Even without legal status, same-sex marriage serves an ideal

Last November, in Berkeley, Calif., my friends Kat and Jack were married. Their union was not legally recognized; biologically, they are both women. Despite this, their joy was untamed, as was mine.

It's funny the way things can happen at precisely the time you need them to.

It just happened that on this particular November day I'd read something in the news, regarding same-sex marriage, that infuriated me. I no longer remember what it was, but I remember that it prompted an argument between me and a member of my family.

As a straight man, my passion for the legalization of same-sex marriage can be considered the support of an ally. As an African-American, my passion can be seen through the lens of civil rights. It is actually more personal than that.

As an adult, I realize how fortunate I was to grow up in a stable household. My parents are still happily married. I'd always taken this for granted. I now see that my parents gave me a gift: a positive model of what marriage can be.

I've never given up on that ideal, and when I see it being abused for politics, it hurts me personally. Not simply as an ally, not simply as an African-American. It hurts me as a human, and it does every day.

I have a poet friend who once wrote about how his grandmother, through her troubled marriage, taught him fidelity, devotion to an ideal even after it has been damaged. This spoke to me. My friend challenged me, as someone not involved in the protests and marches, to decide what it was that I personally could do.

On the day that my friends Kat and Jack were married in California, here in Minnesota I read something about same-sex marriage and got into a heated argument with a relative. It was the angriest I had been that entire year. I hopped on the bus and fought tears on my way to work. I stopped at a Dunn Brothers and had to chuckle bitterly when I saw the soup selection. It was "Italian Wedding."

When I came home, I saw pictures posted online of Kat's and Jack's wedding. In that moment, all the politics vanished. Eight months later, I cannot recall what it was in the news that set me off. It's a blur in the face of those photos from Kat's and Jack's wedding. In the long run, their joy outlived my anger.

I have mixed feelings whenever I'm invited to a wedding. But I go anyway. That ideal of marriage is still there for me, whether the marriage is legal or not. To use a sports analogy, it's like when my hometown of Detroit embraced a local baseball pitcher for achieving a perfect game, even though it was officially botched by an umpire and would not be recognized by the league. We all knew it was true.

That's how I feel with Kat and Jack. We know it's true.

We'll just wait for the law to catch up.

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Khary Jackson, St. Paul, is a teaching artist and playwright.

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