Yesterday, May 26, was my four year wedding anniversary. It was also the day the California supreme court ruled to uphold the ban on same-sex marriage. This coincidence led me to a reflection on marriage, mine and the general concept, that I'd like to share with you.

Dave is my husband. He is also my best friend. No one in the world knows more about what goes on in my heart and mind than he does. We share values, hopes and dreams. He knows my sense of humor and I know his, even if all we can sometimes manage is a pained groan at the other's jokes. We often finish each other's sentences or give voice to the same thought at the same time. We are not the same person but we complement each other well. We make the other want to be better. I can't imagine the way my life would look without him in it.

This was true the day before our wedding. Getting married didn't make it any more true. Looking around my life before I got married, I didn't have any great role models for marriage. I knew a fair number of people who probably would have been happier out of their current state of wedlock but stuck around for various practical reasons - none of those reasons related to the fact that they had taken a vow to stay with the other person. In fact, the happiest, longest lasting, most functional couple I knew were not and still are not married. A fact that does not diminish their commitment to each other or the care they give to each other. Dave and I were an inseparable pair - the Lambsters - before we exchanged rings, and for me, at least, the wedding didn't make me any less likely to walk away when things got hard. I love him no matter what is recorded in the annals of the Keystone state.

So why get married at all? For one, it is the gateway to a host of social benefits and responsibilities. But Dave didn't marry me to assume responsibility for half of my six figure education loan debt and I wasn't trying to get my hooks into his 401K. For me, marriage is a kind of choosing. It sets a boundary around yourself and your partner that the world sees as more inviolate than simply dating. It is a public way of saying "This is my family. This is forever. What you do to one is done to the other." It is a public declaration of what is already true in our hearts. For me, marriage is about commitment and bringing two lives into one.

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't understand why anyone would want to deny a fellow person the right to that public declaration. Is the world so perfect that we would demean and belittle any offered expression of love? Why does anyone care who wants to marry who? I would certainly be protesting in the street if someone told me I couldn't marry Dave. Why does the government care who I love? The thing that really blows my mind, though, is the vocal outcry of religious groups against gay marriage. Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why? It seems to me that do unto others . . . and love thy neighbor . . . are supposed to convey acceptance and love not hatred and exclusion. (Of course, it is that evident hypocrisy that always turned me off to organized Christianity, but that is a subject for another post.) In any event, with a rising unwed teen pregnancy rate, a whole segment of the population choosing to practice serial monogamy, and the divorce rate around 50%, it doesn't seem to me that the heterosexual population is doing so well with marriage and lifelong commitment. I say that anyone who's brave enough get on the scary roller coaster of matrimony deserves a chance.

Of course, the legal system doesn't care about love and the joining of souls. Proponents of gay marriage get a foothold in the courts by arguing matters of equal rights and fairness. ie. If heterosexual couples can assume certain social rights and responsibilities, denying them to homosexual couples is discrimination. And it is. I do not see another way to answer that issue. If one pair of people have the right to throw theirs lots in together and take on the world as one, then ANY two people should have that right. Period. In America, these days, we all get to sit wherever we want on the bus, and while I know there are people who wish that wasn't the case, who fondly yearn for the days of Jim Crow, at least those views have been soundly rejected by those who make our laws. I can only hope that when Nathan is old enough to discuss such things, he will be shocked and appalled to learn that this discrimination against gays stands in our history. . . and not in his present.