Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life - Posts Tagged "scotus"

I read about a year ago that the marriage equality movement had reached critical mass which meant it was essentially unstoppable; it could be resisted, it could be delayed but change was gonna come. And come it did, last week when SCOTUS, in a 5-4 decision, made marriage equality the law of the land.

Like most successfully married couples, Stanley and I know each other better than anyone else knows us: he knows I miss seeing my father, that I hate the idea of being buried, knows I wish to be cremated; I know Stanley is loving, and generous and so is an organ donor.

To those wishing to deny me my fundamental rights based on their “religious beliefs,” I have this to say: I do not want to get married in your church before your God for I believe in neither. I don’t believe in your religion, a sanctified lean-to built on a foundation of fables, hearsay and superstition. And I don’t believe that a God, who would allow His son to be nailed to a cross, who would allow generations of innocents to be enslaved and slaughtered, who would allow children to die and animals to be abused, gives a damn what I choose to do or not do with my dick.

Our commitment ceremony 18 years ago was about love, and a promise made to each other. Our marriage last year was about protection. It guaranteed that as I lay dying no one could deny Stanley the right to sit at my bedside and hold my hand. It guaranteed that should one of us die before the other, no member of either of our families could remove the remaining widower from the house we’d sacrificed to buy, the home we’d made together; no one could take the books off the shelves on which I’d placed them, or remove the art we’d hung together. I always maintained that not being able to get married had not kept us apart and being married wouldn’t keep us together but it could protect us from others who would try to separate us, who would deny what we had and what we meant to each other.

I was taken aback at the hostility with which some people greeted the Supreme Court decision in favor of marriage equality. My own Twitter stream was populated with comments from people who seemed to despise me for…being different, for being me, for claiming my right to equal treatment. I finally silenced them for, just as my marriage has no effect on their own marriages, their small-minded meanness has no effect on mine thanks to SCOTUS.

But even as I was filled with dismay for the enmity of total strangers, I was filled me with joy and hope at the idea that our nephew, Max, born June 12, 2015, will never know a time when his uncles were not married, may, indeed, never be able to conceive of a time when they could not have been married. (Note: That is Max we are holding in the photo.)

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