Maine Marriage

Two of my best friends from Smith, C. and R., live in Maine. They’re Mainers, which necessarily means they’re a bit different than the rest of us. A little more private, a little more reserved, a little more protective of their state and its natural beauty and special history. One’s into agriculture and animal husbandry; the other’s into teaching special-needs children. They work and go to school. They live simply. For fun, they like to attend church potlucks the way I attend, say, wine tastings, and rate them on the variety and quality of the culinary offerings. They pick fruit and turn it into jams and preserves that they then give to visitors, sometimes stuffing eight jars into one’s overnight bag if necessary (I should know; I once benefited handsomely from their largesse). Every Christmas, they bake Christmas cookies – not piece-of-crap generic sugar cookies, but really beautiful and delicious cookies and treats, and send them far and wide to their friends.

I know a lot of good people, but they’re two of the best.  They are kind and generous and fiercely, absurdly funny. They live too far away from me for comfort, but I suppose that’s my fault for moving 3,000 miles away.

They’ve been together for a long time, many years. At some point, they got engaged. When they realized that they needed a good (a marriage license) that their home state’s government did not offer, endorse, or recognize, they decided to go up to Canada to procure that good instead. So they did. Their visit there was apparently very cold, and full of mishaps, but they got what they wanted and rightfully deserved: married. They invited a bunch of us, a core group of friends from college and before, to celebrate their new marriage in a weekend-long fete up in Maine, about an hour outside Portland, in a lovely house they’d rented for the occasion. I drove up there with the Boston-based contingent and had one of the best weekends of my life. It was in October right as the leaves were turning, and as someone who lived in New England for many years, I’m well within my rights to say that Maine foliage is the prettiest foliage of all.

So instead of fluffy sequined white dresses, First Corinthians verses, and overcooked salmon entrées, we hiked around technicolored woods, ate lobster and steak and cheese and pie, laughed about the past, talked about the future, and drank an obscene volume of New England microbrews. Some whiskey may have been involved as well. We went around the room at one point and offered up our congratulations, our favorite memories of them as a couple, our joy at the fact that they had found each other, and that they were and are meant to be together, even if their state and their country couldn’t acknowledge that fact.  We are not a crying clan, so this was, you know, one of those moments, where everyone’s in tears but no one mentions it, then or ever again.

Here we are a few years later, and Maine, like a number of other states, has made some moves toward legalizing gay marriage.  The legislature there passed a marriage equality law that would have gone into effect on September 11, but because anti-gay-marriage types gathered enough signatures, the law is instead going to become a referendum for Mainers to vote on.  My friends C. and R. have been working tirelessly, giving time and money, to help the “No on 1” campaign that would defeat the referendum and make gay marriage legal in Maine.

After C. reached out to all of us who were at their wedding reception to give any amount, we responded in kind.  Donations made through August 31, I believe, are being matched by a generous donor.  We gave some.  The campaign needs cash to make calls, to canvass the state, to air ads like this one that was just released:

After the agonizing disappointment that was Prop. 8, I’m not all that confident in referendums to get gay marriage to a place where it’s finally outside of the volatile and contentious arenas of the courts and the legislature.  I’m hopeful, though. If anyone can do it, Maine just might be it.  To be able to shut down marriage-equality-opponents, finally, by pointing to Maine’s democratic process — not “unelected judges,” not “politically correct legislatures” — and the people of Maine saying that discriminating against gay couples who wish to marry is wrong.  Well. That would be a beautiful thing.

So by way of this intensely personal post, if you have any spare cash to throw around in the next couple of weeks, or if you can forego a few comic books or cocktails and donate what you would have spent, this is the place to do it.   I think it goes without saying that it infuriates me that I even have to write this post, or that I feel the need to defend my friends who wish to have their marriage recognized, as good, solid, hardworking, morally upstanding people.  I shouldn’t have to do that.  I should be able to attend their marriage ceremony in their beloved home state, not up in fucking Canada, a foreign country.  But we’re not there yet, so I wrote this.

And if you do donate, please comment here and let me know.  I’d love to pass along to C. and R. that my blog readers are awesome, generous folks, because I know you all are.