Much has been written about
the decision of a bare majority of Supreme Court justices to declare the
Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. The federal government must now treat
same-sex marriages as equal in all ways to heterosexual marriages. California’s
ban of gay marriage has been overturned. These are momentous decisions,
unthinkable not long ago. There is much to say about shifting public opinion,
partisan politics, and the evolving meaning of equal rights.
But I have been thinking
about love. The couples who brought the case to the Supreme Court made
courageous decisions about trying to gain equality of rights through a
protracted legal process. The word “love” is never mentioned in the decision to
overturn DOMA. Yet their journey began with falling in love. Love for each
other sustained them when their unions were not recognized by law. Edie Windsor
and Thea Clara Spyer were together for
42 years before Spyer died in 2009. The couples who contested California’s
Proposition 8, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, and Jeff Katami and Paul Zarrillo,
have been together for
over 15 years. Love brought them to get marriage licenses as soon as the
Supreme Court decisions were announced. They have now proclaimed their love in
formal ceremonies,
presided over by California Attorney General Kamala Harris and Los Angeles
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, respectively.
Homosexual love is not for
me. Since I was much too young to have any moral judgment or make any life
decisions, I was attracted to girls. I made no reasoned choices about love or
sex – I just felt things when I saw the girl I had a crush on in second grade
or the different girl I swooned over in the seventh grade. I looked at
photographs of beautiful women with great interest, and never connected the
word “beauty” with men.
I also never felt the love of
a boy for his sister, because I don’t have sisters, but I believe in that form
of love. I have no personal experience with the worshipful love for an older
sibling. That is also my understanding of homosexual love: I don’t have to
experience every type of love to know that love is the most wonderful feeling
one can have. I know that the love between two adults can bring daily joy to
ordinary life.
Our society frowns on some
kinds of love. Love for someone else’s spouse can spread profound unhappiness.
Sexual love for children can destroy their lives. Lust for bodies can be
confused with love for minds and souls.
But society also disdained
types of love which only harmed rigid ideologies. Homosexual love, like
interracial love, was once a love that in our culture could not speak its name.
False prejudices bolstered by selective biblical quotations proclaimed that
homosexuality was immoral, the same cultural process that declared black
inferior to white and slavery morally justifiable.
The truth is that same-sex
couples who have discovered love act on the most profound human emotion and
want only to share the greatest gift we can bestow. Their love has persevered
through hatred and discrimination and lies, not because it is rational, but
because it cannot be stopped by law or politics. I don’t have to participate in
it or even understand it. I just have to see its glow to know that it is good.
I don’t feel homosexual love,
but I love some homosexuals, in my family, among my colleagues and friends. Now
the law can support that love, instead of condemning it. Love is the law.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
Published in the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, July 2, 2013
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