My New Year's Resolution? More tolerance. About everything. I only see happiness coming of accepting the fact that the vast number of different lifestyles out there don't threaten my way of life, they enrich it. Humans are so very different from one another. It's what makes us so wonderful. If there were no differences between us, life would be pretty boring.
Moments of clarity are wonderful things, usually (in my opinion) brought about by empathy. Nothing brings something home faster than experiencing it yourself. For instance, a legislator who opposes increased funding for a certain medical condition until a beloved member of his or her family is affected, and they then become a huge advocate for researching the disease. That's not hypocrisy, it's personal growth. We're humans. We grow, we're supposed to learn and we've all had moments like this, whether it was about something small, such as not understanding why someone listens to a type of music you dislike until you hear a song from that genre that you really enjoy, or something momentous, such as a prejudice against an ethnic group until you find friendship or love from a member of that group. I can only think the One Million Moms is going to turn into Nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine moms (good thing they don't really have that many members - that's a mouthful) the day one member's child comes home and announces that they're gay. Statistically speaking, it's going to happen.
This is about my moment of clarity regarding gay marriage. Now, for the most part, I was raised without prejudice. My parents didn't care if someone was black, white, gay, straight, poor, rich ... whatever. So when my mother told us that a close family member had announced that he was gay, we shrugged and said, "Okay."
If I am perfectly honest, I don't think I understood what that really meant when I was younger. Once my relative came out, I did start to worry about things that affect the gay community, most especially prejudice, but really didn't give it much thought beyond that. He is a wonderful person, as is his partner, and nobody in the family made any judgments.
A few years later, my first husband passed away. It is very difficult to describe the despair that overtakes you in that situation. My entire life had collapsed. My reason to get out of bed in the morning seemed to have evaporated. Life consisted of going to work and spending my evenings eating a tiny meal while perched at the edge of my coffee table. I didn't read. I didn't watch television. I stopped playing the piano. Nothing seemed to mean anything anymore.
At the time, I was working as a medical assistant and about two months after my husband's passing, I went to work and called in the first patient of the day. It was a woman named Mary who usually came in with her partner, Anne (not their real names). Anne and Mary were an extraordinary couple. They treated each other with more respect than almost any other couple we saw in the office. We knew them by name and they knew ours. We talked about the pets they doted on, the home improvement projects they were working on, and the vacations they took.
On this day, Mary followed me into the exam room, and I noticed that she was alone. "Oh, where's Anne?" I asked. Mary burst into tears, telling me that Anne had passed away suddenly a month earlier. I told Mary that my husband had also passed away. We immediately hugged, sobbing on each other's shoulders. We were two women who had each loved deeply and were now desperately trying to trudge up the downward slope that life had become. Things that had seemed easy before now required an enormous effort. The fact that her partner had been a woman while mine was a man made absolutely no difference. We were simply two people who had loved and lost. My moment of clarity had come, though I wouldn't recognize it for that until years later.
That time came when the hoopla arose surrounding gay marriage. All I could think about was Anne and Mary, two people who were more married to my thinking than most heterosexual couples. The respect with which they treated one another should have been an example for all couples. What Anne had offered Mary from their relationship was comfort, strength, dignity, and most of all, compassion. If that's not the definition of what should exist in a marriage, I don't know what is. After truly giving of themselves to one another, why shouldn't they be granted the protection that marriage offers? As human beings, they only wanted what everyone else does: to protect those they love - with things such as insurance and inheritance rights.
I am very proud that my state has legalized same-sex marriage. Personally, I think that marriage also offers stability in relationships. Isn't that a good thing? Shouldn't society want that for all of its members? It doesn't (nor should it) have any effect on me whether the married couple next door is gay or straight. Quite frankly, it's none of my business.
As a society, we seem to have gone astray. Instead of recognizing the good that comes from two people being in love, too many are concerned only with defining what is acceptable behavior for others. What is the true purpose of marriage? If it is only to procreate, than does that invalidate the marriage rights of those couples who marry but don't have children, whether by choice, inability or tragically through loss? And what of couples who marry after their child-bearing years have passed? To me is seems that trying to define marriage as anything other than a binding relationship between two people for their mutual benefit will lead to all sorts of murky water. As for gay couples adopting children - why not? Would we prefer children to remain in the foster care system than be adopted by a gay couple? As any person who grew up experiencing any kind of abuse will tell you, one or two same-sex loving parents beats an abusive straight couple any day. Same-sex couples are just as capable of providing a loving, secure environment for children as heterosexual couples.
I know not everyone will agree with me. That's okay because I am tolerant of your right to disagree. Just remember that I'm not asking everyone to be in a gay marriage, just to give every couple the opportunity to marry and provide for their significant other.
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