Why Marriage Equality Matters to Me

by: Rosi Efthim

Wed Dec 10, 2008 at 09:29:03 PM EST

I am now going to out myself. Yes, as a person who came very late to support marriage equality.

This is not news for anybody who knows me. And I've said the same, uncomfortably and shuffling my feet, in front of a microphone at Town Halls with Garden State Equality, which has had the good sense to welcome straight people like me into this movement for change.

But here's the thing. When you invite the straights in, you never know what you're going to get. And one day, they got me. If you haven't been to one, GSE Town Hall meetings are a combination old-fashioned tent meeting, precision-drilled presentation (founder Steven Goldstein used to produce Oprah), occasional display of gay fabulousness, and lots of children running around - always welcomed - their grownups with the look of full-out determination.

Frequently, there are balloons. But GSE Town Halls are very serious business. You're welcomed if you are still thinking about the question of whether New Jersey should change its laws to allow same-sex marriage. But the reasons you'll hear are so compelling, that you'll probably leave convinced. And maybe even, recruited.

I was recruited. Gay marriage, which is how most straight people think of what gay people call marriage equality didn't hit me right at the beginning of this movement. Oh, I was all for equality, who isn't? So, I was solid behind domestic partnership, or civil unions, or anything else that brought parity to gay couples in love.

But marriage? Marriage to me, a few years ago, was something else  entirely, by definition the union of woman to man. Clearly understood, everybody knew what it was. And gay people were doing something .... else.

I don't like admitting my wrongness. I'm a progressive activist, and I'm often the person in the front of a room helping organize things. But I can be slow. And I had to listen to some people to figure it out. Teenagers whose schoolmates didn't recognize their civil unioned families as real, workers whose employers wouldn't extend the rights afforded under civil unions, loving couples who felt like their families were accorded second-class status. And, maybe worst of all, is the uncertainty civil unioned couples felt in a hospital, in a health care crisis.  

I stand in awe of my friends at GSE. Since I've lived in New Jersey, no movement has been more crystal clear, better organized, better messaged. What Gov. Corzine and the New Jersey legislature are going to have to realize is that the core group of gay people who began this, acting in their own interest for their own futures, has now rolled into a much bigger wave of fair-minded New Jerseyans who see this clearly as a matter of fairness, of parity, of doing the right thing because it's the right thing. Speaking just for me,  I don't care anymore if I didn't grow up thinking of two guys as a married couple, or two ladies. So what? Because, when I asked myself some questions, I couldn't come up with one single defensible reason why all the options should be open to me in life and only a few should be open to others. Sounds stupid to write it out like that, because it was so obvious to so many other (smarter, apparently) straight people I know. But there it is, and that's how I got there: Who am I that my options should be greater than yours?

There's another Garden State Equality Town Hall Meeting, up in Montclair, right now. Get there if you can, the Holiday Party's probably still going.. If you can't, listen in, to Blue Jersey Radio. Or go to the one in South Jersey tomorrow. Tonight's Town Hall features Stuart Milk, the nephew of Harvey Milk, who was assassinated 30 years ago in the city, San Francisco, where he served on the Board of Supervisors. Milk was an early hero of this movement, which has had many since then. And whether you find your way to a Town Hall meeting, my friends at Democracy for America-NJ (full disclosure: I'm on the board there) want to invite you to come to Opening Night of Milk, the very well-reviewed biopic starring Sean Penn in the title role. DFA-NJ is hosting a Special Event on Friday, at the wonderful indie theater Montgomery Cinemas (Rocky Hill) and if you let us know by Thursday night that you're coming, we'll make sure you have a seat (expect the show to sell out, you have to be there to claim your ticket by 6:40pm sharp).

Outside you'll find DFA-NJ people advocating marriage for all New Jersey's loving couples, and advocating for our friends at Garden State Equality.  After all, they've taught us all a thing or two.