I had a pretty interesting conversation last week with Dr. M.V. Lee Badgett, author of  Money, Myths, and Change: The Economic Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men and most recently of When Gay People Get Married, based on her study of the relative state of several European countries where gays have been “allowed” the right to marry.  I’ll be posting that interview in the coming days. 

As things often do, it got me thinking.  I’m a staunch gay marriage supporter and was devastated by the loss in California in 2008.  It made me physically sick – gut-wrenching agony the day we went down in flames.  Why?  Why is it so important to me?

Because I believe in marriage.  I believe wholeheartedly that when a legal construct is formed around a relationship it strengthens the bond.  That it makes it harder to leave.  That when you are a part of it, it allows you to move among others as equals.   That most couples tend to work harder when bound by law in maintaining the relationship.  And, truth be told, more gays and lesbians have been hurt than not by the legal inequity that currently exists.

Find a gay person who doesn’t know another gay person who has been unable to get employer-provided health insurance for their families, lost their home due to their partner’s death, not been able to make the final life medical decisions, been shut out of their partner’s funeral, had to pay taxes on jointly owned property after death, lost child custody, or been completely cleaned out by rabid families who didn’t recognize the union they had formed without benefit of law.

And, I believe that by the nature of the way our government has been constructed and our society has evolved, that the institution affords protections, rights, and responsibilities that one group should not be excluded from. Ones that don’t require us to pay thousands of dollars to attorneys so we can have papers drawn for every single aspect of our legal lives when if straight, would be automatically granted.  And it’s the only way we have in our current cultural evolution to get what I believe should be fundamental rights for all citizens.

Right, preaching to the choir.

Other countries have eliminated the difference.  But, their cultures don’t necessarily limit the definition of relationship to one finite and stagnate visage.  There are options.

Here, many thinkers have posed options and bandied them about. Like making it civil marriage for all.  Making marriage one ruled solely at the federal level.  Abolishing it completely.  And even creating ways for non-matrimonial partnerships/close relationships to be recognized (like sisters or two close friends or mother and daughter)  so the participants can then be afforded things like health insurance and tax benefits and rights of probate.  A lot of those ideas are sound in theory.   But, that takes a cultural shift so great, it seems an impossibility.  It’s far bigger than the one we are fighting now – the one surrounding the word “marriage.”

The word itself has taken on some sort of mystical meaning for both sides.  But, until we are all able to share the word, the fight goes on.

And, that’s what the interview with Dr. Badgett will focus on.  I hope you’ll join me.