First published on May 19, 2004, in the Chicago Free Press.
With all the legal impediments finally swept away, Massachusetts gay and lesbian couples are now for the first time anywhere in America being incontestably, legally wed.
And not just legally wed, but welcomed with religious marriage ceremonies by the venerable and influential Unitarian church, whose ministers almost to a man - and woman - have made themselves available to same-sex couples wishing a blessing in the religious tradition.
Politics is always with us if only because our uncomprehending opponents try to make our lives a political issue and there are always people who wish to use governments to control, to exclude and to gain preference for themselves. But let us, if only briefly, put politics out of our minds to savor these first few days of legal gay marriage, the consummation of a painful, protracted struggle for a simple acknowledgment of the dignity and virtue of our relationships.
For the rest, the sequelae will just have to play themselves out.
There is no doubt that this is an enormous defeat for religious conservatives, Catholic and evangelical both, who fought this outcome at every step with vast economic resources, religious pressure, especially from the Catholic church, and a seemingly endless series of increasingly bizarre legal arguments ending only with a cold stare from the U.S. Supreme Court itself.
This is also a serious setback for Massachusetts' Mormon governor Mitt Romney, who is reported to have higher aspirations and viewed the gay marriage issue as way to gain national prominence and conservative credentials. But he now has that most unenviable of political reputations - loser.
Further, at the last minute Romney decided to block most out-of-state gay couples from marrying by reviving enforcement of a widely ignored 1913 law designed to prohibit out-of-state interracial couples from marrying in Massachusetts if they could not marry at home. No action could have better illustrated a parallel between the black and gay movements and cemented the image of Romney as a George Wallace of the north.
At the national level, evangelical leaders are deeply discouraged. Consider this doomsday scenario from Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family:
"Barring a miracle, the family as it has been known for more than five millennia will crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself. ... For more than 40 years, the homosexual activist movement has sought to implement a master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family. The ... goals include universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting of special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia, ... and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies."
At a soberer level of analysis, The New York Times reported that evangelical leaders are perplexed at the lack of horrified response from "people in the pews." Here is the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition: "I don't see any traction. The calls aren't coming in and I am not sure why."
But the obvious fact evangelical leaders are trying to ignore is that while, no doubt, a majority of Americans oppose same-sex marriage, they don't oppose it all that strongly. It is not exactly biblical, it is an unknown and it "feels" funny. But at some level they realize that contrary to conservative propaganda gay marriage will not harm them or their children personally.
So now evangelical leaders - if they can be called leaders when so few are following - are reduced to hoping against hope that the sight of gay couples marrying in Massachusetts will induce a phobic reaction in their followers. As the puritanical Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, put it, "We need to do a better job of educating our base, although I don't think we can do better than Massachusetts is going to do for us."
But this is just whistling past the graveyard. Over the last decade, evangelical leaders have been relentlessly "educating our base" about the threat of gay marriage - with only modest results, apparently. And if "the people in the pews" were going to be upset by pictures of gay couples marrying, they would have long since been upset - by newspaper and television coverage of happy brides with brides and grooms with grooms in San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. It didn't happen then and it won't happen now.
To the contrary, many people will inevitably find themselves empathizing with the joy and delight they see on the faces of radiant brides and delighted grooms, leaving the Lou Sheldons and Richard Lands sputtering Groucho Marx's classic desperation plea, "Who you gonna believe - me or your own eyes?"
There is, in fact, no better advertisement for gay marriage than gay marriages, which, of course, is exactly why religious conservatives fought so hard to block them from happening anywhere.
It is our moment. Enjoy!