By Charlie Smith, Charleston
My cousin Wil sent me a YouTube clip today of Keith Olbermann making some observations about how marriage has dramatically changed in this country. Olbermann talks about how on Nov. 4, 2008 we elected a president whose parents at the time of his birth were legally unable to marry in 16 of our 50 states. On this same day, a majority of the citizens of California decided to relegate gay and lesbian people to that same station in life in which Barack Obama’s parents were forced to live just 47 years ago when the soon-to-be leader of the free world was born.
Olbermann’s comments reminded me of something that I don’t think I have ever revealed in public about myself. Something in fact that I have rarely ever mentioned privately even to my parents and sisters. In 1993 my partner of six years, a very handsome and wonderful man whom some of you knew, asked me to marry him. I did not know what to say when I heard those words. I wasn’t necessarily opposed to the idea, but I’d just never really thought that anyone would ask me that question. Why would someone? I mean I’m a guy…and guys were the askers, not the askees…and I knew that I would likely never be asking anyone…at least in the sense that the target of that question would be a woman. I did not know what to say to him, so I said what I always said when my partner asked me to do something that was obviously important to him…I said “Of course I will!”
My next big surprise came when I discovered that Carlos did not intend for us to have a small private ceremony with a handful of our closest friends as I had envisioned. He wanted us to join 2600 other couples in front of the IRS Building in Washington, D.C on April 24, 1993, during the March on Washington to be married by the Reverend Troy Perry, Founder of the Metropolitan Community Church. This was the wedding that became known at the time as the largest same-sex wedding demonstration and celebration in history. And so on that crisp Saturday morning in our nation’s capital we donned our Sunday finest and did just that.
If you think the issue of marriage is controversial now, imagine what it was like fifteen years ago. It simply was not talked about. Even though I felt strongly that marriage was a simple matter of justice, I really was not prepared for or interested in discussing my views on the subject with anyone other than with my partner. Our marriage was a commitment between him and me and I’ve never really discussed the fact that it ever occurred with anyone else. To do so would have meant not only “coming out” all over again, but pushing loved ones, who had only recently come to terms with my relationship, beyond what I felt their comfort zones might be.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since 1993. My partner died on Easter Day 1995. I moved back to South Carolina from Miami the next year partly because I enjoyed social justice work and there was much more of it to be done in South Carolina than there was to be done in Miami; and partly because I felt that I was losing my connection with my family. Everyone was getting older. My niece and nephews were growing up and I missed my parents and sisters. The family that I had quietly created with my partner, for myself and for him alone, was gone…and I needed to be a part of a family. Thankfully I still had one to go to. Many of us don’t.
When I heard Keith Olbermann’s comments today, it made me think differently about my 1993 marriage to my partner and how the family that we had created fifteen years ago was distinctly different from the family that I had been born into. Olbermann’s comments made me realize that I have always had the right, if not the guts, to have both kinds of family. Olbermann made me realize that before Proposition 8, the Mormon Church and others came along who would steal from me my right to have a family, I actually had had that right…but was too afraid to fight for it. It is because we have not fought hard enough to keep that 14th Amendment right and because we have not publicly exercised that right that we are losing these battles. We have also not yet enlisted the support of all our friends and loved ones who might support us that we are losing these battles…and that’s what this letter is about. Asking you to support us…or to at least rethink your discomfort with the issue if you still have that discomfort.
On June 12th 2007 Mildred Loving, the plaintiff in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, issued a rare public statement prepared for delivery on the 40th anniversary of that decision by the US Supreme Court. She is the embodiment of what marriage is about and she was unambiguous in her comments on how the 1967 case guarantees marriage equality for all people:
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.
I am ashamed that I have not talked about this issue sooner and I hope that for those of you who are still uncomfortable with the subject, please know that you are not alone, but understand that being uncomfortable, in an of itself, does not give anyone the right to deny another person the most basic right of creating his or her own family.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Yours truly,
Charlie Smith