You can tell how in love they are by the pictures.
You can see it in their smiles, how they touch each other, or the way their eyes are so brilliant. Each one is radiant.
I have gone entire relationships without photos like that.
As California became the second state in the country to allow gay marriage this week, choruses sang on courthouse stairs and throngs of supporters — gay and straight — tossed rice over the newly married couples who emerged hand in hand.
I must admit, I felt more than a tinge of envy. My partner, Geoffrey, asked if we should fly out to join the party. Over breakfast, our son wondered aloud when we would get married and get our photo in the paper.
While I’d be thrilled to attend this celebration of life and love and relationships, what I would really like is for that party to be here in Colorado — our home. Unfortunately, though we certainly honor our relationship on our own, it might be some time before we can do so officially.
This weekend, during the Pridefest celebrations, I can’t help but feel the sting of rejection by the state I love, at the same time I give thanks for my partner.
Two years ago, Coloradans refused to support civil unions and, in fact, codified discrimination in our constitution by defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. This has left me unable to accurately describe my relationship.
I fell in love the first night I met him. He accidentally spit on me as he talked, and it was clear that we had much to talk about. Three years later, I proposed. Not thinking Geoff a huge bauble ring sort of guy, I opted for matching classic wristwatches. We were in Paris. I told him that there was no other, and if he would have me, I wanted nothing more than to spend my life with him.
We have been together for 7 years and are raising two kids. We work jointly to support our household. Yet, there is no room for me on the forms I fill out listing only married, single, divorced, and widowed.
And there are no forms in Colorado that would allow us to celebrate like they have this week in California.
In that state’s Supreme Court decision, the justices declared “that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.” They maintained that a separate designation for same-sex couples distinct from marriage perpetuates “that gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects ‘second-class citizens’ who may, under the law, be treated differently from, and less favorably than, heterosexual individuals or opposite-sex couples.”
In Colorado, where the Williams Institute estimates there are over 13,000 same-sex couples, gay families still do not have access to all the rights afforded our straight friends, rights central to a stable home, such as full health-care coverage, mutual medical decision-making, and shared retirement benefits.
Yes, we could go and fill out all the forms, protest to our employers and insurers, and pay all the lawyers — but why should we have to when our straight friends do not?
Last year, Geoff and I returned to Paris. We decided we would wait no longer to forever commit ourselves to each other. We paused briefly at a fountain outside the Centre de George Pompidou and slipped rings onto each other’s fingers as we professed our love.
No pomp, no circumstance. Just a simple promise to each other. Marriage, after all, is less about the ceremony itself and more about the relationship. It is about two people who have chosen to intimately entangle themselves in each other’s lives. Two people stepping into the unknown, secure that the other will keep them safe. Two people willing to work hard (relationships are anything but easy) to make each other, and their kids, happy.
Our laws should encourage, not discourage, committed relationships.
Someday our neighbors in Colorado will choose to make our commitment official. When that happens, we will take time to celebrate our love in front of our kids, our friends, our families and our community, and make legitimate in our neighbors’ eyes what already is in ours.
On that day, someone will take our picture, and we will look radiant. But until that day occurs, I remain steadfastly wed — but not married — to the man I fell in love with the first night we met.
Mark Thrun (mthrun@comcast.net) is a public health physician and a member of the Denver GLBT Commission.
