Love, Wedding Bells, and Same-Sex Legalities

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“A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.”
― Barack Obama

 Last Friday, June 20th,  my daughter Lisa, and Deena her partner of seventeen years, were legally married in a civil ceremony in Washington, DC.  The weather forecast just days before was for a rainy, humid weekend.  But as we drove north from our home in Virginia on Friday morning, the clouds cleared and we were greeted with deep blue skies and wedding perfection all day long.

Mary Gordon singing for the brides.

Bill and I were there along with grandchildren, Zoe and Noah, Lisa and Deena’s kids.  One of Lisa’s oldest and dearest friends, Mary Gordon Hall and her partner Nancy, were there as well.  Before vows were exchanged in the small courtyard of the hotel we were staying in, Mary Gordon, serenaded the wedding couple with a heart wrenching song. DC resident and wedding planner, Travis Crytzer, wrote the vows, got all of the legal paper work done ahead of time and  joined them in marriage at approximately 3:30 PM.  It was a beautiful day, a beautiful ceremony, and I cried happy-tears as Lisa and Deena said their “I dos.”

It was so wonderfully appropriate, as just the day before, Bill and I celebrated our forty-nineth year of marriage.  If we count the two years we spent as a couple before we went to church and made it legal, it would make it fifty-one years.

Times have changed.  Back in the sixties there were no same-sex marriages performed except perhaps for very small and private commitment ceremonies between gays and lesbians. Homosexuals were called fairies and were treated with hatred and disrespect by the general public.  If you had a gay or lesbian relative, you most likely whispered about them so that your friends and neighbors wouldn’t know you had a “weirdo” in your family.

Today there are seventeen states with legalized gay marriage laws. More will be joining the fold in the coming years.  It’s a slow process, but it will happen.  These days, people are waking up to the fact that though the person standing next to them may be gay, they deserve the same rights as everone else.  The old, hateful  attitudes are the same prejudices what kept women and people of color from the right to vote for far too long. All of those struggles took years before they were finally settled. Though racists and homophobes are  still around,  life is easier as a result of the pain and suffering of those who helped bring change to our world.

The tatooed wedding rings they hid for several weeks.

Bill and I are the proud parents of our lesbian daughter and daughter-in-law.  Let’s all pray that we’ll see same-sex marriage legalized throughout our entire country.  What a happy-tear day that will be.

Zoe, Lisa, Deena, and Noah