So, Wednesday morning, with thousands of others, I opened SCOTUSblog’s live feed, and by 10:01am I knew that my forthcoming marriage to a woman would have all the legal rights of my previous marriages to men. (Yeah, yeah, in addition to ten years of marriage to Isaac Bonewits, I had a brief teen marriage: Read all about it in my memoir, Merry Meet Again.)
I cried like a baby.
I cried and then I woke my fiance from a sound sleep, and we held each other, and then I let her go back to sleep, and then I cried some more.
I don’t even know how to say what I feel. That this is right, that this is just, that this is fair, and decent, and fundamentally American–all that is true. But it’s more than that. Five years ago, when I was a bisexual woman who dated men almost exclusively, I would have celebrated, I would have cheered, I would have been overjoyed. But now? Now it is about my full-fledged membership in the public square. Homophobia hasn’t gone away. Gay bashing hasn’t gone away. Hate and bigotry and well-meaning insistence on second class status haven’t gone away. But I feel like my true American citizenship has been affirmed. Like I can walk with my beloved anywhere, and the highest court in the land affirms our right to hold our heads high. (And, yeah, Scalia is a douchebag, but whatever.)
On a practical level, it means I can write a will without worrying about my spouse being screwed by unfair inheritance taxes, and it means I can add her to my health insurance without paying a penalty.
The battle is won, the war goes on. My heart is full of hope for the future and my eyes are wet with tears.
