Nov. 22, 2008 — Occasionally, when I visit my roots in Missouri or the Tennessee town our kids call “home” a couple refers to me as “the priest who married my wife and me.” Not so!
I have never married anyone other than my own wife. A wedding is an event, a marriage is a relationship. The wedding does not create the marriage; it simply acknowledges that it exists. The marriage is created by the couple themselves, they marry each other. A judge may declare the marriage legal according to state statutes; a clergyperson declares it acceptable to the Church. But the principals are the individuals themselves.
Any couple of legal age can publicly formalize their relationship by declaring their intentions in the presence of a notary public and filing a document with the County Court Clerk. No clergy, no judge, just the two of them and a witness to the signing of the contract.
What it comes down to is this: a couple is married if they say they are married. It is their choice, their decision. It remains for the society in which they live to acknowledge and accept their decision, or not.
My wife and I recently attended a wedding reception. It was a delightful event with happy people, convivial ambience, and enough delicious food to founder a regiment.
I did not preside at the wedding; that took place a few weeks ago in another city. The couple returned home to family and friends who feted the newlyweds with a gracious, emotionally moving occasion.
These are not starry-eyed, moonlight-and-soft-music-this-is-bigger-than-both-of-us-don’t-fight-it-dear youngsters. They have actually been married for 31 years, one-third of a century of living and loving, sharing and caring in a faithful, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, monogamous relationship that was not launched by a ceremony of any kind.
Not that they didn’t want one, but there was an impediment. Both of them are men.
This is one of those relationships that critics stridently decry as “going to destroy the sanctity of marriage for everybody in the country.” Marriage is both a legal contract and a personal covenant. This couple’s covenant has been in place and honored by them for 31 years without a binding legal contract; that’s nearly twice as long as the average conventional American marriage.
Family members of both of the couple waxed eloquent about the quality and character of their new in-law. Assuming that any who disapproved of the union would not attend such a celebratory bash, I quietly asked some members of both families if there were any for whom the same-gender marriage created any religious, moral, or interpersonal problems. Every response was an emphatic negative.
The problems and heartaches experienced by the two now legally married men have been daunting. Treated as pariahs by some, ridiculed by others, their integrity would not permit them to take the road other same-gender lovers have traveled: claiming to be cousins, becoming socially reclusive, hiding or denying the intimate nature of their relationship.
I admit to having some turgid visceral reactions to same-gender marriage; I am incapable of comprehending it. Then there’s the semantic thing; it totally changes the definition of “marriage.” I know all the arguments arrayed against it by many ignorant, malevolent people and some reasonable, well-meaning ones.
But the overriding issue, really the only relevant question, is: is there a valid reason why these two decent, honorable, loving, utterly responsible guys should not have the life they choose?
Editor's note: W. Jackson "Jack" Wilson is a psychologist, an Episcopal priest, a sometime academic and a writer living in Colorado. He writes with humor, whimsy, passion and penetrating insight into the human condition. And in Pushkin, Russia, a toilet is named in his honor.
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