The Widening Gyre

I read this at my union ceremony on September 7th:

We have not yet decided whether we will be legally married or refer to this union as a marriage, and we’d like to say a little bit about why.  The most pressing issue for us in this place and time in history is that one of the things that marriage has become is a set of legal and social privileges bestowed on people whose relationships conform to a particular image of what love can and should be.  The legal privileges are clear and distinct (as much as anything legal ever is). The social privileges are more subtle.  If I can refer to L as my wife rather than as my partner, that places me in a familiar category.  It smoothes my relations with people.  That subtle distinction could make the difference between getting a job (or house, or business deal) and losing it to someone else who makes a better—safer—impression; the difference between  acceptance, rejection, or that dubious concession, tolerance.  As two able-bodied, cis-gendered, white Americans in a heterosexual relationship, we are already afforded this privilege, this benefit of the doubt, in most cases anyway.  And as a heterosexual couple we have the privilege of the choice whether to marry or not.

But marriage is more than a set of legal and social privileges.  Marriage is older than history; it has been and continues to be many things.  It has certainly been a tool for the oppression of women—a contractual agreement in which men dispose of the lives, loves and bodies of women without acknowledgement of those women’s agency.  But it has also been a celebration of love and a sacrament of union.  A sacred joining of separate lives in the creation of something greater.  An acknowledgment and affirmation of the mystery of the way families converge and grow.  Marriage is not one thing.  It is not merely an established institution that we may choose either to submit to or to reject.  Like all human ideas and practices, it is a work of art to which we are invited to contribute.  Whether we ultimately decide to use the word marriage or not, this ceremony  both owes a debt to and is our contribution to this tradition.

It would be naïve to think that simply by refusing to use the word marriage or take advantage of its legal manifestation we could absolve ourselves of complicity in a society that uses marriage as one of many ways to separate people into categories and value some of these categories over others.  So as we stand here ready to affirm our love before and with our community, we wish to acknowledge all those around the world who are unable to enjoy this same affirmation, and we promise that we will always defend the right of everyone to love whom we will, how we will, and as much as we will.