How the California Supreme Court made an honest woman out of me, same-sex marriage, and the Prop 8 campaign

There’s a time during the preschool years when kids get fascinated by weddings. Maybe they see a wedding party on the steps of a local church, and stop to watch the pageantry. Maybe they page through their parents’ wedding album while mom or dad is on the phone or folding laundry. Maybe one of their classmates actually gets to be that cute flower girl or ring bearer in a wedding, or maybe they attend a wedding themselves. But definitely, around age three or so, they are into weddings. They play pretend wedding; my daughter at that age insisted on being a bride for Halloween.

And they have lots of questions about weddings. One question my son had at that age (quite a few years ago now) was “Can boys marry boys?”

Now if you’ve got a three-year-old in the house, you know that while three-year-olds have a lot of questions, they don’t have patience for long answers. And since he hit me with this question as I came through the gate at preschool pickup, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about an answer. I quickly considered the possible response, “Well, boys can fall in love with other boys, and be families together, but they can’t get married.” If I said that, he’d obviously ask, “Why not?” and I didn’t have a short answer for that one. Or, truthfully, even a long one that made any sense.

So I lied. “Yes, boys can marry boys."

“Then I’m going to marry my best friend,” he told me, satisfied. I found out later the discussion in preschool that day was about who was going to marry who, his classmates were determined to pair  everyone up, and he needed to come up with a name, fast. His classmates were perfectly happy to match boys with boys, just as long as every kid had someone to marry, so his problem was solved.

I hadn’t thought about this incident in years, until the Yes on Prop 8 campaign started running that ad that presents as a horror story the fact that in states that allow gay marriage kindergartners are told that boys can marry boys, and that this is somehow R-rated information that should be withheld until adulthood. Weird concept, particularly because, in my experience, marriage education happens unofficially long before kindergarten, and has nothing to do with sex, but it did remind me that, since California now indeed permits boys to marry boys, I can stop calling my statement of so many years ago a lie, it was simply prescient.

I also hadn’t thought about what kids whose parents are two men or two women in a place where they can’t legally get married feel like during that marriage-fascination phase. What do the parents of these kids, 52,000 in California, tell them when they ask to see the wedding pictures?

Then I saw this amazing video, put together by Bill Walker, a friend of a friend of mine, that looks at Prop 8 from the point of view of these children. He explains in an email (excerpted below with permission) why he made it.

Kelly and I were married on June 17, after nine happy years together.  Next to the births of our children, it was the most joyful day of our lives.  For our 7-year-old daughter Elizabeth, it was the high point of our family’s life.  She was bursting with pride all summer.  Until she heard about Proposition 8.

Our most compelling reason for choosing marriage had less to do with romance than with the benefits marriage would provide our kids.  Not just the many legal protections marriage automatically confers on children, but the more real, everyday benefit of knowing that their family is equal, not in some different, lesser legal category than all their friends’ families. 

Our daughter is upset about Proposition 8.  The other day we passed a newspaper stand that had a “Yes on Proposition 8” bumper sticker on it.  She became visibly agitated, as she has recently whenever she sees one of the ubiquitous “Yes on 8” yard signs.  She asked if I would stop the car so we could take down the bumper sticker.  I explained to her that there’s a thing called freedom of speech in our country, and that everyone has the right to express their opinion, as long as they’re not hurting anyone.  She said, “But they are.  They’re hurting our family. Why would anybody want to do that?”   Try answering that one.

So I made the video.

You can watch Bill’s 1-minute video below.