Waiting in Vain

About five years ago, an old school lefty activist I know, who also happens to be a straight, white male, told me that I was being impatient about gay rights, that change took time, and that I would just have to wait for things such as marriage equality to come to pass in America. I replied that, as a straight, white male he didn't have a hell of a lot of experience having to wait for anything, and that he could shove that bit of 'wisdom' up his ass.

Yesterday's news was and is well worth celebrating, but it is also a bittersweet victory. 

Not being able to marry and live in the USA with the woman who I thought I'd be with for life kept me away from the United States for years. The fact that the committed and exclusive relationship I was in, which had been built on love and trust did not, for all intents and purposes, even exist, as far as the U.S. Federal government was concerned, forced me to choose between the country of my birth, and the woman I loved and with whom I was building a life. A move back to the states would have had to have been a move by myself.  It was not an easy decision, but I chose a future, happiness, love. This choice - one she did not begrudge, because she wanted her child to be happy -  kept me far away from my mother for most of the last really good years of her life. It kept me from doing my fair share to take care of her when she needed it - something I thought of not as a burden, but an honor and a duty. An act of love.  Being forced to choose also meant missing so many important milestones in the lives of my nephews, who I love deeply. 

I'm beyond happy about the SCOTUS decision, and it does my heart good to know that the next generation of American children will not even remember a time when same-sex marriage was not the law of the land. The truth, though, is that the bitter aftertaste left by my choice - by being forced to choose, as I waited for justice - and what that choice and long wait meant, lingers. It breaks my heart a little, even as I celebrate a victory. It's a victory that came too late for me.

The long wait was pointless, and even cruel. Gay people were ready for this years ago, and there was not one good reason to wait. Black people in America have waited MORE than long enough to get some equity. Hispanics have waited long enough. Women have waited long enough. Trans people are done waiting. When someone says that change takes time, and that you "just have to wait," what he's really saying is that HE is not ready to share his big, old piece of the pie. 

My mother would have been happy about the Supreme Court decision. She would have been happy for me. She would have been thrilled to know that one of the justices who did the right thing was a Puerto Rican woman, that another was a woman from Brooklyn. She would probably have been out in the street making noise, banging a pot with a wooden spoon, in celebration. She can't. Justice waited too long. 

A River Runs Through It

Last week, one of America's anti-same-sex marriage pundits (you know the guy...his name has become synonymous with "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex") said he'd "die to stop same-sex marriage."  My first first reaction? Great, let's kill him. My second reaction? Asking myself how people can be so stupid that they refuse to see when they are fighting a losing battle.

People who waste time and energry opposing same sex marriage are a lot of things: close-minded, ignorant, selfish, self-rightous, intolerant, bigotted. They're also just stupid. That's what I've finally come to see as the plain truth. People who fight the inevitable are stupid. If you were to jump into a raging river, the kind of river where white water rafting is popular, and stand there, hoping against hope to stop the water from getting past you...if you were to do this, I'd tell you that you were stupid. If you were to place a penny on train tracks, in the hopes that it would stop the 5:15 dead, I'd tell you that you were stupid. If you were to hand out bible tracts, believing you could talk hormone-raging teens from wanting to have sex, I'd tell you that you were stupid. If you think you can stop same-sex couples from loving one another, building lives together, forming families and, yes, getting married? You are fucking stupid. Because the movement for equal rights isn't a trickle. It's a roaring rapid. It's an express train without breaks. It's a horny 16 year old boy who'll fuck a jagged hole in the wall, if only he can get close enough. Maybe you can cause a ripple in the flow of water, or get a train to slow down for a second, or force a couple of teenaged lovers to find a more clandestine place to secretly have sex, but you won't stop these things. You can't. And you really, truly are stupid if you think otherwise.

This is what it's like in America, today, when it comes to same-sex couples. While you (yeah, stupid, I'm talking to you) rant and rave about how same-sex marriage will destroy family values, gay couples all over America are getting together, setting up lives, and even getting married. In short, they're quietly proving just how stupid you are. And they're not doing it less than they did before you started acting like a dog with a bone about this issue. They're doing it more often, and more publicly. Even if they're not getting legally married, they're buying homes together, starting businesses together, raising children together.  The minute one state allowed same-sex marriages, the flood gates were opened. And you cannot stop a flood. (There's a joke there, about a dyke, but I'm not going to be the one to make it.) YOU CANNOT. And you're stupid to try.

Last week, my good friend, Thom, married a man named Adam in a quiet, dignified ceremony in New York. Thom and Adam have been together for 20 years. They own two homes together. They collect art. They travel. They support a dozen charities. They throw intimate dinner parties. I've thought of them as a married couple for years. For all intents and purposes, they have been. Now, it's even recognized by law. They win. You lose, stupid. It's a done deal. It's over. The river is picking up momentum, and you're about to be toppled over and drowned. You can go home and lick your wounds, now. Or you can die fighting a losing battle. Be my fucking guest.

