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| Me, at about 23, when I was with my first love. The skirt is thrift. No, I hadn't dyed my hair. It looks like that in the sun. |
I have never been married but I have once been engaged – to a woman.
Long before gay marriage was legal in Canada, I was
engaged to a woman. She and I were deeply in love. We shared a home, had two
dogs and a cat, even had a foster daughter for a while. We worked on our
degrees together, scraped for money together, and shared dreams for our future
together.
In the end, we didn’t get married. If I had to
explain why, I’d say that the short answer is that we were too young. But our
engagement was serious enough that I bought bridal magazines and looked
seriously at wedding dresses. (I believe I favoured a gown with a sweetheart
neckline and puffed sleeves. Thank God I didn’t get one, eh?) She was my first
love.
The current American Supreme Court deliberations
about marriage equality are, therefore, very personal to me. I am,
unequivocally in support of marriage equality, as a human being who has always
cared deeply about human rights, and as a bisexual woman who could just as
easily have ended up with a woman as with a man.
I have always known that I was attracted to women.
In fact, my attraction to men has been the less certain one over the years,
though Beau is in no danger of losing me to a woman. The idea that two women (or
two men) could fall in love always made sense to me and I knew that this was a
possibility for me long before I’d ever heard the word “lesbian,” let alone
words like “queer” or “bisexual.” Soon, I met adults who were indeed in love
with people of their own sex, confirming my belief that it was natural.
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| Me, at eight. Shirt, invariably thrift. Yes, I've always loved cats. Yes, I really was a hippie kid. |
I grew up in a very liberal, hippie-ish environment
and my first conscious memory of knowing a gay couple is from 1979, when I was
eight years old. That summer, there was a Quaker summer camp in a nearby town known
for its huge population of hippies who had moved there as draft dodgers during
the Vietnam War. Quakers have always been known for their liberal views and
their strong belief in social justice and the equality of all human beings. It
makes sense, then, that an openly gay couple not only attended the camp that
summer, but played a major role in its activities and organization.
What did I think of them? One of the men in the
couple was a flamboyant and theatrical man who taught us really fun cooperative
games. I thought he was one of the funniest, most entertaining people I’d ever
met. Therefore, I thought gay couples were just fine. I was eight. This is the
kind of criteria eight year olds have for making such decisions. Maybe we
should all take a cue from eight year olds.
Soon after that, a couple I’d known for a long time
divorced and the woman entered a lesbian relationship. Last I heard, they were
still together.
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| My first real crush. I took this photo in the school washroom when I was fourteen and she was fifteen. |
Gay people and gay couples were soon peppered
throughout my world (and probably had been all along when I’d been too young to
know it). They might have been slightly exotic to me but I certainly saw no
reason why they should not be together. That made no sense.
As I entered puberty, I had crushes on both male and
female celebrities: Matt Dylan and Kristy McNichol, Blair Warner on The Facts
of Life (no, not Jo, unlike every other queer woman I know), that guy who
played Danny on Fame. As I got a little bit older, I had crushes on some of the
women whom I knew were lesbians.
I went to a small, alternative high school, peopled
with hippies’ children, punk kids,
gifted kid, and other kids who felt like misfits in regular schools… including
queer kids. This was the first time I met people my own age who were “out.”
Being gay or bi was just normal (though having the courage to be open about it,
to oneself and others, was exceptional and laudable).
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| My first boyfriend at about the age he was when we dated. Yes, boyfriend. He was and is male. |
So was gender non-conformism. I had two major
crushes in high school, one on a girl and one on a boy. The boy looked a lot
like a girl. In fact, I had fallen for him before I’d figured out whether he
was a boy or a girl. His androgyny was fascinating to me. He was my first
boyfriend and is a friend to this day (as is the first girl I liked). His
mother and I are in regular contact.
I finally officially came out of the closet one year
after graduating from high school, when I was eighteen. (As a very feminine
woman, I did have struggles fitting in in the lesbian community but that’s a
story for another post.)
As someone who has always been very political, it
was only natural for me to become a gay rights activist. I did it the way I
knew how: with my writing. I wrote for several gay newspapers and magazines
while I put myself through school, studying Communications, Creative Writing,
English, and Gender Studies.
