Chapter 4: Not the Marrying Kind

As Andrew Sullivan, junior editor at The New Republic in 1989 saw it, marriage could transform gay people’s lives. Not only would it clear a path for full equality, as Evan Wolfson had argued in his thesis a few years earlier, but it could protect the gay community from the AIDS epidemic by fostering more careful sex. It was a cultural inoculation in the absence of a real vaccine.

But to radical queers, marriage was itself a virus, a tool of the oppressor that, if adopted by homosexuals, would degrade their very identity from the inside out. And to conservatives, gay marriage was an assault on decency. If AIDS was “nature’s retribution for violating the laws of nature,” as Pat Buchanan said in 1992, surely heterosexuals were entitled to exact some retribution as well.

Virus or vaccine, punishment or reward, marriage had become a crossroads of ideologies, a metaphorical battleground with a literal body count.

"At the time, it seemed like it was the fucking end of the world," Sullivan told me, years later, while waiting for his husband to join him at a Provincetown bar. “I mean, I can’t tell you how scary it was. Everybody knew they could die, and there didn't seem to be any cure. Part of that gave me the courage to go out and make that argument. Because I thought it was going to be the last argument I would ever make.”

Music:
In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Chapter 3: Know Who Your Enemies Are

“Marriage felt impossible for so long. This impossible thing you’re never going to get, so don’t bother asking for it,” said Dan Savage. But: “it doesn’t get better for us in a vacuum. It gets better FOR us because straight people get better ABOUT us.”

I chatted with Dan and with Fred Karger about what life was like for gays in the 1970s, and their two very different ways of dealing with it: for Fred, a gay Republican, there was safety in hiding. But Dan, despite being raised in a Roman Catholic household, came emphatically out of the closet at an early age and let the straight world know that any discomfort they felt was their own doing.

From within the belly of the beast, Fred was able to rally opposition to homophobic legislator John Briggs long before it was safe for him to do so publicly. But ultimately, hiding proved far more destructive than coming out.

After all, if queers were ever going to demand full equality, first they’d have to reveal themselves. They’d have to exist. Then they could get down to the work of making things better.

Music:
In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Chapter 2: To be Let in, not Just Left Alone

It was the mid-1970s in Seattle when a twenty-something radical named Faygele Ben Miriam dragged his boyfriend Paul to a King County office to demand a marriage license. They never managed to get one, but if they'd walked into the office of Boulder county clerk Clela Rorex, she'd have defiantly handed one to them on the spot.

These pioneers were the first vanguard of a new post-Stonewall marriage equality movement, and the overwhelming consensus was that they were nuts. Marriage for homosexuals was too ludicrous an idea to take seriously, and those few activists who spoke out for the cause were shunned and ridiculed.

Decades later, the auditor who rejected Faygele Ben Miriam’s license later became one of the state’s leading voices for marriage equality (on behalf of his lesbian daughter). Clela Rorex’s successor, forty years later, led the charge for equality across all of Colorado.

Everyone thought that early vanguard was crazy. It turns out they were visionaries.

Here are some of the clips discussed on the podcast of the 1971 New York marriage counter zap:

Music:
In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Chapter 1: Imperfect Man

It’s March of 2013, and there’s a battle playing out at the Supreme Court, both inside and out. On the steps of the courthouse, protestors wave competing signs; inside, the justices grill attorneys on who gets to decide the meaning of marriage. It’s a gulf that for years has divided the whole country: marriage for same sex-couples versus preserving of the status quo. Some protestors say that God defines marriage. Others say that it’s defined by the state. Most couples just want to say “we’re married” and be done with it. So who gets to choose?

To answer that question, I’ve journeyed to Washington to witness the protests and to watch the Justices deliberate. I explore the personal stake of the activists and attorneys before the court, and delve into artifacts from long-gone same-sex couples who, in decades past, somehow found a way to define their relationships on their own terms. 

I come away with more questions than answers. It’s just the beginning of a saga that will take me back in time and around the country, and force me to confront own conflicted relationship with marriage and with my own partner.

As mentioned in this week's chat at the end of the chapter, here's my video about the Equality Act, as well as Stuart and John talking about why marriage matters.

Music:
In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Defining Marriage Introduction

Hello friends, and thanks for subscribing to the Defining Marriage podcast. You'll get one complete and unabridged chapter every week of my book, Defining Marriage: Voices from a Forty-Year Labor of Love. 

This show, like the book, traces the decades-long evolution of marriage through the personal stories of those who lived through it. We'll take an intimate glimpse into the private lives of those who dreamed of marriage in the 1970s, the survivors of the 1980s, the audacious pioneers of the 1990s, the tireless soldiers of the 2000s, and the champions who won marriage today. Defining Marriage is the story of how people from all walks of life fought to change marriage -- and how fighting for marriage, in turn, changed them.

If you're the impatient type and you'd like to read the whole thing all at once, you can download a digital version over on Amazon. It's available for free during its first week in the store, July 13th to 17th, and just $9.99 after that.

This podcast audiobook version will always be free, and if you find it worthwhile, all I ask is that you give it a rating and review on the iTunes store -- that feedback makes a huge difference, and I read it all. 

Since this is the first episode, I'm going to start things off at the beginning, with the book's introduction. It's a little shorter than the rest of the chapters, but stick around afterwards for a little post-chapter discussion with me and a special guest.

Music:
In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/