"If he meets with us, he'll vote yes."
“If he meets with us, he’ll vote yes.” S said this with such confidence I almost believed her.
She was talking about the “freedom to marry” bill that would legalize marriage for same sex couples in Minnesota if it passed—and about our state representative, a conservative Democrat whom we’d met at the county convention when we were delegates. S had raised her hand and asked the candidates what they were going to do about animal cruelty. This legislator spoke eloquently about his wife’s role on the board of the local Humane Society, and how he had passed a law in the small town where he had served as mayor limiting the number of pets any single family could have.
To say that my animal-loving daughter fell in love with him after he gave that answer may be a bit of a stretch—but when he won the election, she approached his wife and said, “I have a campaign slogan for you and your husband. We could make dog clothing that says, “Pet owners vote for M!”
His wife awkwardly shook S’s hand.
As the campaign took shape, our legislator figured out the only way a Democrat was ever going to win this seat was to get the college students in the district to vote for him. He showed up on the campus where I work more than any candidate in recent memory—and we interacted a few times. He never remembered my name, but he always remembered my daughter.
In the end, amazingly, he won in a ground-breaking, progressive election. There had been a ballot initiative to ensure marriage in MN would remain between a man and a woman for perpetuity (even though marriage was already defined as such by state law). It failed, and both the state House and Senate went Democratic for the first time in decades.
“Minnesota is going back to the way it was in the old days,” an acquaintance remarked the next day as we worked out side by side as we do almost every morning. “I’m proud for the first time since Wellstone died to live here.”
S, T, and I had worked on the “Vote No” campaign over the summer, and S and I had continued to do so in the fall after T went back to school—but until the election was called that early November morning, I didn’t really believe the campaign had a chance. I also didn’t believe there was any way we would ever get a local Democrat in office, conservative or not.
I also couldn’t completely believe what was happening in my own life. My partner T had lived with us for three whole months in a test run for the possibility of our deciding to becoming a family. The summer had had its challenges, to be sure, but it had also left T and I certain about how we felt about each other—deeply and completely in love and committed—and S asking when the wedding would be.
“This is all really happening, right?” I said to T at the airport, as we all wept.
“Yes, it’s really happening,” she said, and I knew she understood I wasn’t talking about her leaving—I was talking, instead, about the fact that she would be coming back.
“When’s the wedding?” S asked again, obnoxiously.
The thing is, I have officiated more than a dozen weddings, and I never fail to be deeply moved by the wedding itself, even if I’m the one who wrote the words of the ceremony.
I want to be one of those people who doesn’t believe in the institution of marriage. I want to be one of those people who believes in open relationships, who thinks it’s perfectly normal to grow in and out of love with each other and stay on good terms. During my last long-term relationship, I remember talking only once about a wedding—and deciding against it. Too much hassle. Too much drama. Marriage was a heteronormative institution, anyway, and what good did it have to offer? I tried to pretend I was OK with our decision not get married in the same way I tried to be OK with not having children—and honestly, I wanted to be OK with both.
My former partner and I never entered our lives together talking about forever. In the end, maybe that’s why things didn’t work out—because deep down inside, I have always loved the idea of committing forever to another person, of wanting to ride out the good, bad, and ugly with her, to love her even as she grows and changes. I wanted, too, to be loved in the same way.
Ultimately, it was adopting S that made me sure that this kind of love—this kind of leap of faith, of belief in a “forever”—was not only possible, but blessed, and necessary. In a way, S made it possible for me to fall in love all the way—not just because I would have never met T if I hadn’t been S’s mom, but because S opened a place in my heart and soul that hadn’t been opened before.
But back to the election—it was followed by the longest, most miserable winter in the history of our town. Actually, that’s not true, as old timers would remind me again and again—but I didn’t believe them.
It was a horrible, scary, hunker-down kind of winter, the kind of winter that necessitated my getting up at 5:30 every morning to check on what non-profits and schools were closing for the day so I could send e-mails out to 400+ volunteers telling them whether or not there would be tutoring or ESL classes, whether or not the transit (our town’s version of a bus system) would be running, and whether or not they should risk their lives to come in to work or go to their volunteer sites.
I would then go outside to spend an hour shoveling my car out of the garage.
After this, I would force myself to go to the gym, not wanting to stop what had become a daily ritual—the only ritual, truthfully, that was keeping me sane. But I would have to cajole my car to get to the gym, then sometimes shovel it out again to drive from the gym parking lot to work, a block away.
It was the kind of winter where ending up in a ditch was just something that happened, and it was no big deal to call your supervisor and say, “Hey, I’m in a ditch, I’m going to be late for the staff meeting.” Granted, I was the supervisor who panicked and wanted to send out a blanket, hot tea, and a search party, but the natives didn’t think it was such a big deal. They just pulled over, teetering on the edge of the ditch themselves, yanked giant chains out of their trunks, and pulled each other out. I realized, for better or worse, that even after 12 years in this place I’m not actually a native. Go figure.
But again, I digress. The only thing that kept me from wanting to run away from Minnesota forever was a phone call I received sometime in late January. I’d had a falling out with the Vote No campaigners over a stupid turf war among organizations using different methods for the same goal—but after November, everybody got on the same page, and quickly. And suddenly, I was everybody’s friend again.
“We’re going to legalize marriage, once and for all,” the campaigner told me, “and we really need your help.”
My first instinct was to say that it was too early—if we turned around and went from Vote No to Vote Yes in six months, we were going to stab ourselves in the foot. Plus, I had a new employee who was really struggling to learn the job, a few suicidal students who weren’t taking the winter so well, a few dozen programs to call off every day, a lot of snow to shovel, a kid who was starting to let the weather get to her, a dog who was starting to let the weather get to him (i.e., pissing in the house), a not-very-reliable car, and so on. Plus, did she realize how cold it was? I didn’t want to be out in the negative 20 degree weather any more than I had to.
Instead of saying all of this, I managed to spit out, “I’m sorry, but I have a busy, complicated life.”
It turns out no good campaigner listens to that bullshit.
“We already have the Senate,” the campaigner informed me. My heart leapt. Never in the 12 years that I’d lived in Minnesota had I heard a campaigner utter those words with that much confidence.
“But what about the House?” I asked her.
“We have all the Democrats from the metro, and a couple Republicans. But we can’t do this without the rural legislators having the guts to vote yes. And we need M’s vote.”
