(Not Quite) Out to Pasture: Knocking Down Walls

BY: CURTIS COMER

    This past weekend Tim and I were granted the honor of participating in the wedding of our two friends, Erin and Richard. It was a lavish affair, the likes of which this hillbilly, dressed in his rented tuxedo, had never seen, not in my family, anyway.

    For starters, the bride wasn’t pregnant.

    There was a string quartet, champagne toasts, appetizers passed around by servers and place cards on the table. Tim and I acted as ushers, decked out in tuxedoes carefully chosen by the bride and the groom. Erin, of course, looked stunning in her beautiful wedding gown. The next day, I described the scene to my friend, Kris, who rolled her eyes in response.

    "What?" I asked.

    "It figures," she replied. "Erin is tall, beautiful and has big boobs. It figures that she would have an amazing wedding, too."

    I laughed at Kris’ assessment of the night. Kris is tall and beautiful, too, but is nowhere near getting married. Her real issue, I guessed, was with the boobs. I went on to describe the hotel downtown where the reception was held. It was there, out on the large, open air terrace, where I got into the conversation of the coming smoking bans. One of my friends, a smoker, suggested that she disagreed with the decision since it was decided by a few aldermen, not by a popular vote.

    "If it had been decided by voters," she concluded, "then I would feel better about it."

    I thought about this for a moment, but was unable to agree. Voter decided issues don’t always go the way we hope, after all, and the recent repeal of the state law allowing gay marriage in Maine quickly came to mind. The irony of the situation, me playing usher at two friends’s wedding while Tim and I are legally barred from enjoying the same right, was a bit much. Both Erin and Richard would, I know, agree with me when I say this is unfair. Not that Tim and I put much stock into the whole marriage thing. I mean we’ve been a couple for almost eighteen years and the ceremony we had two summers back, a Neo-pagan hand fasting ritual, was really only something we did for ourselves. But I will never give up my opinion that everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, should be allowed to wed if they wish to.

    To date, thirty states, Missouri included, have amended their constitutions in a blatant, religiously driven move to ban gay marriage. "The righteous will of the people," insist the anti-gay marriage crowd.

    Only five states, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Iowa, allow gay unions.

    As I write this, I am reminded that today is the seventy-first anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. On Nov. 9, 1938, Nazi storm troopers smashed the windows of Jewish shops across Germany, signaling the unofficial start of the Holocaust. During the pogrom, some 7,500 Jewish owned shops were attacked and looted, two hundred synagogues were burned, and hundreds of Jews were killed and upwards of 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Dr. Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s minister for propaganda and the Gauleiter of Berlin, stated that the attacks were "the righteous indignation, the will of the German people against the Jews."

    I’m not saying that the fight for gays and lesbians to legally wed is comparable to the Holocaust, rather, that the case of popular opinion can often be flawed. It certainly is on the matter of gay marriage. Popular opinion was wrong in 1930s Germany, was wrong in the segregationist south and is wrong now. The oft repeated cry of the anti-gay marriage folk that "activist judges are ignoring the will of the people" could have been lifted directly from Dr. Goebbels’ diaries.

    Today, Nov. 9, marks another anniversary in Germany, this one more hopeful. On this day in 1989, the Kremlin decided after decades of Cold War stalemate, to lift travel restrictions from East to West. This act led, within days, to the dismantling of the despised Berlin Wall. With the destruction of the manmade barrier, families were reunited, people could once again move freely and Germany, split in half at the end of World War Two, began the task of reunification.

    It’s my hope that, in the argument over gay marriage, walls will begin to topple. We, as Americans, must begin the task of reunification regardless of race or religious credo. To continue to deny loving same sex couples the right to marry is not only wrong it is hateful.

    To my amazing friends, Richard and Erin, I wish many years of love and happiness. And for all of my gay and lesbian friends, I wish them the same.

    When the walls begin to come down, it will finally happen.

　You can email Curtis Comer at Greenwitchsf@aol.com