I am reminded each day I park my car that the pressure will never subside. A billboard from a storage company cries out to couples tying the knot: "IF YOU DON'T LIKE GAY MARRIAGE, DON'T GET GAY MARRIED."It's not the political message that's killing me. It's the marital call to arms.
The pressure began on a subway platform the day our daughter Luna, 6, and her best friend, Jackie, 7, saw a newspaper with drawings of double brides and double grooms. The state of New York had saddled same-sex couples with the same stress long available to everyone else: the pressure to marry. And they were starting with our kids.
Jackie to Luna: Are your mommies going to get gay married?
Luna: Mama, are the mamas getting gay married?
Me: (Silence)
Luna: Don't get gay married because I don't want to be the flower girl.
Jackie: You don't have to go. You can do a sleepover at my house.
Luna (eyebrows gathered, arms crossed): Mama, can you please marry Mami so I can do a sleepover at Jackie's house?
The biggest life question facing my partner, Mafe (Maria Fernanda or Mah-Feh) and me boils down to this: Does Luna get a sleepover at Jackie's house?
Mafe called me while I was on a reporting trip for CNN to tell me the New York State Legislature had voted to allow gays to marry. I reminded her she has been saying she wouldn't marry me for the last 10 years.
"That's not the point," she said. "It's big news."
It was big news, but I'm a journalist who distances herself from debate on any issue that requires my objectivity. Vermont granted civil unions, New Jersey offered domestic partnerships, Massachusetts granted marriage, people in dozens more states defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Even if I had taken any of this personally, racing to some other state to get hitched seemed more like activism than a wedding. Why would I get married in Massachusetts if I live in New York?
The news came home when New York's politicians made this burning issue a nonissue, just by letting the marriages take place. My heterosexual neighbors invited us to the Gay Pride March so they could mark the occasion. I told them I don't participate in political marches. So they called me a bore and went alone!
One lesbian couple asked if we wanted to marry at City Hall with a big group of couples. Uh, nope. We couldn't go more than a day without someone asking: "When's the wedding?" By October, nearly 2,000 gays and lesbians had married in New York City alone and the press had stopped covering it altogether. The wedding announcements became mundane.
Marriage rates overall are sliding even as divorce is on the rise. This latest development was about a civil contract, not a personal, emotional or religious commitment that people are free to choose.