IGF CultureWatch

First published October 15, 2005, in National Journal. Copyright © 2005, National Journal.

A cloudy afternoon on a recent Saturday in western Massachusetts. Rain sprinkles the Berkshire hills. Strolling in twos and threes along paths between broad lawns, 80 or so wedding guests make their way to a performance barn on the grounds of Jacob's Pillow. Rustling, cheerful, curious, they take their seats. Gray light filters through high windows and casts soft shadows among the rafters. The barn is not a sanctuary, but it feels like one today.

A violinist, one of the relatives, begins a Corelli prelude, and the wedding party enters. Both grooms wear tuxedos and boutonnieres. The minister, a young seminarian in the United Church of Christ, tall in his robes, begins. Under order of the state Supreme Court, same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, and today the minister will marry Jamie Beckland and Michael Pope.

"Every relationship of love is holy, sacred, and worthy of public affirmation and celebration," he says, with a touch of emphasis, slight but sufficient, on the word every. "We pray that this couple will fulfill God's purpose for the whole of their lives." Emphasis again, this time on the word whole. Not everyone in the hall picks up the inflection, but the grooms do.

Jamie is 27, originally from Wisconsin, now a development officer at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Michael, also 27, works at a private research company. They plan to move to Massachusetts, the place where Jamie lived when they met and the only state where their marriage has legal force. Jamie is taller, blond, bespectacled, thin, with the bearing of the former dancer that he is. Michael is dark, heavyset, as reserved as Jamie can be bubbly, a product not of the liberal Upper Midwest but of conservative southwestern Virginia, a state notorious for its gratuitously anti-gay legislation.

For all the differences, Jamie and Michael and their families have this in common: divorce. The newlyweds' immediate families count eight divorces between them, four on each side. Michael's parents divorced when he was 6, Jamie's when he was 10. "I think there's a whole generation of kids from broken homes who only want to be married once," Michael says. This marriage of two men, so radical by some lights, aspires to reconsecrate the deepest of marital traditions.

A few weeks before the wedding, over coffee at Starbucks, I asked Jamie why he wanted to marry. For my generation of gay men (I am 45), legal marriage was unthinkable, and emerging into the gay world often meant entering a cultural ghetto and a sexual underworld. Jamie, who could just about be my son, replies with an answer that turns the world of the 1970s and 1980s upside down. Once he realized he was gay, he says, he simply expected to marry.

"Why does anybody get married?" he asks. "I wanted the stability, I wanted the companionship, I wanted to have a sex life that was accepted, I wanted to have kids. For me, it's not a choice. A marriage evens you out."

The couple met on May 18, 2002. The next day, they exchanged telephone numbers at church (both are Christian). Within weeks, they knew it was serious. In February of this year they took a trip to Massachusetts and went snow-shoeing on the grounds of Jacob's Pillow, a dance center where Jamie had worked when they met. There, on an outdoor stage, Jamie got down on one knee. "Which was hard, because we were in snowshoes."

He gave Michael a compass inscribed, "May we always find our way together," and launched into his carefully planned proposal, doing fine for about a minute before starting to cry. Michael began laughing, Jamie pulled himself together long enough to propose, and the two kissed, their faces stung by freezing tears.

Most weddings occasion unambiguous joy, but at this one, reactions run the gamut from delight to incredulity. Jamie's mother, Laura, freely confesses to having been a "monster mom" when Jamie first told her he was gay, seven years ago. He recalls her blaming a demon that might have possessed him one day while he was using a Ouija board. Today, however, she is fighting a losing battle with her false eyelashes as the tears flow, and the tears are happy ones. "It's amazingly wonderful and appropriate," she says of the marriage, "and it breaks my heart"-not that Jamie is gay or is marrying a man, but that he is making this final transition out of childhood.

