The date is getting near May 28, 2008

California is going ahead with its plans to allow gay couples to marry, starting June 17, because technically, the state supreme court still has until the end of June 16 to decide whether to delay its previous ruling.

I still feel very apprehensive and a little unloved because I know there’s those lurkers out there, quite willing to steal our legal happiness away.

In my part of the state, only 38% of people approve of gay marriage. And most of them are probably gay themselves, I joked.

I don’t think I really thought seriously about how hatred and misunderstanding and faceless judgment of me and my love really hurt until it came down to trying to snatch it back away. It’s like handing a child a shiny toy for one minute and then snatching it away and crushing it underfoot, and watching that child cry. Cruel, unnecessary.

The conservatives just can never be content with losing. As if loving someone was losing.

We need more love and understanding in this world, not less. I don’t want to hate anyone, but I am prepared to hate a group of people willing to take away this one little thing that has come to mean so much to me: being just like everyone else, with the same rights as anyone else.

Can’t help it May 24, 2008

I just had a pleasant conversation with my mom. I told her I was going back to school. And she even seemed *almost* proud, an emotion she hasn’t directed my way in almost two years, ever since I came out to her in Sept. 2006.

Further, she mentioned LIzzie’s name, and asked her role in this entire school bit. (”Yes, she’s moving, no she’s not in school, she’ll be helping to support me.”) That’s all that was said of her, but it was a start.

I hadn’t wanted to tell her about school since that whole conversation a few months back, when she was saying how big a burden it was to be nice to me. But it came up, and she was in a good mood, so I told her.

I shouldn’t be happy. I know this is fleeting. But for the moment, I’ll allow myself to smile.

Happy and angry, all in the same day May 15, 2008

Today should be a happy day for me. A happy day for us both.

An interested friend called and asked me if I’d been on the internet lately. I had finished my morning reading and had moved on to yoga and was planning to take a swim.
She started reading a story about the California Supreme Court’s ruling that domestic partnerships do not go far enough in ensuring equality for gays. The moment we’d been waiting for.
A few months ago, Jade and I half-wondered whether we should hold off on our ceremony until the Supreme Court ruled, one way or another. But then we knew it would be in limbo for a bit, and maybe they would uphold the ban against same-sex marriage. So we figured if it did go through, we could just easily and quietly go ahead and get married again, this time with the paperwork.
Well, I was happy. I am happy. I actually cried a little bit later, at the thought of what this meant for us.

Equality.

Even if outside the state, people still think we’re wackos, offensive in the eyes of god.

Then I got to work. I can’t really explain what I do, or what was said, on this blog. Suffice it to say that it was a topic of discussion and that eventually I got very offended. But that I couldn’t fully express my disgust. Because I’m not entirely out at work. I was sitting next to a closeted man who also showed restraint.

And I couldn’t win that argument. I thought about dropping the L bomb right there and then, but then I still wouldn’t have won. I might have been the topic of snickering. And it wasn’t an appropriate place, other to say that I thought that the discussion was offensive and pandering to the lowest common denominator.

So it was both a high and low day for me. I just have to reconnect with my happiness, to replace the dull burning anger at a workplace which is supposed to be more progressive than that, but isn’t.

Got our pictures May 13, 2008

We got the rest of our pictures last week. Tons of them. So when I got the chance, I had a bunch of them printed from the DVD our friend sent, and started assembling the predesigned wedding scrapbook a friend had given us a few months before the wedding.

I know nothing about scrapbooking and actually have little interest in it. But I did pick up some wedding-themed scrapbook stickers.

I also don’t like defacing pictures by cutting them, so in a few places, I cheated in placing the photos. I didn’t cut them to fit in their cute little frames. I couldn’t bear to.

I also haven’t glued the pictures down, which I suppose I should do.

Really, putting the scrapbook together right away was a cheap excuse to be able to show up at our minister’s bookstore and ask for some advice. She did ask to see the pictures.

We’ll do that tomorrow. Jade is taking another big plunge; she was accepted to the law school of her choice and now we have to figure out what to do. We were going to ask our minister what the right choice was, but I think we’ve already made it by asking the advice of anybody who would listen.

Jade will go to the nicer law school, three hours away from our condo, and quit her job here. And find a job up there. And find a place up there. In about two months.

Our heads are just spinning. Just after they’d stopped spinning from wedding planning.

We don’t know what we’re going to do about me. I don’t want to stay in my job here. I don’t want to be apart from Jade. But we’re a little wary of trying to rent out our place, and I also don’t want to be running away from a good-paying job just because I don’t like it.

So I don’t know what we’re going to do.

Look at some more pictures, I suppose, and remember how happy we were, and still are. Show the pictures to the minister anyway and see if she thinks we made the right decision, or if she thinks I should try really hard to get a job in two months too.

