Emmanuel

            Could there be a more inauspicious beginning?  A poor married couple, living under an oppressive and brutal dictatorship, is ordered to travel miles from home only a few days before she is to give birth.  When she goes into labor, they take refuge in someone’s cave-like living place, and she delivers a son in a portion of the house usually reserved for the livestock.
           
           This, we are told, is the story of Emmanuel – how God came to live among us for a time.  It’s a story of hope amid despair, renewal amid devastation, love amid pervasive hate.
           
            I didn’t become a Christian until I was 52 years old.  I had rejected religion as harsh and judgmental, guided by rules and mythology made up by angry old men who claimed some kind of divine right.  About as believable as a fat guy in a red suit coming down my chimney with a bag of presents.  Bah, humbug!
           
           As I got older, however, and began to think about the enormity of the idea – God dwelling among us, taking our human form – I began to understand the power of the story.  The innocence of childhood.  The power of love to conquer hate.  The immediacy of reality over abstraction.  And it hit me.  A child is always meant to lead us, to show us the way.  How else will we ever know God?
 
           Flash forward to December 14, 2012, Newtown, Connecticut.  Twenty children murdered for no reason.  Twenty young faces flashed endlessly on television screens.  Twenty stories about dreaming to be an astronaut or a painter, or helping others, or always smiling, or loving peace, or being the “light of our family.”  And it struck me.  Every child is Emmanuel – fresh from the arms of God, full energy and passion and innocence, effortlessly showing us how things are meant to be. 
           
           It seems so futile.  Every child brings hope for a better world.  Then we snuff out that hope, over and over again.  Darkness falls.  Hopelessness returns. With what, then, are we left?  I guess it’s just this:  No matter how evil we become, no matter how selfish, blind, dishonest, greedy and murderous, hope does spring eternal with every birth of a child.

           O come, O come, Emmanuel!  And ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here.
           
          

Married

Lotte Lenya and Jack Gilford as forbidden lovers in "Cabaret," 1966

          A subplot in the 1966 Broadway musical “Cabaret” concerns the doomed romance of an elderly Jewish fruit vendor and his non-Jewish landlady in early-1930s Berlin.  Their love was taboo in the anti-Semitic German culture of the day, and their marriage was against the law – even before the Nazis made it a capital crime.  At one point, the man sings these words to his forbidden lover: 

How the world can change.
It can change like that-
Due to one little word:
"Married."
See a palace rise
From a two-room flat
Due to one little word:
"Married."

And the old despair
That was often there
Suddenly ceases to be.
For you wake one day,
Look around and say:
Somebody wonderful married me.

            I have thought about that a lot since Referendum 74 was approved by the voters in Washington, and same-sex marriage became legal in the state this month.  My partner Terry Bible and I have been together for 37 years.  We met in 1975.  Our relationship was still against the law in many states.  Those old laws were rarely enforced by then, but everybody knew they were on the books.  Even living in a big city like Los Angeles, we were cautious whom we told about having a “roommate.”  Our official status was always checked “single/never married,” our public lives were quite separate, and only those we chose to tell knew who we really were.  Prejudice, if it happened, wasn’t overt.  Just whispered.

            It has gotten so much better through the years.  The “stigma” that my mother worried so much about has pretty much disappeared.  We have lived in diverse communities in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Dallas, and have shared our lives openly with everyone.  It’s amazing how many straight couples these days tell us how much they admire the longevity of our relationship.

On our 30^th anniversary in 2005, we had a church wedding at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, before 200 friends and family members.  And since we moved to Coupeville in 2009, we have enjoyed a warm reception by this very friendly, close-knit community that we love so much.  This is where we intend to spend the rest of our lives.  On Dec. 6, the first day it was possible, we got a “legal” marriage license at the Island County Auditor’s office in Coupeville.  At least 10 other same-sex couples, most of whom had been together for many years just like us, were lined up, waiting for the office to open.  After the required three-day waiting period, we had a civil marriage service on Dec. 9, officiated by Coupeville Mayor Nancy Conard.

So, after 37 years together, with every aspect of our lives already enter-twined, and every human being we know already aware of who we are, what difference does “legal” marriage make?  A lot.  It feels good knowing that Terry has all the legal protections and benefits of any other spouse in Washington.  It feels good knowing that when I am introduced as his spouse, people will automatically know we’re married.  And it feels good knowing that all the young gay men and women who come after us won’t have to share their love in the shadows or pretend to be something they’re not or tell lies about the person they love.  They’ll be able to marry that person, just like anybody else can.

Most of all, it feels complete.  Somebody wonderful married me.  Thank you, Washington voters.  Thank you very much.