OPINION

Published Monday, May 03, 2004
Marriage of the Heart
By Katie Brown

Harvard is in Massachusetts. When I decided to pursue my master’s degree in education at Harvard, I had no idea that this simple fact of geography would take on such significance for me. I didn’t know that events in this Commonwealth would turn my world topsy-turvy and make me examine many things about the way I live my life and what my future will hold.

For the last six years, I have lived my life in shadows. Although I am generally a very open and honest person, I have shrouded one very important aspect of my life in secrecy and deception. They say experience is the best teacher, and my experience taught me that I could lose my job in education by not hiding who I love. A lifetime of church teaching taught me that love is of great value, but only if that love is between people in certain categories. And over the years, this society has taught me in a myriad of ways that my love is deviant, and that the simplest gesture of affection between my lover and I such as holding hands or a peck on the lips should elicit discomfort, ridicule, or even physical violence toward us on the part of any onlookers.

But the Supreme Court of Massachusetts disagrees. In a landmark decision in November, the majority of justices decided that our love is not something we need to hide, but something we should be allowed to celebrate. Marriage is an antithesis of secrecy. It is an open declaration to the whole world of the deepness of commitment to one’s love for another person. And marriage is something that I thought I would never experience.

It is not that our love doesn’t have the ingredients for a successful marriage. We have a strong commitment of over six years that life has tested in many ways. A few years ago, Suzy insisted on staying by my side as I recuperated from surgery resulting from an accident, and then worked herself ragged to nurse me back to health so I wouldn’t have to drop out of college. We have both lost jobs for being a couple, have endured financial and personal hardship to support each other’s advanced education, and have comforted each other as we mourned the death of loved ones and through times of personal illness. We look forward to sharing our capacity for love with children some day and our most treasured fantasy is to be two white-haired old ladies sitting on a porch swing as the sun goes down in the twilight of our years on this earth.

Until now, the law of our land has been interpreted to mean that none of those ingredients matter unless the participants are of the opposite gender. Since our love did not meet that one criterion, we fully expected that we would never be allowed the benefits and responsibilities of marriage. We experience the constant worry that comes with not having the security of knowing that should tragedy strike and one of us is incapacitated or killed, that the other one would be able to make important medical decisions on our behalf or be able to mourn properly. Unfortunately, this is not a theoretical scenario for us. Suzy has already lived through it once. Her previous girlfriend of almost five years sacrificed her life for Suzy by swerving her bicycle into the path of a drunk driver, but Suzy was unable to visit her in the hospital as she lay in a coma or to publicly mourn at her funeral.

Some would argue that civil unions are an adequate compromise for same-sex couples. But these and domestic partnerships, I have come to discover, are not enough. Only marriage would have given me the option of living in Harvard-affiliated housing with my partner. Only marriage can assure that we can someday share guardianship of children together. Marriage gives 1,600 rights that most couples take for granted. These are basic rights that we too deserve.

Strange as it may sound, it wasn’t easy for me to demand these rights. I had deeply internalized the messages that society had drilled into me that there is only one acceptable way to love and create a family through marriage. I have read the Bible, studied the history of how marriage has been defined, and examined arguments on both sides. The preceding sentence makes it sound like I did this in a vacuum. I did not. My classes taught me the value of embracing diversity and acknowledging individual differences. I had long, and often late-night, conversations about the theology and politics of same-sex marriage with classmates from the School of Education and from other schools like the Kennedy School of Government and the Divinity School. Classmates (and the spouses and partners of classmates) offered me unprecedented support and acknowledgement of my relationship with Suzy. Listening to the stories of the depth of commitment and love between heterosexual married and long-term couples allowed me to see that their experiences mirrored mine and hearing the longings of single individuals showed me how much I have to cherish in my relationship with Suzy.

Although I acknowledge and respect the viewpoints of those who think that marriage should be reserved for heterosexuals, I have come to believe that especially with issues of ambiguous interpretations, the scales of justice should always be tipped in favor of love.

I cannot predict what our future will hold. I don’t know if same-sex marriage will become a reality in Massachusetts or if the ruling will be overturned in time. I didn’t predict nine months ago when I started my program that the prospect of marriage would elevate Massachusetts to the top of our list of places to live after my graduation. I don’t know if we will eventually be granted a legal marriage or one that is recognized under religious institutions. What I do know for sure is what Suzy and I have now and will always have, is a marriage of the heart.

Katie Brown is a masters candidate in Technology in Education. Her fiancée Suzy has her masters degree in Social Work from the University of Southern California and currently resides in Virginia.

Learn more about the debate about same-sex marriage in Massachusetts: http://www.boston.com/news/specials/gay_marriage/