Jade, being jaded, doesn’t think the minister really wants to hear it. But she’s a friendly breath of light in the room. Always happy, smiling, hugging. And I’m NOT a huggy person, but I don’t mind a hug from the minister. Even being an atheist, as I am.

Meanwhile, I’d like to do something with the photos. Maybe post some more up here when I feel like it. Maybe set up an online album through Flickr or something, but not linked to my main Flickr account so that the people I don’t want to know that we got married just won’t know.

Jade and I also took a multimedia class this semester, and learned how to assemble a slideshow in the process of making a professional-looking DVD.

I also have plans to have a couple of coffee-table books made of our wedding pictures through blurb.com.

I love photography, you see, and someday, I’d like to get a vanity book of my own photos made. But I think getting a book made of our wedding would be pretty cool, even if we’d be the only people to ever look at it.

Yes, I did the scrapbook, but it only hold so many pictures. And I want to have something truly special and different.

Plus, it just sounded cool to try. Along with making our own DVD. (Relax, we will never inflict the DVD or wedding book on people unless they really want to look.)

Do ask, do tell May 3, 2008

I’d love to trade spaces with a straight person for a day. Well, that’s not entirely fair because I told myself I was a straight woman for several years, so I suppose I’ve been there and done that.

But bear with me. I’d like to get a nice, sheltered, hetero married woman to step into my shoes for a day. Preferably one who feels that any sign of gayness is being all up in someone’s face about it.

So hetero woman, I ask you this:

• You’re filling out applications for school. Do you fill out the space that says spouse/partner? What do you put there?
• Someone asks you if you’re married. What do you tell them? Do you lie? Change the subject? Tell the truth?
• An otherwise tolerable stranger blurts out something being “so gay.” What do you say? Or better yet, a coworker blurts out something being “so gay.” Or your boss. How far do you take a response? Or do you chicken out, say nothing?
• Someone mentions your husband’s name, calls him your “little friend.” How do you respond?

We face a million little decisions every day about being out. I find myself being out, then closeted, around the same people in the same day, wondering if they notice my terminology change throughout the day. “My partner… my roommate…”

Right now, my current policy is, “if they ask, I will tell. If they freak out, they shouldn’t have asked.” A coworker asked me the other day if I was married, and I replied, “technically, yes,” which isn’t the best response, but I was kinda surprised he hadn’t figured it out yet, with four matching rings between Lizzie and I, our living arrangements, etc etc. etc.

I’m lucky in that my workplace is a fairly friendly place to be. There are a TON of gay people there. My department alone I’m fairly sure is half gay. But, as Lizzie points out, they’re all closeted. Well, except for the ones who aren’t. But anyhow, we’re part of a club where not all the members are hip to the others. Unless they are. Who the hell knows. Does your head hurt yet?

But anyway… a million little decisions. And in the end, the choices we make about the information we give out may not mean a thing. I wonder sometimes: What if I get into a wreck while alone in my car, or I collapse at the gym during my customary wee-morning visits to the treadmill? If the ambulance is called, will anyone tell Lizzie? I mean, who would think to call a woman to come after another, grown-ass woman? Will they just call my mom, who will then try to ensure that, even two thousand miles away, Lizzie will have no say in what happens? This scenario, actually, was what sparked the entire wedding talk to begin with. We have the requisite legal papers drawn up, but I don’t know if they’d do anybody any good if everyone doesn’t know what’s going on. And this doesn’t even count the horror stories of hospitals and things not honoring those agreements or waiting until the partner dies …

There’s a lot of risk involved with just trying to be honest — risk of losing a job, risk of bodily harm, risk of important decisions being scuttled away from one’s partner. And this is something that people who use homosexuality as a political scare mongering tactic will never, or never want, to understand.

How hard May 2, 2008

I was just thinking about our engaged friends, K & M. How one day they might have a wedding ceremony like us.

Or almost like us. K & M are guys. I never really thought about how much easier it must have been, comparitively, to plan a wedding around two lesbians. How hard would it be for a couple of guys? They would just have to fight against even more stereotypes and gender roles.

It was kind of fun for Jade to wear her suit and me to wear a dress. I don’t see K or M considering anything like that. How much harder is it for two grooms? Would they want flowers? Could they find another gay-friendly florist? Of course, they live in Orange County, so that’s probably one of the best places to try to find a gay-friendly wedding vendor, outside of San Francisco, perhaps.

And K & M will be in the same boat as we were. Parents in denial. Parents pretending they don’t know. They’ll have to make it up in friends, which they have a lot of. More than we do. Would it be a big wedding? A small wedding?

I asked K & M when they were going to get married, and I kind of got that look like they’d wished I hadn’t asked. So I didn’t get an answer, either. It’s probably just the equivalent of your Aunt Harriet asking you when you plan on getting married to some nice young man, when you don’t even have a boyfriend. And aren’t even straight.