Laura's parents, Lee and Ludene, both in their early 70s, have shown up at their grandson's wedding on the advice of their priest, who counseled support for their family even if they could not condone a same-sex marriage. They say they are open-minded Catholics, but today's event has pushed them to their limit. "I feel that it's wrong," Lee volunteers. "I don't think it's real. I kind of wish it hadn't happened." He loves his grandson, no doubt about it. But "this is hard for me, to see it happen." Ludene, who believes that marriage is for procreation, struggles to find a more conciliatory note. "We're living in a different age," she says.

Jamie's two younger brothers are enthusiastic about the marriage. It never occurs to them to regard a same-sex marriage as anything but real. His father, Kim, has been supportive all along. But his paternal grandparents, Jim and Carol, are guarded as they sit on a bench awaiting the ceremony's start. "We love Jamie, and I'm not going to drive a wedge in the family," Jim says. Carol mentions that both are Christians who are close to the Bible. "This will be interesting," she says. "I'm not the judge."

Opponents of gay marriage have argued that same-sex couples, especially men, will undermine marriage by regarding it merely as a path to legal benefits, rather than as a moral and spiritual commitment. Gay couples may get married, goes the criticism, but will not act married. To judge by Jamie and Michael, there is little cause for worry on that score.

For their part, gay couples have had reason to worry that their marriages, however valid in the law's eyes, might be regarded as less than authentic in the eyes of family, friends, religious institutions, employers. After all, a marriage is a marriage not just because the law certifies it but because the community accepts and underwrites it.

Jamie's and Michael's relatives will face a question that never comes up after a straight wedding: whether to inform their friends, neighbors, and colleagues that their son or grandson or brother or nephew is married to a man. Among the parents' and grandparents' generations, most people said they would share this information selectively, or they would play it by ear, or they just didn't know what they would do. The marriage is no secret, but neither does it bask in the social sunlight that straight spouses take for granted.

Yet marriage has its own dynamic, one that deepens bonds between spouses and forges links to kin and community. From time immemorial, parents have expressed ambivalence, even dismay, over their children's choice of spouse, yet have been won over, if not to the choice, then to the marriage and the stability it provides. Michael's mother, Kathy, is from the town of Buena Vista, Va. She was raised in a strict Brethren Church but now considers herself "spiritual." She has been married and divorced twice. "This is truly not what I expected to see in his marriage," she says of Michael, her only son. But she adds: "I hope this is going to be a stabilizing factor in his life, because he's been at loose ends for a long time."

Marriage creates kin, a process in evidence today. Laura, Jamie's onetime "monster mom," toasts the couple with the words, "I'm so happy to have a fourth son." Jamie's father says, "I've seen these two together enough to know that this is the kind of relationship that marriage is about." Times may change, and marriage may change, but parents are ever parents.

It is almost 5 p.m. The minister has given his blessing, invoking Solomon's song that many waters cannot quench love. "Remember this," he says, "remember this, remember this. Amen."

Then: "Before God and all present, do you, Michael, enter into this marriage with an open mind and heart and promise to love Jamie as long as you both shall live?" Michael firmly answers yes, and then Jamie, less steadily, gives the same answer, wiping away tears as he says, "Most importantly, I will work every day at loving you better." The minister calls for the rings, and laughter relieves sniffles as Jamie, flustered, offers his right hand.

That mistake corrected, the minister makes a pronouncement that I never thought I would live to hear. "By the authority vested in me by the state of Massachusetts, I declare that you, Jamie and Michael, are joined in the covenant of marriage, with the blessing of Christ's church. You may kiss."

They do. It is done.

Hardly anyone seems aware of it, but on Nov. 8 Texans will vote on an unusually far-ranging state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and anything "similar" to it. Since it's an off-year election, the turnout is likely to be very low. It's an excellent-almost unique-opportunity to make a strong showing in a state where we should be blown away. But the campaign against the amendment has been lackluster and marred by poor tactical and substantive decision making.

