Forging a New Destiny

How do we discuss marriage with people who continue to think that same sex marriage is wrong? I don’t believe that explaining the historic facts around the biblical injunction would sway them. Nor would common sense rebuttals against “marriage being for the sole purpose of procreation.” What about couples, for example, who marry past their childbearing years, or who have no intention to have children? No matter how scholarly or well grounded the arguments for gay marriage may be, I don’t think this will help some people become more comfortable with it.

And I think I know the reason for this…it has to do with The Yuck Factor.

Most people outside of the LGBT community are used to heteronormative behaviors. For people who haven’t experienced love between two people of the same gender, it can be easy to consider same sex marriage as weird, abnormal and wrong. Intellectually, I can empathize with discomfort around gay marriage due to discomfort I have experienced in my own life.

The thing that caused me to exclaim ‘yuck’ was snakes. Slimy, scaly, slippery do-ers of evil. The legend tells that a snake tricked Eve to take a bite of the forbidden fruit. She tricked Adam, resulting in them (and by extension us) being thrown out of the Garden of Eden.

One day I took my then three-year-old nephew to the zoo. We saw the lions, the tigers and bears (oh my!). I’d never visited the children’s petting zoo until that day. It was just my luck that directly blocking the exit path was a teenage docent holding a snake, writhing up and down her left arm. Here I was, face to hissing face with one of my life’s nemeses. But damn if I was going to act like a wimp in front of my nephew, in front of the smiling docent, and in front of all these kids, eager to touch the snake. So I cautiously moved my hand off my nephew’s stroller and toward the reptile. Wow, it wasn’t slimy! The scales felt kinda neat, and I realized that my fears were unfounded. Here was one of God’s creations, one that I could probably admire, since the docent said it could do something I had always wanted to do: ingest an entire chocolate chip cookie at once! Perhaps the analogy in being comfortable with gay marriage is as simple. While most people are attracted to the opposite gender, there are those of us who aren’t. I don’t know why. I doubt science will be able to provide an answer. And I won’t look in the bible for the answer. It simply is.

How then do we get people past their unfounded fears and learn that there’s little, if no, substantive basis for The Yuck Factor? I believe it’s by us living our authentic lives…and by fighting for the rights to live our authentic lives based on the same (not similar, but the same) laws as the rest of the land. I am confident that one day in the not distant future, domestic partnerships will be a relic of the past and same sex marriage will be allowed in all 50 States. And one day even in Russia!

So I offer my Mazel tov to those couples who plan on marrying. And for those of us who aren’t interested in, or are at a point in a relationship to consider, marriage, we can advocate to others why this is important and right for society. I look forward to wishing many, many couples “Best Wishes,” whether I am their Officiant or whether I am watching them celebrate their nuptials.

Howard M Steiermann is an Ordained Ritual Facilitator based in San Francisco.