I listened, remembering how I had ushered S away from M’s wife at the district convention. How her question, the last that had been asked, may very well have contributed to his win, since his opponent stumbled over it, not sure what to say. I remembered hugging that opponent after she lost—I knew her well—and sensing her irritation that my daughter had allowed M to shine in a way he might not have if the question had not been asked. I had, after all, made sure to ask questions I knew she would answer well. I remembered feeling both a sense of pride that my daughter had developed an interest in social issues that didn’t concern me much and horrified that she might have played a role in the other guy’s win.
“We hear you worked on his campaign, and that you know him,” the campaigner went on. Both of which were a stretch—I’d shown up to a few forums and worn his button around, had given a little money to his campaign, but I felt I hadn’t done much at all, if anything.
“He knows my daughter better than he knows me,” I said. I took a deep breath. “OK, what do you want me to do?”
There was going to be a secret meeting with M at a minister’s house in a small town about 30 minutes away. This minister and his wife were very supportive of gay marriage. Who knew there were ministers besides mine in rural MN who were open about this? But they were, thank goodness, and, thank goodness again, they knew an older lesbian couple who were worried about their farm property and what would happen if one of them landed in a nursing home. “You know them, right?” she asked.
I didn’t. But I knew other queer people, and before I knew it, I was helping her hatch a plan for how to get M to show up at this minister’s house and meet with us.
S was so excited. She talked for days in advance about what she would wear and say. The morning of the meeting, she woke up at about 5 a.m.—we had to leave at 8—and started working on her hair.
And then, wouldn’t you know it, the weather got in the way. “The roads are a sheet of ice covered by five inches of snow covered by another sheet of ice, and it’s 40 below,” the campaigner said, as if I hadn’t already called off every goddamned volunteer program in the county and sent an e-mail to my employees telling them not to come in if they didn’t feel safe on the roads. “He can’t get here from the cities, so we’re canceling.”
The meeting happened a few weeks later on one of the few drivable weekends of the entire winter—but I was in Seattle visiting T for some much-needed respite from the hell that was winter. As much as I was enjoying my trip, I found myself legitimately bummed out that I didn’t get to go. I found myself calling some of my friends who had been there, asking how it went.
“He’s nowhere near voting yes,” one told me.
“I don’t think he’s got the guts,” another said.
I figured it was over.
And then, a week or so later, I ran into another campaigner who was tabling in the Student Center. She knew who I was. “The meeting went well. He’s so damned close all he needs is someone to push him over the edge,” she said. “We think that someone could be you. And your daughter, of course.”
So, because I had nothing else to do besides cancel things and try frantically to reschedule them by obsessing on the nuances of every weather-related internet site I could understand, I said I’d do it. I showed up a couple times to town meetings he’d scheduled within an hour’s drive from us, usually at 7:30 in the morning on a Friday or Saturday, only to get there and learn they had been canceled. Each time, S would excitedly rise at 5:30 to do her hair, and each time, she’d curse the weather and life in general as I clung fearfully to the steering wheel, driving us slowly home. I called his legislative assistant so often she stopped answering. I was obsessed with scheduling a meeting.
Finally, in an act of sheer desperation, I sent M an e-mail.
Who sends their legislator an e-mail, anyway?—especially when she’s landed the personal cell phone number of his legislative aide. I sent the e-mail on a Thursday afternoon, when I knew the legislature was in session. In the e-mail, I told him I had been a district delegate, had given to his campaign, had been trying for weeks to meet with him. I sounded desperate, crazy, even.
He e-mailed be back right away.
Dear Argie,
Weather permitting, I will be home tonight [in a town about an hour away]. I would be glad to talk with both of you. My home phone number is _____ and my cell phone number is ____. Call me and I'll make sure we get together.
He signed the letter with his first name only, as if we were old friends.
Maybe it’s because he is a freshman legislator who doesn’t know he’s not supposed to set up his own meetings or give out his personal numbers—or maybe he just figured I wasn’t going to leave him alone. Whatever the reason, the next day, I called him, assuming he wouldn’t answer, and he said he would meet me and S at 2 p.m. at the coffee shop in town. As it turned out, I was down and out with what might have been the flu, but I pulled myself together and got S to the coffee shop in time.
We sat there, nervously waiting for the meeting we had been trying to have for over a month. I was exhausted, my voice barely audible—but somehow none of that mattered when I saw M and his wife walk in. I waved shyly, and then I saw them both smile. I could tell they remembered us.
It’s funny how, at this stage in my life, I feel as if I’m out to everyone. I think I’ve lived here long enough and been vocal enough that I just assume everyone knows. But I forget that most people now—seven years after the end of my last relationship—barely remember me with my partner, and think of me instead as either the community engagement coordinator at the local college, or as S’s mom. My sexual orientation isn’t front and center in the same way as it was before. Certainly, to M and his wife, I was just a mom with a daughter who had some odd behaviors, who maybe had some special needs, though they couldn’t be totally sure. Maybe I was married or not—I doubt they’d ever checked my ring finger.
When I said, “I am a mom, and a lesbian,” my voice caught just a little, and they looked surprised. I told my story, briefly—the adoption, meeting T, how much S loves T and wants her to be a part of our family, how I never imagined this turn of events happening to me. I talked about how T and I had briefly considered our moving to Seattle once marriage passed in Washington state, and how we ultimately decided that she wanted to come home.
When I told him where she was from, he asked about her family. I explained that they were Catholic, and not political, but very supportive. I teared up, really feeling for the first time how lucky I was to have their support, how little I had expected it.
And then his wife asked S about the Humane Society. She chatted politely about our animals and her volunteerism and the bill going in committee to outlaw puppy mills in Minnesota.
And then S said, “But now we’ve gotten off topic. I want to say something. I want to say that I think my two moms should be able to get married just like the two of you were able to marry.”
That wasn’t rehearsed. We’d never discussed making a comparison between his marriage and my potential marriage.
Everything went quiet.
“I can understand that,” his wife said, finally.
“I know you’re in a tough place,” I said, looking M in the eye. “I know that whatever you choose to do, you’re going to take some flack for it.”
He relaxed when I said that, and nodded. “You know, it’s going to pass no matter what I do,” he said.
“You can’t promise them that,” his wife responded.
“I know things,” he said. “We have the votes. It’s just that not everyone is talking.”
“Even if it would pass without your vote,” I said, “It would mean a lot to me, and my family, if you would vote yes in support of us.” I talked then about how there were other families who would never be comfortable coming out to him, and how I was meeting with him not just to represent myself, but also all the other families. I talked about health insurance, and property rights, and sharing custody of children.
And then, just before saying goodbye, I handed him about 200 postcards we had collected in the district from supporters.
