LUMBERYARD LOGS: Popping the marriage question

A couple of weeks ago, my managing editor asked me, “Are you getting married?”

It’s a simple question, but it threw me.

I gulped and said, “I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it.”

It was a question that no one would have — or could have — asked me up until last month.

But it’s a question that is getting asked a lot now.

For gays and lesbians in long-term relationships, such as mine of 28 years, the idea of marriage — real marriage — has been there in the background but never seemed real.

In fact, it wasn’t real, until last month’s state Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriages. In just a few weeks, it has become very real.

It’s become “the question” to pop; not just to one’s significant other, but suddenly, it’s something people want to know — and feel they have a right to know.

Blame the Supreme Court of California for pulling the veil off of same-sex relationships.

We are no longer able to slide by under the radar. Like serious heterosexual couples, whose families want to know “when” they are getting married, we are now being expected to cross that threshold — or explain why not.

It’s wonderful and powerful, and a bit intimidating, especially if you are used to life in the “open closet” that has been the norm for gays and lesbians over the past 20 years.

Over the last two decades, huge strides have been made in protecting us from discrimination. Up until 1993, a California employer could legally fire someone for being homosexual. Discrimination in housing was also legal.

That meant gays and lesbians were taking their livelihoods and possibly their lives into their hands by being “out.” And staying in the closet presented numerous problems, such as how to explain that long-term roommate to your boss — who thinks she is doing you a big favor by introducing you to the perfect “match.”

My managing editor, bless him, blogged last month about an incident during junior high school in the mid-1970s when a rather unpopular kid whose name rhymed with “gay” ran for election as student body president with the slogan, “Don’t be gay, vote for Ray” (or whatever the name was). Of course, nobody wanted to be “gay,” so he won handily.

That wouldn’t happen in a California public school today.

It’s been a tough road, and I’m proud to be part of the generation that hacked through the wilderness to get where we are today.

And just where are we?

We are, as gay activist and former Laguna Beach mayor Bob Gentry says, “On the precipice of full civil rights.”

Gentry and others believe that, with California opening the floodgates, full federal marriage rights will soon follow. And that will blow the doors off “the closet” forever.

Others are taking a more cautious approach.

But back to the “marriage question.”

Marriage: It’s the ultimate commitment, usually taken at the beginning of a relationship, and for many gay and lesbian couples who have been together for years, it may seem unnecessary.

One lesbian friend I spoke to — popping “the question” — was really not interested, despite her having a committed relationship with a partner she adores.

“Why get married? I never liked the idea of marriage in the first place,” she says.

I confess to having had the same reaction. Marriage? Not for me.

Up until now, marriage has been for someone else. Both of my sisters; my partner’s sister. My father — three times!

As mature — OK, older — gays and lesbians, we have been locked out of that “city on the hill” for so long that we have turned our backs on it. Now the door is open, at least until Nov. 4, when voters will have the chance to lock the door again by voting for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in the state.

But some believe the ban may not apply to marriages conducted legally, and there will be thousands of them, you can be sure. Others believe that the more same-sex marriages are performed, the less likely voters will be to close the barn door after the fact.

Until then, look for a steady flow of gay and lesbian couples filling out marriage license applications in city halls and county offices throughout the state.

As for my partner and I — we aren’t rushing to the altar, but we are setting a date.

CINDY FRAZIER is city editor of the Coastline Pilot. She can be contacted at (949) 494-2087 or [email protected].