Nov 20, 2008, On California's Proposition 8The below essay on California's Proposition 8 was originally published at jointheimpact.com - an organization that was established to further national support of gay marriage through peaceful and positive demonstrations of the power basic human-ness of the gay community. They seem to be expanding to become a new voice for civil rights in general. We are all brothers and sisters in Kula ... I wrote an essay concerning California's proposition 8 on Saturday morning in a rush of deep feeling. I know, I should have been working on my exam, however... Love is important. It's what were made of. On California's Proposition 8 - Universal Expansion and the Integrity of MarriageI am newly married, after almost seven years of courtship, and negotiation, and commitment and re commitment. My now husband and I lived together during much of that time; sharing resources and money, supporting each other through emotional hardships and enjoying each other's families and friends. A year and a half ago, we even bought a house together, and moved together from the city that was our home to somewhere where we hardly knew anyone. Most people thought we were married already, and others didn’t see, after all that, that there was any point it it.Superfluous, they said. Redundant. But I am here to tell you, being married is different from being “together.” I love being married. Marriage feels like a thing that we hold, my husband and I, separate from us yet of us, somehow, almost in the way I imagine a child will be. Being married is like an emotional asset that we share, that we can fall back on during challenges that face us, and that we protect and nourish as partners. We promised to remain at one another’s side, and we each heard the other do the same. That is both a powerful responsibility and a tremendous comfort, an affirmation of worthiness I never thought to wish for. And we made these promises publicly. We said I do, and we meant it, and those words ring in our home like both a solemn echo, and a bubbling spring of giddy joy. I have always said, like so many of us have, that I just “couldn’t understand” why some people would want to deny this experience to others. But now that I am married - I am beginning to. A friend of mine, also married, guided me toward this new understanding by pointing out that the feeling of “marriedness” I am newly experiencing is a transpersonal one, that through joining the ranks of billions of married couples from the dawn of society, I have tapped into a new level of the collective consciousness. And because of that, what being married is is a sharing in the entity that is marriedness with all married people everywhere, an entity that has been built and defined by a collective of billions of human hearts. While planning my wedding I had the revelation that this party was not really for me, or even for my fiancee and me. We had already made and tried our commitment to one another in private, between us. The wedding celebration was about sharing that commitment with our community. And likewise, being married doesn’t just concern those signing the documents end co-filing their taxes, but connects them to all people who have made that commitment before them. In becoming married, we join the ranks of humans who have taken a solemn vow to love one another, and in taking that vow, to validate each other as individuals. That is what frightens people - the people who have fought for Proposition 8 to be passed in 'defense of mairrage." It’s not that “homosexuals,” the current metaphor for “that person who is separate from me” will join souls with each other. People are fearful of the fact that when homosexuals legally marry they will be joining souls with us. That they will join us as we continue to build the collective entity of “marriedness.” They are fearful of the fact that it will, and it will, dilute the relevance of qualities that define us as separate - not just gay and straight, but man and woman, too. It will strip away one more layer of convention and get us closer to the crux of what love is, of what we are. Marriage is not about the husband and the wife. When we get married, we celebrate love itself in the form of our beloved, by placing the health of that love at the top of our list of priorities. We recognize that there is something bigger than our personalized identity, something, call it nature or god or love itself, that supports that identity, and ultimately contains it. I believe that for many people whose spirituality is wrapped up in organized religion, that “something bigger” has become obscured by the very traditions which were established to honor it. And these traditions that now hold us back from expanding our understanding of love, deny love. They deny god. They stifle our spirits. They stifle our freedom. Not just their freedom, our freedom. Proposition 8 can’t last. It will be overturned, because it compromises one of the fundamental concepts that this country is built on. It is simply anti American, not to mention wrong, to stand in the way of the pursuit of happiness of our citizenry. But I think it is helpful to clarify the issue. I sat down to write about this after a conversation with my father, a voter and a Californian who, while not a supporter of Proposition 8, was not particularly passionate about opposing it. He voted no, but he had friends that voted yes, and in his words, he “could kind of see where they were coming from.” Please understand, my father is an exemplary human being. He is moral and strong and deeply compassionate and very smart, and left leaning to boot. I’m sure his friends voting for this constitutional amendment that childishly hoards one of life’s deepest joys for “us” and keeps it away from “them” are good people too. I in fact believe that the majority of the supporters of Proposition 8, even those suffering from homophobia, or some other brand of fear of the unknown, are good people. But as human beings we are evolving toward unity and away from separateness. If this matters to you then Gay Marriage matters. If putting love back into god, if maintaining the integrity of the spiritual evolution of humanity matters to you, than stripping away the training wheels of our traditional definition of marriage, matters. Overturning Proposition 8 is more than just a gesture, it is crucial to the spiritual integrity of the nation.
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