Soulforce Email Update - November 20, 2007

Dear Emily and Cory,

So much thought has gone into this letter, I have written it in my mind countless times, waking up to it, daydreaming it, and going to sleep with it: I so want to get it right.

Part of the timing thing, waiting so long after your wedding to give you your present is that it needs to be distanced from your wedding because that was all about you, your happiness, and your great love and commitment. But giving you a present includes me and my values, and I have a problem with being invited to a first class event as a second class citizen who can't participate in such a grand event. Another part of the timing thing is the googled answer to "wedding gift etiquette" which included the opinion that one has a full year to give the wedding present.

The range of response on this issue has been fascinating, from real life gay people boycotting family weddings to a fictional gay character picketing a family wedding (maybe you saw John Stamos in Wedding Wars) to straight people proclaiming they will not get married until gay people are allowed to.

I so want you to understand my motivations for my decision; can you imagine being african-american and being invited to lunch at an all-white private country club that wouldn't have you as a member?; or more hypothetically, being Susan B. Anthony and being invited by your male relatives to a party celebrating their right to vote? My Constitution tells me I am equal as a citizen, but my state tells me that I am not. I see such hypocrisy, Larry King can get married seven times, Elizabeth Taylor eight times, and Britney Spears gets married for 54 hours. And I can not go down once to the county courthouse, to the clerk to get one marriage license. I have gay friends in California who flew up to San Francisco and got married (when the mayor allowed it) only to have the state supreme court rule it didn't count! I have a college buddy in Ohio who has adopted a daughter with his "husband" and they deserve for their family the same 1200 different federal rights that you got when you got married. So, I know gay couples raising kids and I know straight couples with zero kids: How about this for logic; gay people are human, humans fall in love, gay people fall in love. Studies have shown that married people, on average, are slightly happier, healthier, and wealthier, and that is true for gay couples as well; so it makes sense that gay marriage is good for America. Domestic partnerships only give you a few hundred state rights, zero federal rights, they are not equal.

At first I thought to just give a donation in your name to soulforce.org, they are truly a great nonviolent and nonprofit grassroots organization working for gay equality, but I did go to your wedding and had a fabulous time. It was wonderful, your vows were incredibly progressive, personal, and so here and now, and I am grateful for the experience. So after much thought I have decided to compromise by giving you twelve porcelain chinese soup spoons and a one hundred dollar donation in your names to soulforce.org. I hope you look them up.

I hope you understand. I hope you can have empathy for my position because frankly there is a risk to this gift; you may dislike this decision to some degree or worse you may dislike me to some degree, and even further I may not get invited to some other family weddings and that is the risk I take because until I get the right to a civil marriage I will continue this gifting.

Sincerely,

Tom