Engagement and Rights of Citizenship

Gay Marriage is a human rite
Gay Marriage is a human right
Gay Marriage is an American right
Love and Family Values
Loving Partners Rights
Resonance With the Cosmic Ecosystem

This is a little poem, or is it a T-shirt epigram, which occurred to me this evening as Chelsea and I hashed out Thanksgiving, Christmas, and our respective approaches to our respective families. Along the way I agreed to get married with Chelsea. We have been together 17 years in February, and we feel that our relationship deserves the same social and civil respect and status as all other marriages. We have been talking all day about how my children do not take our relationship as seriously as marriages which are currently sanctioned by the state.

The passage of Proposition 8 in California has raised the energy of the queer community and allies right across the country. NYC City Council President Christine Quinn wrote in a message to the GLBT community that the demonstration last Sunday in front of City Hall amazed her. She said the crowd (estimated by the police at 20,000, which means it was closer to 50,000) stretched in all directions from City Hall as far as she could see. The vote on proposition 8 (which outlawed “gay” marriage in California) has been a wake-up call to people that full-fledged American citizens are being deprived of their civil rights by a vote taken in the largest and most progressive state in the union. We are not going to stand for it anymore.

I was not able to attend the rally. One of the organizers was Rev. Pat Bumgardner of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, of which I am a fallen away member. My old friend Sylvia Rivera is the patron saint of the MCC-NY. Her ashes are placed on the altar each Sunday, and her memory burns brightly in the congregation’s commitment to social justice. I am sure Sylvia would have been there in the flesh as she was in spirit.

I am not anxious to remarry, after two failed attempts over a span of 25 years. Nevertheless, it is the right thing to do. I have written elsewhere that Chelsea and I are living one of the great love stories of the ages. Certainly it begs to be commemorated in a marriage sanctioned by the state and recognized by all of the myriad religious and spiritual believers of all the myriad beliefs out there in the universe.