The proposed state constitutional amendment would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Nothing surprising there. But its second sentence goes on to prohibit the state and any of its political subdivisions (like counties and cities) from creating or recognizing any status "identical or similar" to marriage.

That means civil unions are out, and it probably prohibits broad domestic partnership programs, too. The amendment might also make enforcement of some private agreements between same-sex partners more doubtful since enforcing them might require a judge to "recognize" a relationship "similar" to marriage.

The Texas Marriage Amendment is thus among the most sweeping amendments proposed anywhere in the country. The damage it would do is huge and long-lasting. Short of a ruling that it violates the federal constitution, it could not be reversed except by another state constitutional amendment. That would require a 2/3 vote in both houses of the state legislature, followed by another popular vote. It will be a very long time before a majority, much less a super-majority, of the Texas legislature supports gay marriage or anything like it.

Around the country, state marriage amendments have passed by wide margins. The closest margin came in relatively liberal Oregon, where 56 percent of voters approved it. The largest came in ultra-conservative Mississippi, where 86 percent of voters approved it. In states that border Texas-Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas-anti-gay-marriage amendments passed with votes of 78 percent, 76 percent, and 75 percent, respectively. Needless to say, fighting the amendment in Texas is an uphill battle.

But two factors make the Texas marriage fight somewhat different, offering the potential of at least a closer margin than in neighboring states. First, the Texas amendment is coming up for a vote in an off-year election in which perhaps only five to seven percent of registered voters would ordinarily bother to show up. This means that a motivated and well-organized minority of voters (like gays or religious conservatives) could make a difference. Most of the other state-marriage referenda around the country have coincided with high-turnout general elections, like the fall 2004 presidential race, where even an intensely concerned minority is overwhelmed.

Second, the only major city in Texas that will decide important local elections in November is Houston. Houston voters, already a huge portion of all voters statewide, should therefore be an even larger factor in this election. And Houston voters are more socially tolerant than voters elsewhere in the state.

When Houston's disproportionate voice and its relative gay-friendliness are combined with a depressed turnout elsewhere in the state, we have an almost ideal circumstance for a marriage vote. With a smart campaign, we could be in a position to keep the "yes" vote under 65 percent, which would have to be counted as a moral victory.

But, alas, the anti-amendment campaign has been inept. Start with the campaign director, Glen Maxey. In the 1990s, Maxey served a few undistinguished terms as a Democratic state representative from a liberal district in Austin. He was the first (and so far only) openly gay person to serve in the state legislature. But whatever laurels he earned from that status have long since wilted.

The anti-amendment campaign is running under the alliterative but oblique slogan, "No Nonsense in November." While Houston should clearly be the focus of anti-amendment organizing, the No Nonsense organization is based in Austin.

Evidence of gay-community apathy is everywhere. There are hardly any yard signs visible in Houston's heavily gay neighborhoods. (No Nonsense is trying to sell the signs instead of giving them away.) Go to a gay bar and few of the patrons have even heard there's an amendment on the ballot.

Maxey and his friends among the Texas gay civil rights establishment are fond of coalitions. In a conservative Republican state, here's the coalition they have put together to defeat the amendment: Among the eight "featured sponsors" of the anti-amendment campaign are three partisan Democratic groups, two leftist groups that promote "social justice," one statewide gay group that barely pretends to work with Republicans, and another that was founded by the daughter of former Democratic governor Ann Richards. This is, to be sure, a "coalition." It is a losing coalition.

Go to the No Nonsense website and you find a confused, unattractive jumble of logos, icons, and blinking mantras. Click "talking points." There, the very first argument against the marriage amendment is one that practically cribs from press releases of the state Democratic party. No Nonsense argues that instead of passing a marriage amendment, the Republican-dominated state legislature should have concentrated on "real solutions" like child healthcare and equalization of public-school financing.

There is not one word under "talking points" arguing that gay marriage itself is a good idea. An opportunity to educate people about gay marriage is being lost. And so is another amendment campaign.