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| Me, around my nineteenth birthday. This was my brief and half-hearted attempt to "look like a lesbian." Note the thrifted pants and belt. My hair was already growing long again and I'm wearing some kind of rose-bud earrings. |
I was also very “out” as a lesbian (not feeling
bisexual until my mid-twenties). To me, being out was and is a very important
political gesture. I am a femme so can pass as straight but refuse to do so. (I
came out to Beau on our very first date. If he was homophobic, there would be
no second date so it’s something I needed to know right away.) It’s important
for people to realize that they do know queer people; it’s harder for them to
hate us then.
I went to all the rallies, and the marches, and the
social events. I wore first the pink triangle and then, when that fell out of
vogue, the rainbow colours. I had a t-shirt that loudly proclaimed, “Everyone
thinks I’m straight.” I like to think that I was on the forefront of an
important civil rights movement (though I know it was the generation before me
that fought the even harder battles on this front). I like to think I paved the
way for the queer kids of today.
Yet gay marriage was barely on my radar. First of
all, I just never believed that I would live to see the day when gay marriage
was legal. It was like fighting for the moon. We’d never get it so we should
fight instead for things we might actually be able to attain: hospital
visitation rights (remember that AIDS was still a death sentence), workplace
recognition of partnerships, tenancy rights, visibility.
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| One of the many marches I attended. This was the Dyke March and you can see that we're not there for the fun of it, not in this weather. I really believed these marches and rallies mattered and made a difference. Did they? |
But I think I also didn’t think much about gay
marriage because marriage itself had never meant much to me. In my liberal
environment, I felt like real commitment was in one’s heart and getting a legal
document to validate that commitment was hopelessly old-fashioned and
“straight,” not heterosexually straight, but “square,” mainstream, dull.
And, of course, my parents’ hippie generation
doesn’t have a very good record where marriage is concerned. By the time I was
twenty, my mother had been married three times, my father had been married once
but was on a lifelong failed search for his true love (a search in which he is
still engaged in his 70s), my first step-father had been married and divorced
four times, and my second step-father had been married twice. How on earth
could I take legal marriage seriously?
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| I'm about 21 here (on the right) with some pals after a Gay Pride Parade. |
This skepticism about legal marriage was only
bolstered by the fact that I could not legally marry a woman. I didn’t even
have to ask myself if I would ever choose to get that government sanctioned
piece of paper because I couldn’t get
it.
When I realized that I was also attracted to men, I
knew that I would never marry a man
if I could not legally marry a woman. That, to me, would be like being of mixed
race during the times of segregation and choosing to sit at the front of the
bus because I could pass for white. It was morally repugnant to me.
So, again, I didn’t really have to think about my
own personal feelings about marriage. I couldn’t do it and that was that.
Then, like some kind of miracle or dream, gay
marriage became legal in Canada. We had marriage equality!
Suddenly, marriage was a real option for me. For the
first time, I had to ask myself if I would ever want to get that little piece
of paper that says the government recognized my love for another person. I
doubted I would. A deep and firm lifetime commitment in my heart? Yes. A
wedding? Yes. A wedding before the eyes of God and my community? Yes. A
beautiful gown? Well, obviously.
But that little legal document? I doubted it.
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| Me and Beau, a few months after we met. I hope and even plan to spend my life with Beau but will we ever marry? That's a personal choice that everyone should have the right to make! (Note that the blanket is a dead ringer for the fabric of my shirt when I was eight.) |
I decided that, if I were ever lucky enough to find
love again, and that little legal document was necessary for my lover to feel
truly committed, then, yes, I’d get married. Otherwise, no, I wouldn’t.
It just didn’t mean anything to me. I had trouble
understanding why it meant so much to others. But I have a thousand times more trouble understanding why preventing marriage equality means so
much to some heterosexual people. Why on earth do they care so much? What
possible harm can gay marriage cause anyone?
And it is because marriage does mean so much to others, including those who oppose marriage
equality, that I am absolutely, 100% in favour of gay marriage. I might never
choose to get legally married but I will fight for my right to make that choice
for myself. Whether or not one gets
married should always be a personal choice, not some favour denied or
granted by the government or moral conservatives.
And so, this is my long-winded, personal story of why I support marriage equality and am closely
watching the Supreme Court deliberations in the States. Because marriage should
always be a personal story, not a political one, and I am thrilled that my
country has come to the same conclusion. I hope the United States follow.
(Update: Beau and I did get married, on October 11th, last year.)
