obergefell v. hodges, ten years on

Ten years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that marriage between persons of the same sex was a basic right. Ten years on, it’s by no means clear that our current Supreme Court will stand by that ruling. A Greek man once told my class, “People in this country say the Constitution will protect you. In reality, you have to protect the Constitution.” We learn that, bit by bit.

I’m still working on a bunch of projects and buried in paying work, but here’s what I posted to facebook ten years ago. It seems an anniversary worth noting.

Not, by any means, an uncomplicated day. A beautiful day. But a complicated day. The very life of life, you might say, in extreme measure. After dinner I met up with Yeshwant at Dunkin Donuts and we talked about the things that might be disappearing right in front of us. And he had written this:

“…asking the State/ the majority to legalize marriage ends up demeaning unmarried or other relationships as being less than or inferior to married ones. It's almost as though we bought into the straight people's system (and that's why they're so overjoyed about this decision as well).”

And that seems true. I talked about “A Pattern Language,” which celebrates subcultures and says they only can thrive because of the boundaries between them, and although it means physical boundaries, its true of social boundaries, too, and maybe one of those got rubbed away today.

And elsewhere in my facebook feed is Louie Clay, who wrote “Thriving as an Outsider, Even as an Outcast, In Small Town America” which I read a long time ago (and which you should find and read) and it made me a little braver, and who faced down far too many foes and fought far too hard for far too long in inhospitable places for me to suggest in his presence that this day might be anything other than unalloyed good. Louie had written this:

“We who are lgbtq are much too small a portion of the population to bring about on our own a change as monumental as that which the Supremes codified today.

“I celebrate the persistent, loving advocacy of so many heterosexual persons who took risks on our behalf. I rejoice for all that have stood with us in fiery furnaces. I rejoice that together we have hugged, revised sentences, listened to crickets, slept under mosquito nets..... in a few of the uttermost parts of the earth sharing good, if often unwelcome, news like today’s.”

And that seems true, too.

So I went to the Stonewall, and I posted those pictures earlier, and then I peeled off and followed the march for the trans day of action, and joined in, playing my role as the least queer person in the line. “Do you know what this march is for?” my new acquaintance Julia asked me when I asked if I could fall in with them. And then met up with Can Dice and the Gabriela folks, and took pictures and had dinner.

But it felt right, spending a few minutes celebrating and a few minutes marching and a few minutes figuring out what to make of it all. Maybe we got a little closer to understanding it all today.

The march for the trans day of action was full of chants, chants of enthusiastic and joyful anger. I told Julia it was more like the gay pride march than the gay pride march. She agreed.