I Believe in Love, or Why I am an Advocate

Today's reading music is brought to you by John, Paul, George, and Ringo. 

Really, did you expect a different song?

When yesterday’s Supreme Court decision was announced stating that the misnomer-ed Defense of Marriage Act^* was determined to be unconstitutional, I found myself doing an enthusiastic happy dance in my office. I ran down the hall and shoved my iPad, Huffington Post front page breaking news-first, into my friend Tami’s face. I texted my friend Josh all but squealing with glee, and joined the Facebook frenzy letting my opinion be known: “Hear that sound? That’s the sound of walls coming down, of barriers being destroyed. Today is a good day!”

Yes, my friends, I am overjoyed at what this decision means not only for marriage rights, but for civil rights and human rights and state’s rights and for the future of my homeland.

But why?

I found myself wondering why I was so happy with this decision. Why, as a self-identifying heterosexual, Kinsey-1, single woman was I so freakin’ pleased with a Supreme Court decision that has little to no direct effect on my life. Why am I such an advocate and ally?

First, the obvious: It’s not all about me. If I have brothers and sisters being wronged, being denied rights, being discriminated against, being treated as lesser-than second-class citizens, then I must speak out. I have a duty to my brothers and sisters—and to myself—to stand with them in solidarity and use what little position I have to make sure that everyone is treated as the dignified, precious human being they are.

Second, the emotional: I believe in love. Despite all the odds, I still believe in that which is said to be the greatest and most powerful force on earth. Stronger than life, stronger than death, I believe in love.

I have loved and been loved. I have been in love, and have—twice—thought that I had found my love reciprocated in another in the form that so many crave, in the form that leads to so many weddings. I have thus known heartbreak, too, real and raw and crushing. Once by my own doing and once by another’s I have known that overwhelming, soul-slicing, chest-constricting pain of losing the one you love. I know what it is to be under so much hurt that all you can manage is to just sleep. Since hindsight is always 20/20 I know, now, that this heartbreak was not due to the fact that there was no love, but because there was different love. We could not love one another in the way we each needed to be loved.

And so it ended. Clean yet messy. Simple yet difficult.

And while I have come out the other side stronger and tempered (as often happens with heartbreak if you allow it,) I still would not wish it on anyone. Beyond that, my heartbreak was caused by nothing so spectacular as just the natural order of relationship. I can’t imagine finding the person who I love and who reciprocates my love; finding the person who I want to be with more than anything else in all the world; who pledges his life, faithfulness, and loyalty to me forsaking all others; who devotes his time and energy to me and I to him; I can’t imagine finding this person only to have a judge tell me that because of it I am unworthy. Love—pure, perfect Love—is the only thing that makes us worthy despite our unworthiness.

I didn't choose my sexuality. I didn't choose who I fell in love with. In the words of Scott Miller, “What a cruel trick that you can’t pick the one you love.” It is indeed cruel, but crueler still is to deny someone the blessings of that love and the privileges of their country when they do find it. I don’t want someone else telling me who I can and can’t marry, so I won’t tell anyone else.⁺

I am an advocate. I am an ally. And I still believe in love.

_______________________________

^* I say “misnomer-ed” because it was really not a defense of marriage so much as it was a defense of the status-quo traditional heterosexual union. Striking it down was the real defense of marriage.

⁺  This is all within the context of two enthusiastically consenting adults. I realize that while marriage should imply love, fidelity, consent, respect, and all the other things that go into making a relationship work, sadly it does not. Not this side of the Kingdom, anyway, which is why we have to work at it. What I’m advocating is two people—regardless of gender, sexuality, race, creed, or ethnicity—consciously working at it out of a mutual desire to bring a little bit of the Kingdom to earth, whether they know that’s what they’re doing or not.