What We Mean by 'Freedom to Marry'

Even before last week's atrocities unfolded in Boston, a friend and I had made plans to spend this last weekend at Frog Meadow, a gay bed and breakfast in Vermont. It was an ideally, if serendipitously, timed outing: With its 63 rolling acres, trails through peaceful woodlands and a tranquil lake, charming accommodations, and wood-fired hot tub, Frog Meadow is the perfect restorative environment.

The fact that we had signed up for a "work weekend" only made it that much better. The "work weekend" is an ingenious thing: For a minimal fee ($25 per night in the case of Frog Meadow), guests are fed and housed. In exchange, they put work into the facilities and the land, with plenty of hours left over in a day for hiking, socializing, or other activities. The owners, for their part, receive much-needed help in maintaining the property.

There is, of course, no shortage of work to be done on such a large property. Some of the guys attending the weekend raked; others worked on the gardens; some occupied themselves with cleaning tasks. From the moment I spotted the enormous mounds of chopped firewood that had been delivered and left near the converted barn (which offers extra accommodations), I knew what work detail I wanted.

It took a crew of six guys more than six hours to lug and stack all that wood -- six cords' worth all in all. It was nothing short of therapeutic to stack as much wood as I could carry into my arms, shuttle over to the ever-growing wood pile on creaky knees, and fit the split pieces together as though constructing a stone wall without mortar. The guys kept up a running patter of pun-laced, sometimes faintly lewd, banter. "Men," one fellow exclaimed. "Working together!"

So we were. And when we had finished our task and the woodpile stood high and stretched long and lay six courses deep, we stood around, took a deep breath, and admired our handiwork before turning to the next task: Preparing the communal dinner.

I had decided to contribute guacamole, and as I mashed avocado and stirred in lime juice and salsa, I fell into conversation with a young couple that were preparing their own part of the meal. They were in their late twenties, and hailed from a small community in upstate New York. They had a sweet story to tell about being friends in school, coming out just after their teen years, and being together ever since. I took note of the matching rings they wore and asked whether they had gotten married.

"No," the taller of them said, with a shudder. (I'll call him Todd.)

Todd's boyfriend looked over at us. (I'll call him Yancey.) "What was that?" Yancey asked.

"He wanted to know if we got married," Todd said.

"Since it's now legal in New York and all," I said.

Yacey exhibited a similar shudder. "God, no," he said.

I was utterly baffled. Trying to keep from sounding full of myself or outraged, I asked them why the idea seemed so repellent. People of "my generation" (as well as from every other generation, of course, but I was getting into the whole "Listen, sonny" thing) had worked awfully hard for the gains in family equality we'd gotten over the last nine years, ever since marriage became legal in pioneering Massachusetts. Were the younger set really that jaded? Did they reject marriage, as many members of a generation older than myself seemed to have done, as a patriarchal institution that represented oppression more than it did liberty?

Todd looked at me. "I was already married once," he said.

As it happened, he'd been married to, and divorced from, a woman. The circumstances surrounding the end of the marriage had little to do, directly at least, with Todd realizing he was gay and coming out of the closet, but I wondered how large a role being gay had played.

Anti-gay, anti-equality figures like sci-fi writer (and NOM board member) Orson Scott Card like to claim that gay people getting married somehow constitutes "forcing" marriage equality on them -- as though thugs in pink jackboots were going to kick in their doors in the middle of the night and conduct wedding ceremonies between unwilling heterosexual men at gunpoint. It's an absurd claim, with deep roots in an assumption of heterosexual authority and hetero-normative superiority. It is, in fact, tremendously offensive. For years, however, that stripe of thinking --�the meme that freedom for a minority somehow erodes the freedoms of the majority -- held sway. In some corners, it still does.

But when we argued long and hard for the freedom to marry, were we not also arguing for the freedom not to marry? The more I talked with Todd and Yancey about it, the more I realized that the things I wanted down in my bones were not necessarily the same things they might want. Moreover, that was perfectly okay. After all, I am not Orson Scott Card. Nor am I NOM's Maggie Gallagher or the FRC's Tony Perkins, or any of the other anti-gay personalities who pay lip service to freedom and equality while, at the very same time, doing everything in their power to deny essential freedoms to individuals and families they simply happen not to like.

That is to say, who am I to think that these two young men, who seemed perfectly happy to be together and not marry, should do anything differently? Who am I to think that the wedding ring that fits my own finger would sit as comfortably on anyone else's?

Todd and Yancey were not jaded, nor were they looking to tear down any patriarchal monoliths. They were simply two young guys who didn't need or want to get hitched, and the beautiful thing is that, should they one day decide differently, they'll still have that option available.

Indeed, one could imagine that in the fullness of time that might happen. Whatever painful memories Todd might carry of a marriage not suited to him will one day fade; and Yancey, for his part, might have reasons for wishing to embrace the protections and guarantees that marriage is designed to provide.

It was starting already, I realized: Yancey looked over at Todd with a smile, and said, "I might need to be on your insurance one day. Then we should talk about it a little bit more."

A remark like that would have sent the Orson Scott Cards and Maggie Gallaghers of the world into orbit, with shrieks of "All they want are the benefits!" Well, damn right. So do mixed-gender couples. Marriage includes those benefits because they are useful and, let's be honest, the economic benefits are a means of enticing people to tie the knot. These young men, like young mixed-gender pairings everywhere, had all the romance they needed; what they might some day require is the legal ability to care and provide more completely for one another and not be treated as legal strangers in a time of crisis. Marriage, for them as much as anybody else, would be an economic commitment as well as an emotional one.

"I'm more ready to adopt than to marry," Todd replied.

"Then the kid will have your insurance," I pointed out.

"And I won't," Yancey said, with a grin. "Well, thanks for that!"

"Thanks, Kilian," Todd grumbled.

Just doing my bit, young feller. Just doing my bit.