Cheese Store of Silverlake

We left the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles in the afternoon, in the last hour of pink-sienna-magenta sky before twilight. I’d sampled amazing Italian olive oil at The Cheese Store of Silver Lake, taken a delightful turn through the ReForm School, and eaten the best gelato of my life (Market plum! Chocolate covered raisin! Salty chocolate!) at Pazzo Gelato.

We were sad to leave L.A., but I was even sadder that we were leaving for Fresno.

Fresno: n., The place that you struggled to leave physically many years ago, but still struggle to leave mentally. A place you don’t like to visit, because as soon as you’re back it seems like nothing ever got better at all.

You know what, though? I’m married in Fresno. And I have my family with me. So maybe there’s only one coffee shop (Thanks for the WiFi, guys!) downtown, only one or two gay bars (Glad to see you still bustling, Veni Vidi Vici.). Maybe it freezes at night and you can’t stand to be in the sun after 11 a.m. So what if the public transportation consists of your cousin’s tattered 10-speed and FART, the Fresno Area Rapid Transit?

Fresno has a PFLAG chapter, a Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in its 20th year, and a Gay Fresno website.

After a less-than-perfect morning with my mother, who is an active Mormon, Ruby reached out to the local PFLAG chapter. They were empathetic, and invited Mom to a meeting, even offering to meet with her beforehand to talk. But ultimately it would be up to her to contact them, and only then would she be able to access the literature she desperately needs to begin to understand us. The likelihood that she would do so seemed, well, slim. So the search continued.

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but we found a group of Mormons for Marriage.  As in our marriage.

I cried. At first, when Ruby said, “There must be Mormons out there that support their gay family members,” I didn’t even respond. I thought, Ya, like there must be a Protestant Pope. I’m sure he has a website, too. But lo and behold: “Mormons for Marriage supports marriage equality for all, and stands in respectful opposition to California Proposition 8.” There’s even The Feminist Mormon Housewives, and the Family Fellowship–a volunteer service organization, “a diverse collection of Mormon families engaged in the cause of strengthening families with homosexual members.”

Ruby wrote an e-mail to Mormons for Marriage, and a woman named Laura immediately wrote back. She attached four documents written by Mormons who are LGBT or support LGBT people. She copied another woman who she thought may know some people in Fresno. They even mentioned a book: No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones.

Maybe Mom won’t read the book when we buy it for her. Maybe she will and even then still say things like, “I’m sad in my heart [about the fact that your aunts outed you to your grandmother], but your grandma and your aunts love you, no matter what choices you make.” Maybe my wife will still cry in the living room once Mom has left for work, feeling like she was that ill-advised “choice.”

But today, in sunny, oppressive Fresno where I once learned internalized homophobia, I found just a little hope for our family. Our whole family.

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From the 'No on 1' Campaign Headquarters

You know, I wasn’t always a big gay. For more than half of my life so far, I did not self-identify as queer.

In fact, the number of years I’ve had to think about marriage are about three-to-one the number of years I’ve had to think about queerness. I’ve encountered marriage as a child, as a teen, as a straight-by-default, as a closeted queer, as an out queer, as a married queer, as a Lutheran, as a Mormon, and as a person with enough Comparative Religion credits to need several paragraphs to express their spiritual perspective.

So I was very surprised to learn something about marriage while volunteering for the “No on 1″ campaign in Maine. I was calling a list of people who had expressed interest in supporting the campaign previously. I was calling to ask them to do whatever they could to get the vote out on the big day.

I placed a call to a number of an 84-year old gentleman we’ll call “John.” A younger woman answered the phone, and she told me John wasn’t available. I said, “Well, maybe I can speak with you? <smile> My name is Ami and I’m calling from the “No on 1″ campaign.”

And then the most appalling thing happened.

She said: “You don’t need to speak to me. We’re Yes on 1.” Then she hung up.

I know, I know: for a seasoned cold caller, that would be a very gentle let-down. But after a lifetime of having it insinuated, but not said to my face, it was a real shock to hear someone say: “I don’t believe you should be able to marry anyone. Ever. Because of ‘how you are.’”

Usually, I’m live-and-let-live to a fault. But this call changed my perspective for good. Having had several run-ins with religion in my childhood, I still thought of marriage in a religious framework. I hadn’t really conceived of it as a right. I hadn’t really realized that people thought they could take it away from me!

This woman’s fear and righteousness are the basis of the fight against same-sex marriage, and what they fail to see is: Marriage, although I believe it to be a spiritual endeavor, is not a religious institution. It is a civil institution. Their side struggles to ‘defend marriage,’ when really that’s like defending business licenses, or any other civil procedure. Defend land use permits! Defend parking tickets!

