At midnight, when this weekend officially ends, I
will be halfway to accomplishing the central goal that I have set out for
myself in life – the single item on my bucket list, as it were. My
ability to attain this goal is not totally up to me. In fact, it’s largely out of my control. But that’s OK, because luck is central to
pretty much every venture in life, and I’m at peace with depending on luck in the
things that matter most to me. What choice is there?
So what happens at 12:00 a.m. Monday morning? I celebrate my 30th wedding
anniversary. My goal is to make it to 60. Once that happens, if that happens, I would
be 88 and my wife would be 89, and I’ll be ready for whatever God has in store
for us. Until then, I respectfully
request that the two of us keep on breathing, and we’ll take care of the rest.
As long as I can remember, I’ve revered the
institution of marriage. I saw my
parents fight and fight and fight and yet, I never saw them separate, let alone
divorce. They were married for 17 years
before I was born and another 41 years thereafter, and believe me, it was no
bed of roses. I knew they deeply loved
each other. And I also knew that they
drove each other crazy. So I had to
decide – what is the more important value in life: to minimize the extent to
which we are driven crazy by our loved ones?
Or to maximize the extent to which we experience and bestow the deepest
of love? You have my answer.
I have been a bit more fortunate than my
parents. I married a woman who actually
doesn’t drive me crazy. I found her at
Harvard Law School, where she was a bit of a fish out of water. Now, instead of honing her rhetoric and brinksmanship
skills in arenas of verbal combat, she teaches 5-10 year old schoolchildren how
to appreciate reading and do research. Recently, she spent 15 days in a hospital attempting
to recuperate from surgery, but never once did she get upset with me, or with
anyone else. No, being married to her
for 60 years would hardly entitle me to combat pay. In fact, to use the immortal words of Lou Gehrig,
it would make me “the luckiest man alive.”
This weekend, as I reflect on the significance of
Monday’s anniversary, I’m reminded that not everyone in my generation was given
the opportunity to aim for the goal that I’ve set out for myself. In order to have a reasonable chance to be
married for 60 years, the members of my cohort needed to tie the knot by the
end of the 80s or early 90s. But for
many, that wasn’t possible. Not in
America. Not overseas.
The group of people I have in mind who were denied
their rights to marry were formerly known by several nasty, hurtful words. Oh, there was no shortage of names. They weren’t sequestered from society like
lepers, but to a degree they served the same role in society. They were the ones most likely to be bullied
by teenage alpha males. Why sequester them if we can ridicule them
instead? It’s so much more fun,
right? Civilized people – the kind who
thrive at places like Harvard Law School – would know enough not to mock these
people or even to refer to them by derogatory names. But when it came time to decide whether to
support their right to get married, now that was a bridge too far. Like most Americans, Ivy League educated
lawyers turned politicians, knew enough NOT to advocate for same-sex
marriage. Obviously, the Republican
leaders opposed it. But, more notably,
so did the highest leaders of the purportedly-progressive Democratic party.
Barack Obama finally came out in favor of gay
marriage in 2012. He was joined by
Hillary Clinton in 2013. Is it any
wonder that as recently as 2003, not a single state allowed gay people to get
married?
In 2018, the times have changed. The coup de grace was the 2015 Supreme Court
decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which mandated that all 50 states allow
same-sex couples to get married. The
vote was 5-4. And yes, Justice Kennedy
decided with the majority.
I have scrupulously striven to make this blog a
law-free zone so that I may separate what I write about on weekends from what I
do for a living. Accordingly, I don’t
wish to comment on the legal reasoning of Obergefell, or the stability of this
precedent in light of past and future changes on the Court. That kind of candor will be preserved until
the time I leave government service and feel free to speak my mind on all
topics. But today, allow me to point out
on a personal level just how important it is for me that other Americans be
granted the same fundamental rights that I possess, and just how fundamental I
view the right of all consenting adults to get married.
It is sad enough that gay people my age will never
dream of reaching the big 6-0. But I
pray that in my children’s generation, and their children’s generation, every
American will grow up secure in the knowledge that they can reach for this
beautiful milestone regardless of their sexual preference.
You know, my wife isn’t a very opinionated person,
and she is definitely an open-minded one.
But I remember her telling me once that while she is typically able to
see two sides on every issue, the one issue on which she only sees a single
side is gay marriage. I feel the same
way. Anyone who would take away that
right for secular reasons is making arguments I simply can’t fathom. And anyone who would take away that right for
religious reasons is just the opposite kind of religious person than I am.
Long live marriage.
Long live tolerance. Love live
progressive religion.
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