He shook his head. “Your students, they’re amazing,” he said. He knew who had gotten him elected, but he wasn’t ready yet to say he’d vote yes.
I called the campaign after the meeting to report on how it went. We were all disappointed that he hadn’t said how he would vote, but I felt for the first time maybe ever like a politician had really listened to me—like maybe I really could change his mind.
Dear Argie, he wrote to me after the meeting, [My wife] and I both enjoyed our visit, and we both will feel you are truly a great parent. You have made a positive impression on us.
I didn’t know what it meant, but I figured it couldn’t be bad.
A week later a bus full of students showed up in his office during LGBT lobby day. He asked them if they knew me, and told them he thought I was a “great gal.” He told them I had convinced him he “would not vote no,” but that they shouldn’t tell anyone. “My advisors think it’s a bad move,” he confided.
Of course, they told me. Ecstatic, I called the campaign.
“We think he’s going to abstain,” the campaigner said to me. “He’s never said, ‘I’m voting yes.’ He’s only said he won’t vote no.” By now this campaigner was, for better or worse, the person I talked to more than anyone else except my daughter and direct co-workers. I trusted her—but I had so wanted to believe otherwise that it was hard for me to hear this.
“What else can I do?”
“He keeps saying it’s all about his legislative survey. He claims he’ll vote based on what the survey says. I think we just need to keep collecting them, up until the deadline.”
And so we did. We knocked doors and talked to people and got even the most apolitical people to fill out the survey. I sent the link to the survey and his e-mail address to anyone I could think of—including T’s mother, who does not always vote and is generally not political. She had, however, gone to the polls to vote no on the marriage amendment, and had reported this proudly to T.
“I just sent him an e-mail,” she wrote back. She never mentioned it to T until much later.
T came back a week before we suspected the vote was going to happen. We had collected another 150 surveys that week—in addition to several hundred he had already received by mail from us. The deadline was April 30, and T was arriving May 1. We could have overnighted them in the mail, but I wanted to hand deliver the last 150. I had heard the news: a group of evangelicals from his hometown had shown up in his office to pray over him—and to deliver surveys. We didn’t know how many.
I sent him another e-mail. Could I drop the rest of the surveys off to him in person on my way to the airport to pick up T, even though they would be a day late?
He wrote back, “Bring them in and introduce me to your partner. I would love to meet her.”
Now, T had been incredibly supportive all along—but she also has never been politically active. She’s shy, nervous around new people, and claims to consistently make a bad first impression (not that I agree). I was sure she wouldn’t want to come along, but I called her anyway.
“I’ll do it,” she said, almost instantly. “I want to do it.”
And so, despite yet another snow storm (yes, on May 1!) and a flight delay, we managed somehow to end up at the Capitol. I didn’t bother with his legislative assistant. They were in session when we arrived, so we asked a clerk to pull M off the floor so we could hand him the surveys.
We waited awkwardly in the hallway.
“Hello!” he said, shaking our hands. “How are you two?”
Fine, we both stuttered.
“How’s nursing school?” he asked T.
“Almost over,” she said.
“Are you on the dean’s list?” he asked.
“We don’t have a dean at the moment,” she said.
He apparently thought this was funny, and laughed. I handed him the surveys.
“Someone named J wants to meet with me tomorrow,” he said. “Do you know this person?”
Yes, I said.
“Is it about this?” He gestured toward the surveys.
I told him it was.
“You can tell him he doesn’t have to worry about it.” He paused, and looked me in the eye. “You don’t have to worry about it.”
“Really?” I said.
“Really,” he said, and then he was back on the floor.
We stood still for awhile, soaking it in.
“Do you think he’s really going to do it?” I asked T.
“Whatever he’s going to do, he’s already decided,” she said. She took my hand. “I haven’t been here since the 6th grade. Let’s look around.”
We walked hand in hand past ministers and families and Catholic school children in uniform following a college intern around the building and people we could tell were not on our side. But I hardly noticed anyone else. All I could think was that in a week, something very big was going to happen here, in this building, and no matter how it ended, we would always be able to say we had been a part of it. All I could think about was that T was here, and her time was limited, and she had a job interview and a family to visit and…she was here with me.
“Do you want to get married?” I asked her.
“You already asked me that. Once in person, and once in a text message. I already said yes, remember?”
“I remember. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t changed your mind.”
We walked outside then, right into a giant, beautiful rally. The people were singing in Spanish and English, We Shall Overcome Someday. I got closer to figure out what was happening. I finally pieced it together: the Senate had passed Minnesota’s version of the Dream Act. I had been so caught up in my own issues that I had no idea the legislation had made it out of committee. I couldn’t believe how selfish I’d been—how fixated on just one issue. In the meantime, progress was happening.
It wasn’t snowing anymore, or even very cold.
I walked over to a group of teenagers who were holding a rainbow flag with a sign that read, “Immigration rights for all families.” I hugged them.
Thank you, I said.
They squinted at me, a white woman close to middle age, then looked at each other as only teenagers in the presence of a truly crazy adult can do.
We got in the car and headed home.
That Saturday, we had an impromptu gathering at the public library. About 50 people showed up. We made thank you signs and sent more e-mails and made a video for M. Families went in front of the camera and talked about why marriage equality mattered to them. My friend T told the story of how her husband had declined her proposal, saying he wouldn’t marry her until everyone could marry—and how she’d convinced him to marry her in Vermont when the civil unions passed there. Another friend said that all he’d ever wanted was a family, and that the only thing that degraded his marriage was the fact that not everyone could get married. His wife burst into tears. An interracial couple said they were glad their marriage was legal and hoped the law would continue to move the state forward rather than backward. Lisa told the camera what she’d already said in person—she wanted her two moms to be able to marry.
It was an amazing day.
S and I got into the car at 5:30 for the House vote a few days later. T had gone back to Seattle—I couldn’t stand the thought of the vote happening without her there, but I was glad S could be with me. The plan was to meet up at the AFL-CIO and figure out a way to get the video to M before the vote. At the gathering, we had also written 35 personalized thank you notes from attendees, and I had these in my purse.
Three students met him in his office and handed him the video with headphones. He loved it. He took the letters and said he would read them on the House floor.
We had some time to kill, so we wandered around the building, greeting alumni we knew who worked there, snapping a few photos. In the rotunda, we were approached by several people with pink signs that read “Don’t Erase Moms and Dads.” One of them shoved a sign into S’s face. “Have a nice day, sir,” she said. A woman got into the elevator with us and told us we should get down on our knees and pray instead of parading around. “Hope you have a nice day, Ma’am,” S said in response.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been so proud of her.
Eighty people got to be in the room on that historic day besides the legislators, and S and I were among them. We weren’t allowed to make any noise. I had been charged with texting anytime someone left the floor so the vote would happen when all the supporters were in the room—no small task for someone how had never been on the House floor before. Otherwise, we were supposed to simply listen.
I started weeping right away, as soon as Karen Clark, an openly gay representative from the Twin cities whom I’d met several times, began to talk about her family. I barely managed to stop when legislators spoke out about how the bill would harm their families, other people’s families, the education system. I looked down at M. He was carefully opening each card with a letter opener, and reading each one. I could make out the two big red hearts a second grader had drawn for him. I teared up again.
The debate dragged on for hours—long enough for us to introduce ourselves to others in the vicinity—the elderly couple from Rochester, the college students from Bemidji, the couple from Brainard who were holding a photo of their son and his partner. For awhile, I hung onto every word, feeling gratitude for the African-American representative who spoke about this being the new civil rights movement, and how she’d struggled with her own feelings about LGBT people but realized she had to vote yes, and the rural representative who began to cry as he talked about the mentor he’d had as a child who had been forced to keep his sexual orientation a secret.
But after a time, the high emotions dissolved—it was simply too difficult to sustain them. There are pictures taken by the Associated Press that show S hanging over the bannister, hanging onto every word, and me, beside her, sitting back, staring blankly into space, a dazed look on my face. By the time that photo was taken, I was numb, tired. I wanted it to be over.
And then, the screen lit up green. When M’s button turned green, I began to cry again. I walked out into the rotunda crying.
I can’t really describe the scene, even now, without getting emotional. Singing, shouting, hugging, crying, dancing, signs everywhere, a sea of orange (the campaign’s color)—it was so beautiful, incredibly beautiful. I’d forgotten a camera, but it hardly mattered—the media covered it well enough. We kept running into people we knew—alumni I see only once a year at Pride, old friends, including a couple who had been together more than 20 years.
“One step closer,” T’s mom texted me.
“Have I mentioned I love you and want to marry you?” I texted T. But, my phone had gone dead, and it would be several hours before I would be able to talk to her.
After the speeches, we headed back to M’s office, wanting to thank him in person. Surprisingly, he was there. S tried to shake his hand and say thanks, but he pulled her in for a hug. He hugged all of us.
“Sorry I’m crying,” I said, sobbing on his shoulder.
“It’s OK,” he said. “It’s a great day for Minnesota.”
“When your light lit up green…” I said, not able to finish.
“I didn’t hesitate,” he said. “I wanted to be on the right side of history.”
“You have so much courage. We’ll work so hard on your reelection.”
“You know what? Today isn’t about that,” he said.
He hugged S a second time as we were leaving.
Fast forward to the Senate vote, which I watched in my office while madly grading final portfolios a couple days later. Even though we knew how it was going to go, I needed to hear the words, for and against. I needed to know what our side was up against—and remember what we were fighting for. When the vote came in, the screen green again, a co-worker in the office next to mine knocked on my door. I opened it and fell into his arms. I was tired, so tired—and, yes, crying again.
Fast forward to the day Dayton signed the bill—we were there, too, standing in the 99 degree sun, shouting as loud as we could on the last day of winter and first day of summer. Spring had been skipped altogether, but what did it matter? Everything felt sudden and unprecedented and beautifully full of life. At the party afterwards, people I didn’t exactly know but recognized from the campaign congratulated me. “A big win for rural Minnesota,” one said. “We couldn’t have done it without the rural vote, which means we couldn’t have done it without you.”
I never did run into my campaigner, so I didn’t get to thank her in person. But I saw two lesbians who had been former students with their three year old and eight month old. “I’m going to be a wax bridesmaid in my mommy’s wedding!” the three year old said.
“She’s kind of obsessed with wax these days,” one of her moms explained.
Fast forward to tonight, the first chance I’ve had to actually get it all down, which is how I remember things, and come to believe they really happened, really matter.
The margin in the House was wider than we’d expected—so, M could have easily abstained without affecting the vote as he had told me back in February.
But he didn’t.
I can’t claim to have changed M’s mind or heart, but I know that his mind and heart did change as a result of talking to real families like mine. I am thinking tonight about courage, and persistence. I’m thinking about that campaigner in her early 20s who kept pushing me to keep pushing M. Who gave S a free t-shirt the first time she met her. Who would probably be out of a job at the end of the month, after changing the world for the better, again.
I’m thinking also about that moment when S said, “But we got off topic. I want my moms to be able to get married just like the two of you did.” I’m remembering how M and his wife looked at each other, then at me, then at S. I’m remembering that silence, how I could barely breathe.
I remember holding my breath when the single mother I knew with a kid on both hips told me she didn’t believe in being gay and slammed the door in my face.
Holding my breath each time someone from my church showed up on the other side of the door we were knocking on. Some surprised me by enthusiastically filling out the survey. Some surprised me by saying, politely, that they didn’t agree with me. I’m remembering how I had to love them all, anyway, when I saw them in church the next Sunday.
I’m remembering the woman in the elevator, the pink signs, the mobs of families on both sides that were in the capitol the day of the House vote—holding my breath each time we were surrounded by pink signs, hoping no one would tip S’s fear or anger to its breaking point. Holding my breath each time she said, “Have a nice day.”
I’m remembering knocking on the door of the guy who won the Morris Human Rights Award the year before I did—who said he wanted to have a real conversation, and offered S and I some tea. He said he had gay friends but just “couldn’t’ agree with gay marriage because of my religion.” Later, he sent me an e-mail saying he still respected me and hoped we could still be friends and work on human rights projects together—that he hoped I didn’t think any less of him. “We all have to fight for what we believe,” he wrote.
I’m remembering the man who told me his transgendered cousin had committed suicide. He said, “I guess I support gay marriage, in the end, because what is wrong with love?”
In the end, love always wins.
I’m breathing again. And pretty soon, I’ll be planning a wedding, thanks in part to S’s persistence, our minister’s eager request to do it for us, “whenever you’re ready”—and thanks, also, to the fact that even someone in her 40s who wasn’t sure she ever believed in falling in love, much less in marriage, is capable of risking commitment, again, even after she’d made what she thought was the biggest commitment she’d ever make by adopting a teenage girl.
Love wins. Love just creates more love. And more. And more, until you’re breathing deeply, and your heart is so open it has never hurt so much, or felt so much joy.
She was talking about the “freedom to marry” bill that would legalize marriage for same sex couples in Minnesota if it passed—and about our state representative, a conservative Democrat whom we’d met at the county convention when we were delegates. S had raised her hand and asked the candidates what they were going to do about animal cruelty. This legislator spoke eloquently about his wife’s role on the board of the local Humane Society, and how he had passed a law in the small town where he had served as mayor limiting the number of pets any single family could have.
To say that my animal-loving daughter fell in love with him after he gave that answer may be a bit of a stretch—but when he won the election, she approached his wife and said, “I have a campaign slogan for you and your husband. We could make dog clothing that says, “Pet owners vote for M!”
His wife awkwardly shook S’s hand.
As the campaign took shape, our legislator figured out the only way a Democrat was ever going to win this seat was to get the college students in the district to vote for him. He showed up on the campus where I work more than any candidate in recent memory—and we interacted a few times. He never remembered my name, but he always remembered my daughter.
In the end, amazingly, he won in a ground-breaking, progressive election. There had been a ballot initiative to ensure marriage in MN would remain between a man and a woman for perpetuity (even though marriage was already defined as such by state law). It failed, and both the state House and Senate went Democratic for the first time in decades.
“Minnesota is going back to the way it was in the old days,” an acquaintance remarked the next day as we worked out side by side as we do almost every morning. “I’m proud for the first time since Wellstone died to live here.”
S, T, and I had worked on the “Vote No” campaign over the summer, and S and I had continued to do so in the fall after T went back to school—but until the election was called that early November morning, I didn’t really believe the campaign had a chance. I also didn’t believe there was any way we would ever get a local Democrat in office, conservative or not.
I also couldn’t completely believe what was happening in my own life. My partner T had lived with us for three whole months in a test run for the possibility of our deciding to becoming a family. The summer had had its challenges, to be sure, but it had also left T and I certain about how we felt about each other—deeply and completely in love and committed—and S asking when the wedding would be.
“This is all really happening, right?” I said to T at the airport, as we all wept.
“Yes, it’s really happening,” she said, and I knew she understood I wasn’t talking about her leaving—I was talking, instead, about the fact that she would be coming back.
“When’s the wedding?” S asked again, obnoxiously.
The thing is, I have officiated more than a dozen weddings, and I never fail to be deeply moved by the wedding itself, even if I’m the one who wrote the words of the ceremony.
I want to be one of those people who doesn’t believe in the institution of marriage. I want to be one of those people who believes in open relationships, who thinks it’s perfectly normal to grow in and out of love with each other and stay on good terms. During my last long-term relationship, I remember talking only once about a wedding—and deciding against it. Too much hassle. Too much drama. Marriage was a heteronormative institution, anyway, and what good did it have to offer? I tried to pretend I was OK with our decision not get married in the same way I tried to be OK with not having children—and honestly, I wanted to be OK with both.
My former partner and I never entered our lives together talking about forever. In the end, maybe that’s why things didn’t work out—because deep down inside, I have always loved the idea of committing forever to another person, of wanting to ride out the good, bad, and ugly with her, to love her even as she grows and changes. I wanted, too, to be loved in the same way.
Ultimately, it was adopting S that made me sure that this kind of love—this kind of leap of faith, of belief in a “forever”—was not only possible, but blessed, and necessary. In a way, S made it possible for me to fall in love all the way—not just because I would have never met T if I hadn’t been S’s mom, but because S opened a place in my heart and soul that hadn’t been opened before.
But back to the election—it was followed by the longest, most miserable winter in the history of our town. Actually, that’s not true, as old timers would remind me again and again—but I didn’t believe them.
It was a horrible, scary, hunker-down kind of winter, the kind of winter that necessitated my getting up at 5:30 every morning to check on what non-profits and schools were closing for the day so I could send e-mails out to 400+ volunteers telling them whether or not there would be tutoring or ESL classes, whether or not the transit (our town’s version of a bus system) would be running, and whether or not they should risk their lives to come in to work or go to their volunteer sites.
I would then go outside to spend an hour shoveling my car out of the garage.
After this, I would force myself to go to the gym, not wanting to stop what had become a daily ritual—the only ritual, truthfully, that was keeping me sane. But I would have to cajole my car to get to the gym, then sometimes shovel it out again to drive from the gym parking lot to work, a block away.
It was the kind of winter where ending up in a ditch was just something that happened, and it was no big deal to call your supervisor and say, “Hey, I’m in a ditch, I’m going to be late for the staff meeting.” Granted, I was the supervisor who panicked and wanted to send out a blanket, hot tea, and a search party, but the natives didn’t think it was such a big deal. They just pulled over, teetering on the edge of the ditch themselves, yanked giant chains out of their trunks, and pulled each other out. I realized, for better or worse, that even after 12 years in this place I’m not actually a native. Go figure.
But again, I digress. The only thing that kept me from wanting to run away from Minnesota forever was a phone call I received sometime in late January. I’d had a falling out with the Vote No campaigners over a stupid turf war among organizations using different methods for the same goal—but after November, everybody got on the same page, and quickly. And suddenly, I was everybody’s friend again.
“We’re going to legalize marriage, once and for all,” the campaigner told me, “and we really need your help.”
My first instinct was to say that it was too early—if we turned around and went from Vote No to Vote Yes in six months, we were going to stab ourselves in the foot. Plus, I had a new employee who was really struggling to learn the job, a few suicidal students who weren’t taking the winter so well, a few dozen programs to call off every day, a lot of snow to shovel, a kid who was starting to let the weather get to her, a dog who was starting to let the weather get to him (i.e., pissing in the house), a not-very-reliable car, and so on. Plus, did she realize how cold it was? I didn’t want to be out in the negative 20 degree weather any more than I had to.
Instead of saying all of this, I managed to spit out, “I’m sorry, but I have a busy, complicated life.”
It turns out no good campaigner listens to that bullshit.
“We already have the Senate,” the campaigner informed me. My heart leapt. Never in the 12 years that I’d lived in Minnesota had I heard a campaigner utter those words with that much confidence.
“But what about the House?” I asked her.
“We have all the Democrats from the metro, and a couple Republicans. But we can’t do this without the rural legislators having the guts to vote yes. And we need M’s vote.”
I listened, remembering how I had ushered S away from M’s wife at the district convention. How her question, the last that had been asked, may very well have contributed to his win, since his opponent stumbled over it, not sure what to say. I remembered hugging that opponent after she lost—I knew her well—and sensing her irritation that my daughter had allowed M to shine in a way he might not have if the question had not been asked. I had, after all, made sure to ask questions I knew she would answer well. I remembered feeling both a sense of pride that my daughter had developed an interest in social issues that didn’t concern me much and horrified that she might have played a role in the other guy’s win.
“We hear you worked on his campaign, and that you know him,” the campaigner went on. Both of which were a stretch—I’d shown up to a few forums and worn his button around, had given a little money to his campaign, but I felt I hadn’t done much at all, if anything.
“He knows my daughter better than he knows me,” I said. I took a deep breath. “OK, what do you want me to do?”
There was going to be a secret meeting with M at a minister’s house in a small town about 30 minutes away. This minister and his wife were very supportive of gay marriage. Who knew there were ministers besides mine in rural MN who were open about this? But they were, thank goodness, and, thank goodness again, they knew an older lesbian couple who were worried about their farm property and what would happen if one of them landed in a nursing home. “You know them, right?” she asked.
I didn’t. But I knew other queer people, and before I knew it, I was helping her hatch a plan for how to get M to show up at this minister’s house and meet with us.
S was so excited. She talked for days in advance about what she would wear and say. The morning of the meeting, she woke up at about 5 a.m.—we had to leave at 8—and started working on her hair.
And then, wouldn’t you know it, the weather got in the way. “The roads are a sheet of ice covered by five inches of snow covered by another sheet of ice, and it’s 40 below,” the campaigner said, as if I hadn’t already called off every goddamned volunteer program in the county and sent an e-mail to my employees telling them not to come in if they didn’t feel safe on the roads. “He can’t get here from the cities, so we’re canceling.”
The meeting happened a few weeks later on one of the few drivable weekends of the entire winter—but I was in Seattle visiting T for some much-needed respite from the hell that was winter. As much as I was enjoying my trip, I found myself legitimately bummed out that I didn’t get to go. I found myself calling some of my friends who had been there, asking how it went.
“He’s nowhere near voting yes,” one told me.
“I don’t think he’s got the guts,” another said.
I figured it was over.
And then, a week or so later, I ran into another campaigner who was tabling in the Student Center. She knew who I was. “The meeting went well. He’s so damned close all he needs is someone to push him over the edge,” she said. “We think that someone could be you. And your daughter, of course.”
So, because I had nothing else to do besides cancel things and try frantically to reschedule them by obsessing on the nuances of every weather-related internet site I could understand, I said I’d do it. I showed up a couple times to town meetings he’d scheduled within an hour’s drive from us, usually at 7:30 in the morning on a Friday or Saturday, only to get there and learn they had been canceled. Each time, S would excitedly rise at 5:30 to do her hair, and each time, she’d curse the weather and life in general as I clung fearfully to the steering wheel, driving us slowly home. I called his legislative assistant so often she stopped answering. I was obsessed with scheduling a meeting.
Finally, in an act of sheer desperation, I sent M an e-mail.
Who sends their legislator an e-mail, anyway?—especially when she’s landed the personal cell phone number of his legislative aide. I sent the e-mail on a Thursday afternoon, when I knew the legislature was in session. In the e-mail, I told him I had been a district delegate, had given to his campaign, had been trying for weeks to meet with him. I sounded desperate, crazy, even.
He e-mailed be back right away.
Dear Argie,
Weather permitting, I will be home tonight [in a town about an hour away]. I would be glad to talk with both of you. My home phone number is _____ and my cell phone number is ____. Call me and I'll make sure we get together.
He signed the letter with his first name only, as if we were old friends.
Maybe it’s because he is a freshman legislator who doesn’t know he’s not supposed to set up his own meetings or give out his personal numbers—or maybe he just figured I wasn’t going to leave him alone. Whatever the reason, the next day, I called him, assuming he wouldn’t answer, and he said he would meet me and S at 2 p.m. at the coffee shop in town. As it turned out, I was down and out with what might have been the flu, but I pulled myself together and got S to the coffee shop in time.
We sat there, nervously waiting for the meeting we had been trying to have for over a month. I was exhausted, my voice barely audible—but somehow none of that mattered when I saw M and his wife walk in. I waved shyly, and then I saw them both smile. I could tell they remembered us.
It’s funny how, at this stage in my life, I feel as if I’m out to everyone. I think I’ve lived here long enough and been vocal enough that I just assume everyone knows. But I forget that most people now—seven years after the end of my last relationship—barely remember me with my partner, and think of me instead as either the community engagement coordinator at the local college, or as S’s mom. My sexual orientation isn’t front and center in the same way as it was before. Certainly, to M and his wife, I was just a mom with a daughter who had some odd behaviors, who maybe had some special needs, though they couldn’t be totally sure. Maybe I was married or not—I doubt they’d ever checked my ring finger.
When I said, “I am a mom, and a lesbian,” my voice caught just a little, and they looked surprised. I told my story, briefly—the adoption, meeting T, how much S loves T and wants her to be a part of our family, how I never imagined this turn of events happening to me. I talked about how T and I had briefly considered our moving to Seattle once marriage passed in Washington state, and how we ultimately decided that she wanted to come home.
When I told him where she was from, he asked about her family. I explained that they were Catholic, and not political, but very supportive. I teared up, really feeling for the first time how lucky I was to have their support, how little I had expected it.
And then his wife asked S about the Humane Society. She chatted politely about our animals and her volunteerism and the bill going in committee to outlaw puppy mills in Minnesota.
And then S said, “But now we’ve gotten off topic. I want to say something. I want to say that I think my two moms should be able to get married just like the two of you were able to marry.”
That wasn’t rehearsed. We’d never discussed making a comparison between his marriage and my potential marriage.
Everything went quiet.
“I can understand that,” his wife said, finally.
“I know you’re in a tough place,” I said, looking M in the eye. “I know that whatever you choose to do, you’re going to take some flack for it.”
He relaxed when I said that, and nodded. “You know, it’s going to pass no matter what I do,” he said.
“You can’t promise them that,” his wife responded.
“I know things,” he said. “We have the votes. It’s just that not everyone is talking.”
“Even if it would pass without your vote,” I said, “It would mean a lot to me, and my family, if you would vote yes in support of us.” I talked then about how there were other families who would never be comfortable coming out to him, and how I was meeting with him not just to represent myself, but also all the other families. I talked about health insurance, and property rights, and sharing custody of children.
And then, just before saying goodbye, I handed him about 200 postcards we had collected in the district from supporters.
He shook his head. “Your students, they’re amazing,” he said. He knew who had gotten him elected, but he wasn’t ready yet to say he’d vote yes.
I called the campaign after the meeting to report on how it went. We were all disappointed that he hadn’t said how he would vote, but I felt for the first time maybe ever like a politician had really listened to me—like maybe I really could change his mind.
Dear Argie, he wrote to me after the meeting, [My wife] and I both enjoyed our visit, and we both will feel you are truly a great parent. You have made a positive impression on us.
I didn’t know what it meant, but I figured it couldn’t be bad.
A week later a bus full of students showed up in his office during LGBT lobby day. He asked them if they knew me, and told them he thought I was a “great gal.” He told them I had convinced him he “would not vote no,” but that they shouldn’t tell anyone. “My advisors think it’s a bad move,” he confided.
Of course, they told me. Ecstatic, I called the campaign.
“We think he’s going to abstain,” the campaigner said to me. “He’s never said, ‘I’m voting yes.’ He’s only said he won’t vote no.” By now this campaigner was, for better or worse, the person I talked to more than anyone else except my daughter and direct co-workers. I trusted her—but I had so wanted to believe otherwise that it was hard for me to hear this.
“What else can I do?”
“He keeps saying it’s all about his legislative survey. He claims he’ll vote based on what the survey says. I think we just need to keep collecting them, up until the deadline.”
And so we did. We knocked doors and talked to people and got even the most apolitical people to fill out the survey. I sent the link to the survey and his e-mail address to anyone I could think of—including T’s mother, who does not always vote and is generally not political. She had, however, gone to the polls to vote no on the marriage amendment, and had reported this proudly to T.
“I just sent him an e-mail,” she wrote back. She never mentioned it to T until much later.
T came back a week before we suspected the vote was going to happen. We had collected another 150 surveys that week—in addition to several hundred he had already received by mail from us. The deadline was April 30, and T was arriving May 1. We could have overnighted them in the mail, but I wanted to hand deliver the last 150. I had heard the news: a group of evangelicals from his hometown had shown up in his office to pray over him—and to deliver surveys. We didn’t know how many.
I sent him another e-mail. Could I drop the rest of the surveys off to him in person on my way to the airport to pick up T, even though they would be a day late?
He wrote back, “Bring them in and introduce me to your partner. I would love to meet her.”
Now, T had been incredibly supportive all along—but she also has never been politically active. She’s shy, nervous around new people, and claims to consistently make a bad first impression (not that I agree). I was sure she wouldn’t want to come along, but I called her anyway.
“I’ll do it,” she said, almost instantly. “I want to do it.”
And so, despite yet another snow storm (yes, on May 1!) and a flight delay, we managed somehow to end up at the Capitol. I didn’t bother with his legislative assistant. They were in session when we arrived, so we asked a clerk to pull M off the floor so we could hand him the surveys.
We waited awkwardly in the hallway.
“Hello!” he said, shaking our hands. “How are you two?”
Fine, we both stuttered.
“How’s nursing school?” he asked T.
“Almost over,” she said.
“Are you on the dean’s list?” he asked.
“We don’t have a dean at the moment,” she said.
He apparently thought this was funny, and laughed. I handed him the surveys.
“Someone named J wants to meet with me tomorrow,” he said. “Do you know this person?”
Yes, I said.
“Is it about this?” He gestured toward the surveys.
I told him it was.
“You can tell him he doesn’t have to worry about it.” He paused, and looked me in the eye. “You don’t have to worry about it.”
“Really?” I said.
“Really,” he said, and then he was back on the floor.
We stood still for awhile, soaking it in.
“Do you think he’s really going to do it?” I asked T.
“Whatever he’s going to do, he’s already decided,” she said. She took my hand. “I haven’t been here since the 6th grade. Let’s look around.”
We walked hand in hand past ministers and families and Catholic school children in uniform following a college intern around the building and people we could tell were not on our side. But I hardly noticed anyone else. All I could think was that in a week, something very big was going to happen here, in this building, and no matter how it ended, we would always be able to say we had been a part of it. All I could think about was that T was here, and her time was limited, and she had a job interview and a family to visit and…she was here with me.
“Do you want to get married?” I asked her.
“You already asked me that. Once in person, and once in a text message. I already said yes, remember?”
“I remember. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t changed your mind.”
We walked outside then, right into a giant, beautiful rally. The people were singing in Spanish and English, We Shall Overcome Someday. I got closer to figure out what was happening. I finally pieced it together: the Senate had passed Minnesota’s version of the Dream Act. I had been so caught up in my own issues that I had no idea the legislation had made it out of committee. I couldn’t believe how selfish I’d been—how fixated on just one issue. In the meantime, progress was happening.
It wasn’t snowing anymore, or even very cold.
I walked over to a group of teenagers who were holding a rainbow flag with a sign that read, “Immigration rights for all families.” I hugged them.
Thank you, I said.
They squinted at me, a white woman close to middle age, then looked at each other as only teenagers in the presence of a truly crazy adult can do.
We got in the car and headed home.
That Saturday, we had an impromptu gathering at the public library. About 50 people showed up. We made thank you signs and sent more e-mails and made a video for M. Families went in front of the camera and talked about why marriage equality mattered to them. My friend T told the story of how her husband had declined her proposal, saying he wouldn’t marry her until everyone could marry—and how she’d convinced him to marry her in Vermont when the civil unions passed there. Another friend said that all he’d ever wanted was a family, and that the only thing that degraded his marriage was the fact that not everyone could get married. His wife burst into tears. An interracial couple said they were glad their marriage was legal and hoped the law would continue to move the state forward rather than backward. Lisa told the camera what she’d already said in person—she wanted her two moms to be able to marry.
It was an amazing day.
S and I got into the car at 5:30 for the House vote a few days later. T had gone back to Seattle—I couldn’t stand the thought of the vote happening without her there, but I was glad S could be with me. The plan was to meet up at the AFL-CIO and figure out a way to get the video to M before the vote. At the gathering, we had also written 35 personalized thank you notes from attendees, and I had these in my purse.
Three students met him in his office and handed him the video with headphones. He loved it. He took the letters and said he would read them on the House floor.
We had some time to kill, so we wandered around the building, greeting alumni we knew who worked there, snapping a few photos. In the rotunda, we were approached by several people with pink signs that read “Don’t Erase Moms and Dads.” One of them shoved a sign into S’s face. “Have a nice day, sir,” she said. A woman got into the elevator with us and told us we should get down on our knees and pray instead of parading around. “Hope you have a nice day, Ma’am,” S said in response.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been so proud of her.
Eighty people got to be in the room on that historic day besides the legislators, and S and I were among them. We weren’t allowed to make any noise. I had been charged with texting anytime someone left the floor so the vote would happen when all the supporters were in the room—no small task for someone how had never been on the House floor before. Otherwise, we were supposed to simply listen.
I started weeping right away, as soon as Karen Clark, an openly gay representative from the Twin cities whom I’d met several times, began to talk about her family. I barely managed to stop when legislators spoke out about how the bill would harm their families, other people’s families, the education system. I looked down at M. He was carefully opening each card with a letter opener, and reading each one. I could make out the two big red hearts a second grader had drawn for him. I teared up again.
The debate dragged on for hours—long enough for us to introduce ourselves to others in the vicinity—the elderly couple from Rochester, the college students from Bemidji, the couple from Brainard who were holding a photo of their son and his partner. For awhile, I hung onto every word, feeling gratitude for the African-American representative who spoke about this being the new civil rights movement, and how she’d struggled with her own feelings about LGBT people but realized she had to vote yes, and the rural representative who began to cry as he talked about the mentor he’d had as a child who had been forced to keep his sexual orientation a secret.
But after a time, the high emotions dissolved—it was simply too difficult to sustain them. There are pictures taken by the Associated Press that show S hanging over the bannister, hanging onto every word, and me, beside her, sitting back, staring blankly into space, a dazed look on my face. By the time that photo was taken, I was numb, tired. I wanted it to be over.
And then, the screen lit up green. When M’s button turned green, I began to cry again. I walked out into the rotunda crying.
I can’t really describe the scene, even now, without getting emotional. Singing, shouting, hugging, crying, dancing, signs everywhere, a sea of orange (the campaign’s color)—it was so beautiful, incredibly beautiful. I’d forgotten a camera, but it hardly mattered—the media covered it well enough. We kept running into people we knew—alumni I see only once a year at Pride, old friends, including a couple who had been together more than 20 years.
“One step closer,” T’s mom texted me.
“Have I mentioned I love you and want to marry you?” I texted T. But, my phone had gone dead, and it would be several hours before I would be able to talk to her.
After the speeches, we headed back to M’s office, wanting to thank him in person. Surprisingly, he was there. S tried to shake his hand and say thanks, but he pulled her in for a hug. He hugged all of us.
“Sorry I’m crying,” I said, sobbing on his shoulder.
“It’s OK,” he said. “It’s a great day for Minnesota.”
“When your light lit up green…” I said, not able to finish.
“I didn’t hesitate,” he said. “I wanted to be on the right side of history.”
“You have so much courage. We’ll work so hard on your reelection.”
“You know what? Today isn’t about that,” he said.
He hugged S a second time as we were leaving.
Fast forward to the Senate vote, which I watched in my office while madly grading final portfolios a couple days later. Even though we knew how it was going to go, I needed to hear the words, for and against. I needed to know what our side was up against—and remember what we were fighting for. When the vote came in, the screen green again, a co-worker in the office next to mine knocked on my door. I opened it and fell into his arms. I was tired, so tired—and, yes, crying again.
Fast forward to the day Dayton signed the bill—we were there, too, standing in the 99 degree sun, shouting as loud as we could on the last day of winter and first day of summer. Spring had been skipped altogether, but what did it matter? Everything felt sudden and unprecedented and beautifully full of life. At the party afterwards, people I didn’t exactly know but recognized from the campaign congratulated me. “A big win for rural Minnesota,” one said. “We couldn’t have done it without the rural vote, which means we couldn’t have done it without you.”
I never did run into my campaigner, so I didn’t get to thank her in person. But I saw two lesbians who had been former students with their three year old and eight month old. “I’m going to be a wax bridesmaid in my mommy’s wedding!” the three year old said.
“She’s kind of obsessed with wax these days,” one of her moms explained.
Fast forward to tonight, the first chance I’ve had to actually get it all down, which is how I remember things, and come to believe they really happened, really matter.
The margin in the House was wider than we’d expected—so, M could have easily abstained without affecting the vote as he had told me back in February.
But he didn’t.
I can’t claim to have changed M’s mind or heart, but I know that his mind and heart did change as a result of talking to real families like mine. I am thinking tonight about courage, and persistence. I’m thinking about that campaigner in her early 20s who kept pushing me to keep pushing M. Who gave S a free t-shirt the first time she met her. Who would probably be out of a job at the end of the month, after changing the world for the better, again.
I’m thinking also about that moment when S said, “But we got off topic. I want my moms to be able to get married just like the two of you did.” I’m remembering how M and his wife looked at each other, then at me, then at S. I’m remembering that silence, how I could barely breathe.
I remember holding my breath when the single mother I knew with a kid on both hips told me she didn’t believe in being gay and slammed the door in my face.
Holding my breath each time someone from my church showed up on the other side of the door we were knocking on. Some surprised me by enthusiastically filling out the survey. Some surprised me by saying, politely, that they didn’t agree with me. I’m remembering how I had to love them all, anyway, when I saw them in church the next Sunday.
I’m remembering the woman in the elevator, the pink signs, the mobs of families on both sides that were in the capitol the day of the House vote—holding my breath each time we were surrounded by pink signs, hoping no one would tip S’s fear or anger to its breaking point. Holding my breath each time she said, “Have a nice day.”
I’m remembering knocking on the door of the guy who won the Morris Human Rights Award the year before I did—who said he wanted to have a real conversation, and offered S and I some tea. He said he had gay friends but just “couldn’t’ agree with gay marriage because of my religion.” Later, he sent me an e-mail saying he still respected me and hoped we could still be friends and work on human rights projects together—that he hoped I didn’t think any less of him. “We all have to fight for what we believe,” he wrote.
I’m remembering the man who told me his transgendered cousin had committed suicide. He said, “I guess I support gay marriage, in the end, because what is wrong with love?”
In the end, love always wins.
I’m breathing again. And pretty soon, I’ll be planning a wedding, thanks in part to S’s persistence, our minister’s eager request to do it for us, “whenever you’re ready”—and thanks, also, to the fact that even someone in her 40s who wasn’t sure she ever believed in falling in love, much less in marriage, is capable of risking commitment, again, even after she’d made what she thought was the biggest commitment she’d ever make by adopting a teenage girl.
Love wins. Love just creates more love. And more. And more, until you’re breathing deeply, and your heart is so open it has never hurt so much, or felt so much joy.
Comments
I am so, so happy for you guys.