What do they mean when they say “Defend marriage”, then? They want to confuse the meaning of the word marriage with as much (muddily-worded and religious-laced) rhetoric as possible.  Take for instance (from the Yes on 1 website):

If Question 1 fails and LD 1020 is allowed to take effect, marriage will be redefined to be about any two consenting adults without regard to gender, the focus being only about what the adults want for themselves, and not what is best for society as a whole. [Because personal fulfillment damages society? Down with the pursuit of happiness!] The roles of husbands and wives would become irrelevant. [I know a lot of straight people that would love to define their own roles, so this is just super. In fact, the happiest, longest term marriages I can think of are based on non-gender specific, personally-fulfilling, self-identified roles. Huh.] The reliance on marriage as an important fabric of society will no longer matter, [I know there's not a language arts pre-req for writing things on the internet, but this metaphor is so ludicrous that I'm straining to get a point at all. If anyone can locate a subject or a verb in all that circular reasoning, please email me a diagram.] and the marriage laws will not consider what is best for children. [Flat out not true...says WebMD, the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychiatric Association--the list grows with the years.]

To all you Yes on 1 folks in Maine, to all you Reject R-71 folks back home in Washington, to the DOMA supporters and to anyone out there that thinks same-sex marriage is ruining something or taking something away from them: I’m fighting for marriage because marriage isn’t yours to give. 

Marriage isn’t just for straight white male landowners. (Although wouldn’t that be just a bit gay!?) Marriage isn’t just for the people in power, or the people who think they know what’s “right” for everyone else. Marriage is a civil right. It’s my civil right.

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We’ve been through New Jersey, a vegetable oil spill (in the trailer kitchen after bumpy road), milky spills, some puppy spills–but now we’re all tucked in. And Ruby and I are married.

It’s hard to write about what marriage is. Regardless of a legal debate or a political battle.

Marriage is a many-colored flag. Marriage is certainly not a settled thing. And yet, its the language of settledness. It has a specific emotional gravity.

Yesterday, I walked into a travel plaza and saw an ice cream booth. I thought, If I get that and don’t get one for Ruby, she’ll be mad. But I could get her some and she’d be surprised and happy.

You won’t get the right flavor.

I know, I know. It’s chocolate yes, but only milk chocolate. No soft chunks, those are gross. Not usually fruity, though. Fruity is anti-climactic. Toffee and caramel are good, but only in thin ribbons. Mint chocolate chip. No, chocolate rule. Rocky Road. Marshmallow rule? Peach. No. Vanilla. No. Birthday Cake? Interesting dilemma, texture rule? Reeses mash? Peanut Butter trumps. Yes. Reeses mash. And I love that flavor.

I’m not sure there’s a rhetorical path here, but that’s marriage. That’s it, folks! And, it’s pretty awesome.

In fact, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. I gave myself to someone, and I really dig her. She knows all the stuff I don’t. And she’s so cute. I love getting to hang out with her, and be married with her–it’s like Magnum PI married Angelina Jolie, and they had like a quiet, happy marriage in Portland, OR for 50 years.

We’re the best.

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RV Park Humor

So far we’ve only had pleasant encounters at RV parks. I’ll admit we were a bit worried when we started out–mainly because we tend to visit the gayer parts of the more liberal cities. Guys decked out in camo vests, Navy enthusiast hats, and ‘going into the marsh’ boots usually don’t hang out there.

But they do hang out in RV park offices, especially when it’s so freakin’ cold outside. So freakin’ cold that when we pulled in at 10 p.m. to a sign reading, “Hoses will be pulled and water shut off at 8 p.m.,” I screamed a little on the inside. You can’t shut off my water! People don’t live without water! Seriously.

The next morning I crunched across frozen grass into the office, and found myself smack in the middle of two camo clad guys. Honestly, I was glad when I wasn’t the only one willing to complain about the weather. But then:

Camo Guy 1: Sure is cold.
Camo Guy 2: Sure is.
Guy 1: This global warming <eye roll> sure has got me freezing my balls off.
Guy 2: Harharhar
Guy 1: Tell you what really needs to happen…
Guy 2: <waits for it>
Guy 1: I needs to shoot me some… <vigorous head bobbing> … ass. [read: dumb city-type liberal] That’d fix global warming right up.
Me: [Oh no, they shoot me out here. Oh no. Oh no!]
Guy 1: <exits, by the grace of god.>
Guy 2: That guy. One of those types that thinks he knows everything about everything, but don’t know nothin’ ’bout ‘nothin.
Me: [Whew. Close call.]
Guy 2: So is it just you out in spot 5? Or you and your husband?
Me: [Uh oh.] Well, actually, my wife.
Guy 2: <thinks for a minute> Well, OK then.

For all its camo and Navy hats, Wyoming got a whole lot safer in that one sentence.

Later, as we were pulling out, ten minutes after check-out, he stopped us. He came over with a handful of Milk Bones. “End of the season,” he said. “Don’t want these to go to waste.”

Thanks, Guy 2–humanity’s pretty good after all. And Wyoming ain’t too bad, neither.

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