Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2004-08-13 - 3:23 p.m.

Doing the Right Thing

This letter was written by a first-grader; his parents found it in his school journal. It was not prompted by anything but his own feelings. This is Ch�'s family portrait - Ch�, his sister Liana, and his parents, Lyn and Silvia.

My friends Lyn and Silvia were married on February 13th, 2004, at City Hall in San Francisco.

But not really.

I don't mean not really because the California Supreme Court said it wasn't a valid marriage. I mean not really because marriage, according to Princeton University's WordNet, means " the state of being a married couple voluntarily joined for life," and, "a close and intimate union; "the marriage of music and dance"; "a marriage of ideas"". Lyn and Silvia's marriage did not begin when they signed papers at City Hall. It began some time before I knew them, in some private and maybe unrecognized moment. Maybe it was when they moved in together, or when they decided to raise children. Maybe it was when they had some huge fight, or didn't, and thought they wouldn't make it together, and then decided they would, through sheer effort. Maybe it wasn't in any of those moments.

This year, Lyn and Silvia and their children got to have a space of time where they could hope, even when practicality counseled them to be skeptical, that their family would now be afforded its just rights and recognition. That what should have been right and easy all along might finally, truly, be possible.

That hope hasn't been shattered, I think. And that marriage hasn't been "voided" in any way. Princeton University says "void" means "containing nothing...the state of nonexistence...render ineffective". The Supreme Court has no power to make Lyn and Silvia's union empty or ineffective. No one does. Marriages are born and sustained, and sometimes broken, in private moments.

What has happened is that the legal recognition of their union has been set back once again. That Lyn and Silvia, and therefore their children, have once again been denied the rights that they've earned. That there will be more waiting, and more fighting for the equity that should have been there in the first place. That along with maintaining a marriage and raising a family - two tasks which are already heroic, we know - Lyn and Silvia, and so many other couples, must continue to fight the system.

But this is not a battle about marriage. The battles of marriage are fought and settled in front of the kitchen sink, or in the car on the way to work. Like the foundation of a marriage, and its joys, they're fully private. They can't be solved, or prevented, or voided by anyone outside the union. Lyn and Silvia's union, like all couples, is that marriage of music and dance, that marriage of ideas.

This is a battle for equitable rights for ALL American citizens. It's a battle about the principles by which we must live, of the things we all must honor and cherish - family, and loyalty, and love, and respect, and perseverance.

It's battle over "justice for all." And it belongs to every one of us.

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