I put the title of this blog in quotation marks because that was the search I googled this morning while contemplating the framework for these comments. Given the extraordinary number of “hits” mostly to posts which have occurred since the US Supreme Court ruling on June 26, 2015, I am not the only one who thinks s/he has something to say. Many are simply news alerts about the “historic” event (a now-ubiquitous and certainly accurate description). There are musings from various sources about the legal ramifications of the legalization of gay marriage. There is no doubt that from estate planning to employee benefits to family law and adoption, there will be significant impact that could take months or even years to fully appreciate. I suppose some of us may consider that job security!I find myself more interested in the human/emotional aspect of this ruling.
Here’s the thing. For me, the gay marriage issue has always been one of “live and let live.” I just don’t understand why any person has any interest in whether the couple living next door is straight or is gay. I happen to live next door to a lesbian couple. There is and never has been anything about having these lovely ladies living next door that has posed a threat to my traditional heterosexual marriage. They are, indeed, the perfect neighbors, with the friendliest demeanor and most beautifully landscaped home on the block. These women have set the bar so high on home maintenance that the rest of us on the block are constantly scrambling to keep up!
I find myself pondering, as I have my entire life, why so many of us are so determined to force our belief systems down the throats of others. What I thought about as we learned of the Supreme Court ruling, was Matthew Shepard, the 21-year gay man beaten to death on October 6, 1998 by thugs in Laramie, Wyoming. In the same way, when President Obama was elected, I could not stop thinking about “strange fruit” – the poem by Lewis Allen written in 1937, which he put to music and sung by Billie Holiday, about the lynchings of black Americans. I could go on and on because, sadly, this country has a long history of discrimination and cruelty to those perceived of as “other.”
There is a lot of noise out there in response to the Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-gender marriage throughout our country. The political pundits explain how a constitutional amendment could nullify the Supreme Court ruling. Faith-based adoption agencies claim that compelling the placement of children with gay couples violates First Amendment religious freedoms (an old argument by the way – think mixed-race marriages and adoptions in years past). And yes, the lawyers are contemplating all the new and unchartered territory legalization of same-gender marriage opens up.
What I ask today is that each of us stop for a moment and pay homage to all those who never intended to be heroes or martyrs, who simply wished to live out their lives in peace, regardless of skin color, religious practices or sexual orientation. We would not have lived to see the Supreme Court legalize same-gender marriage but for the determination of those who came before.