At the risk of overloading you on Prop 8 references, go read “Gay Marriage Revealed the Worth of My Own,” by Jeremy Adam Smith, founder of the blog Daddy Dialectic (itself a great read for anyone interested in gender and parenting). The piece appeared last Friday in the San Francisco Chronicle, and begins with the assertion, “Judge Vaughn Walker has overturned Proposition 8—just in time to save marriage from the mess heterosexuals have made of it.”
Smith writes of how same-sex couples are “an integral part” of his community in San Francisco and how “An attack on [my friends’] lesbian marriage—for that’s how we perceived Prop. 8, regardless of its intent—felt like an attack on all of us, straight and queer alike.”
He explains how he became a father with his female partner before they felt the need to get married, and how it was in part the struggle of same-sex couples for the right to marry that led them to tie the knot. “With Judge Walker’s decision,” he says, “I hope we will soon be seeing more and more gay and lesbian couples join us in pulling marriage back from the brink of irrelevance.”
Destroying marriage? No. We might just be saving it. And knowing we have allies like Smith gives me great hope.