Marriage Equality Is Not a Narrow Fight for Civil Rights

I got a lovely piece of hate mail last week at work. Some man named “Abe” sent me a postcard with two fish on the front facing opposite directions — “How does this person know I’m a Pisces? I asked myself. Then I read the message on the back:

“Alex — Found it hard to believe you would have a high profile wedding. FAGGOTS AGAINST MAGGOTS are to keep their heads down. ~Abe”

I was really taken aback. I immediately showed my straight co-workers, telling them this is the crap I have to deal with on a regular basis. Once I got over the anger in the message, I wanted to laugh about it, so that’s when I went to my fellow gays in the office and showed them.

After making the rounds to people, and reading and re-reading that message, I suddenly realized just how important same-sex marriage is to promoting LGBT equality — and why domestic partnerships just aren’t enough.

See, if I were to have had my announcement in the New York Times that I got domestic partnered (I have been twice leading up to my marriage), I don’t think Abe (oddly enough, my grandfather’s name) would have cared enough to write me such a nice postcard. It was that I could get married and that I was seen as equal to all the other couples on the “Weddings & Celebrations” page that made Abe so angry.

That got me thinking: while I was on my honeymoon, this guy Abe was fuming and pissed off enough to buy a postcard, think about what to write, write it and mail it. Wow. It’s like in a movie when they show serial killers in their basements, plotting their next moves while watching a one-on-one interview with their future victim.

Now, I work at the Federal Reserve. The institution, as you know, has been in the press a lot the last few years, so maybe it was the combination — that I work at the Fed AND I’m gay (the horror) that got Abe so riled up. I wonder what he’d say if he knew I was Jewish too?

But back to reality. I was always ambivalent with having marriage being the driver of LGBT equality the past few years. Yes, it’s a key step in our cause to achieving parity with the majority in this country, but I never thought it energized the entire LGBT community, and it certainly doesn’t address our brothers and sisters abroad who fear for their lives just for saying they’re gay.

But Abe’s postcard showed me how fighting for marriage isn’t such a narrow fight, instead it’s more of an aperitif: get talking about LGBT marriage to your friends and family, and you quickly run down a list of rights and privileges we are denied on a regular basis. “What? Your husband won’t get your social security?” and “What? Your marriage won’t be valid in California?”

These were just a few of the questions I answered in the negative at my wedding, which was the first gay wedding for most of the 90 people in attendance — including the two grooms.

Abe left no return address — shocking, I know — so I had no way of getting back in touch with him. If I could, I’d probably ask him why he cares so much about what I do with my life. You don’t see me writing postcards to Abe, telling him he’s too old to drive, or that he should’ve sent me an email instead of a pesky snail mail message.

But I am able to take what Abe taught me and try to let others know why getting married is something we should be fighting for. We, as a community, need to be more visible and I can’t think of a better way to quickly and convincingly show our equal importance to the Abe’s of the world by having our weddings announced for all to see.

Photo credit: anne.oeldorfhirsch