way to respectability in society, and simply being married doesn’t make one socially powerful, but as a symbol, there are few with more teeth.  And in romantic relationships, there is no contest.  To be legally married, from the perspective of one’s social group, is to have your partnership validated in a ceremony whose roots reach all the way down.  Now those roots are available to all.  

There is death, yes, but only of a way of thinking.  There will be new life, much of it, and I for one think it will be an absolutely beautiful garden.

Terri & LaDonna on Decision Day

This is how the war will be won.  Quietly, rationally and with love and tolerance rather than scare tactics and divisieness.

Good job, One Iowa.  Keep up the good work.