On Same-Sex Marriage: An Open Letter to Rosa Parks

Court dismisses suit by lesbian who couldn’t see dying partner at Hospital

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress eventually called the "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement". On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.

In 1960 four black freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro strolled into the F. W. Woolworth store and quietly sat down at the "whites only" lunch counter. They were not served, but they stayed until closing time.

Dear Miss Parks:

Didn't anyone tell you that the seats in the back of the bus are identical to the ones in the front? That they're made of the same fiberglass and vinyl? That seats in the front have old pieces of chewing gum stuck underneath them, just like the seats in the back? That neither seat is particularly comfortable for your back after a long day's work?

Didn't anyone every tell you these things, Miss Parks? Didn't you know?

Someone must have mentioned it, but there you were, pushing your uppity self onto the bus and sitting right down in the front. In a seat that wasn't meant for you. In a seat that was meant for someone else. Someone who had a right to it. What could you have been thinking, Miss Parks?

And there's another thing, Miss Parks. While we're at it, I feel compelled to point out that the food served at the Woolworth's lunch counter was not all that, Miss Parks. Maybe, in fact, probably, there was some negro restaurant right there in Selma or Mobile or Montgomery that served better food than anything they ever even thought to serve at the Woolworth's counter. And I bet a person could get a better milkshake, too. Didn't anyone tell those young people that making a big stink over those seats at the counter was a waste of time? That there was perfectly good food to be had in the colored section of town? Why, then? Why sit down and demand to be served? What did they have to gain?

President Obama opposes same-sex marriage, but supports the idea of civil unions that provide same-sex couples with the same rights as marriage. Let's ignore the fact that civil unions do not, in fact, provide same-sex couples with the immigration protections and privileges that heterosexual couples enjoy, or that a little something called Social Security is a federal program which does not recognize civil unions. Let's not even get into the 1,100+ federal programs that pertain only to male/female couples who are legally married, and not to people in civil unions. Let's ignore the lie about civil unions being almost exactly like marriage in every way. Because, you know what? Even if that were true, "almost" is not good enough, anyhow.

Let's instead, think about another right. Maybe voting. How would it be if one group (I don't know, white men, maybe) had always been denied the right to vote ? And then, as a concession, the new president stated that he felt white men should have all the same basic rights as everyone else, except, techincally, for the right to vote. Let's pretend that, instead, the new president would like to set it up where white men could "opinionate" on election day. In other words, when all the rest of the world was voting, white men could stand on line to "opinionate." Their votes wouldn't really count, in terms of really swaying anything. And the rest of the world would still be the only ones allowed to actually vote. In all other ways, though - standing in line, getting into a booth, having confidentiality - in those ways, voting and "opinionating" would be exactly the same. And when white men had kids, if their kids were boys, they'd have to tell them that, one day, when they were old enough, they could, of course, "opinionate", but not vote. Because voting was for everyone else. For girls. And black people. And Hispanics. God, after all, wants it that way, they'd have to explain. And, really, "opinionating" is almost exactly like voting. Would that feel very nice? Would it be fair? Would that tiny difference in rights seem irrelevant and insignificant? Would it be fair to say that the little white male child who has just found out he can never vote still has all the same opportunities as every other child? That he can still dream and hope for the same things?

I don't think so.

The minute a person - child or adult - finds out that there are very real limits, due to discrimination, to what he or she can actually hope to achieve in life, things change.

I did not grow up dreaming about marriage. Lots of people do, though. And they should be allowed that dream. Even if they're queer. Liberal straight people, who don't want to find fault with the presidential candidate they fawned over in so many shows of political correctness, liberal straight people who are still basking in the self-congratulatory afterglow of the inauguration love to spew the neat, little lie that civil unions are exactly the same as marriage, and every bit as good. And then most of them run out and get married. Funny that!

And really, how dare anyone say it's not a big deal, or that civil unions are almost exactly the same as marriage, or that gays are making a big deal over something irrelevant. Especially a mixed race president - the product of a marriage that, not so long ago in American history, would have been illegal.

How dare anyone who enjoys a privilege take it for granted in such a cavalier way, when others hope and pray for that same, basic privilege to be theirs before they die. When thinking about why the right to marry is important to same sex couples in America, think about Miss Rosa Parks. Civil rights pioneer. Warrior. Stroppy woman.

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Later, recognized as the mother of the American civil rights movement, she noted,

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day.....the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Getting a seat on the bus was not what the greater civil rights movement was about in America. Getting a husband or wife isn't really what the gay rights movement is about. Miss Rosa Parks didn't care about that seat on the bus - that front seat that was almost exactly like the back seats. She saw the bus rules as a festering symptom of a greater systemic injustice.

Those seats in the front of the bus were not all that comfortable, and they were made of the same stuff as the seats on the back of the bus, but you sure as hell wouldn't tell that to Miss Rosa Parks. Nor should any of us have the audacity.

© 2009 Lana M. Nieves

Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves