Steve Silberman speaks out against California’s Proposition 8.
Anti-gay marriage groups like Focus on the Family say that same-sex couples are trying to “redefine” marriage, and have been getting laws passed like Proposition 8, approved by a slim majority of California voters last fall, which amends the state constitution to read: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” In truth, the definition of marriage has changed a lot since the Old Testament days, when women were entered into matrimony as property, rather than as persons, after being purchased by the husband’s family.
As recently as the 1960s, interracial marriage was illegal in many states in the US, banned by judges with declarations like, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages.” But while Proposition 8—and the fate of 18,000 same-sex couples in California—is currently being weighed by the state Supreme Court, no less an authority than the online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary has decided that same-sex couples have a place at the banquet table too:
1 a (1): the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage <same-sex marriage>.
My husband and I are one of those couples who are waiting for the Supreme Court to tell us if we get to keep our marriage license or not, though we will not stop feeling married and loving one another—for richer and poorer, ’til death do we part—even if the court decides against us.
Equality has to start somewhere.
