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Anniversary
The check arrived in the mail yesterday,
a $60.00 refund for our marriage license
stating that the Oregon Supreme Court has invalidated
our union, all nineteen years of it. People like us
are not allowed to marry.
I am:
what they mean when they say “culture wars”,
the reason our president was re-elected,
a threat to every straight marriage,
news of the fall of civilization,
a sign of decaying morals,
the wolf at the door of family values,
even, one man said, quite possibly the cause
of the destruction of the twin towers.
I never knew I was that dangerous.
Every morning over breakfast
I hear on the radio
the voices of those who hate me,
those who make it their
business to hate us for who we are and
<p">who we love.According to them, our fight for equal rights
to love and to marry, to fair housing and employment,
to raise healthy children, to see ourselves reflected in positive ways
in books and on TV, to let young gays and lesbians know they are not alone,
to be safe in our homes and on the streets--
is just the homosexual “agenda”.
Parents and preachers,
lawyers and politicians,
get a life I think, what would you do with your time
if you didn’t have our dangerous love to fight?
A sin is knowingly polluting the earth for profit,
A sin is killing women, children, fathers and brothers and sons
for oil or land or power.
A sin is not thinking about our children’s children’s children with each decision that we make.
My love is not a sin.
I have a photograph of our handfasting ceremony,
my right hand clasped over your left hand,
fingers entwined, the red silk cord
that binds us still spiraling up our arms. I remember
that slow turn to face you, the unexpected power of our vows--
giving voice to promises we’ve been keeping, unstated,
in all our years together.
This much is true: I am a woman with grey in her hair, a mixed-blood Cherokee-Irish adoptee with two artificial hips and a couple of disabled welsh corgi dogs, I am teacher and writer and daughter and sister and friend and neighbor and, whether the city, the state or even the constitution recognizes or sanctions it, I am married to another woman, in heart, body, mind, in all my outlaw self.