Checking in on marriage equality
For Stew and me, news about the progress of marriage equality doesn't come from headlines or the the noise from the burgeoning circus parade of Republican presidential candidates but from private yet significant moments at airports, car rental counters and hotel registration desks.
It's always bugged me that at airport customs and passport checkpoints Stew and I had to present ourselves as unrelated individuals even though after 40-some years together we were far more related than most of the heterosexual couples recognized by the authorities as legitimate family units.
U.S. Customs forms asked how many "family members are traveling with you" and we obliged by checking "none." When we approached the passport check counter, we dutifully waited behind the yellow line and proceeded one at a time.
At the Miami airport a year ago, even after we were officially married in Massachusetts, a U.S. customs official—a fellow Cuban no less—greeted our marital status with laughter.
"Nah. You're brothers, right? Cousins?" he asked.
We insisted and only when Stew went to get the copy of our marriage certificate did he say "Whatever!" and let us through with a dismissive wave.
We let it pass too, hoping the official might have learned something and would treat the next gay couple with less hilarity and more respect.
Move to 2013 in Massachusetts and the Avis rental counter at Logan Airport. While filling out the paperwork Stew requested the no-charge additional driver discount accorded to so-called "domestic partners," a bland legalism that sanctions gay relationships as similar but not quite as worthy as "married."
The clerk's reply, a middle-aged woman, was a matter-of-fact, "Why don't you two get married, that's what we do here in Massachusetts!" When Stew said that's what we planned to do she offered a loud and sincere "Congratulations!".
The ordinariness of her reaction—to congratulate us as she would any other couple about to be wed—felt good. Things are changing indeed after years, decades, when the notion of two men or two women getting married was treated with contemptuous condemnation, derision or a mixture. The best we could hope for was polite silence.
Two weeks ago, traveling home from Jerusalem, a thirty-one hour insomniac special that combined buses and planes with stopovers in Tel Aviv, Newark and Mexico City, I decided to break up the tedium by announcing along the way that we were married.
In Tel Aviv, a young woman who checked our boarding passes asked if we were traveling together but didn't even look up when I said we were a couple. "Meh" seemed to be her reaction.
Pretty much the same for a customs guy in Newark though an officious U.S. Department of Agriculture beagle named Flannery dutifully sat down when it sniffed some Israeli oranges in Stew's carry-on. After surrendering the oranges we proceeded along.
The only tense pause came in Mexico City when the customs agent asked, in a not particularly friendly tone, about the "nature of our relationship (parentesco)." Nonplussed I replied, "¡Somos pareja!" ("We're a couple!"). She let us through but her reaction was surprising: Hadn't she heard that Mexico City's Federal District legalized same-sex marriages in 2009?
I admit there are limits to our field testing of changing mores on marriage equality, though the recent tectonic shift on the issue in Ireland, which one commentator described as "once a virtual colony of the Vatican," augurs further progress worldwide.
Still, I'm not going to make a scene at, say, the immigration kiosk at Benghazi International. Then again, Libya and most other Arab countries are not on our proximate to-visit list.
Neither is Louisiana, another marriage equality backwater, New Orleans notwithstanding. There, Gov. Bobby Jindal insists on an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage and mocks other GOP luminaries for going soft on the issue.
Bah. Stew has a great tried-and-tasted recipe for beignets and neither one of us is that fond of crawfish anyhow, from New Orleans or anywhere else. The hell with Jindal.
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It's always bugged me that at airport customs and passport checkpoints Stew and I had to present ourselves as unrelated individuals even though after 40-some years together we were far more related than most of the heterosexual couples recognized by the authorities as legitimate family units.
U.S. Customs forms asked how many "family members are traveling with you" and we obliged by checking "none." When we approached the passport check counter, we dutifully waited behind the yellow line and proceeded one at a time.
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| Stew is the blond one. |
"Nah. You're brothers, right? Cousins?" he asked.
We insisted and only when Stew went to get the copy of our marriage certificate did he say "Whatever!" and let us through with a dismissive wave.
We let it pass too, hoping the official might have learned something and would treat the next gay couple with less hilarity and more respect.
Move to 2013 in Massachusetts and the Avis rental counter at Logan Airport. While filling out the paperwork Stew requested the no-charge additional driver discount accorded to so-called "domestic partners," a bland legalism that sanctions gay relationships as similar but not quite as worthy as "married."
The clerk's reply, a middle-aged woman, was a matter-of-fact, "Why don't you two get married, that's what we do here in Massachusetts!" When Stew said that's what we planned to do she offered a loud and sincere "Congratulations!".
The ordinariness of her reaction—to congratulate us as she would any other couple about to be wed—felt good. Things are changing indeed after years, decades, when the notion of two men or two women getting married was treated with contemptuous condemnation, derision or a mixture. The best we could hope for was polite silence.
Two weeks ago, traveling home from Jerusalem, a thirty-one hour insomniac special that combined buses and planes with stopovers in Tel Aviv, Newark and Mexico City, I decided to break up the tedium by announcing along the way that we were married.
In Tel Aviv, a young woman who checked our boarding passes asked if we were traveling together but didn't even look up when I said we were a couple. "Meh" seemed to be her reaction.
Pretty much the same for a customs guy in Newark though an officious U.S. Department of Agriculture beagle named Flannery dutifully sat down when it sniffed some Israeli oranges in Stew's carry-on. After surrendering the oranges we proceeded along.
The only tense pause came in Mexico City when the customs agent asked, in a not particularly friendly tone, about the "nature of our relationship (parentesco)." Nonplussed I replied, "¡Somos pareja!" ("We're a couple!"). She let us through but her reaction was surprising: Hadn't she heard that Mexico City's Federal District legalized same-sex marriages in 2009?
I admit there are limits to our field testing of changing mores on marriage equality, though the recent tectonic shift on the issue in Ireland, which one commentator described as "once a virtual colony of the Vatican," augurs further progress worldwide.
Still, I'm not going to make a scene at, say, the immigration kiosk at Benghazi International. Then again, Libya and most other Arab countries are not on our proximate to-visit list.
Neither is Louisiana, another marriage equality backwater, New Orleans notwithstanding. There, Gov. Bobby Jindal insists on an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage and mocks other GOP luminaries for going soft on the issue.
Bah. Stew has a great tried-and-tasted recipe for beignets and neither one of us is that fond of crawfish anyhow, from New Orleans or anywhere else. The hell with Jindal.
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Great post, with a snappy ending!!! I totally agree. And the reaction of the Avis woman at Logan made me proud of my state.
ReplyDeleteWe now have a republican governor, but he has a gay brother, and the governor is totally socially liberal and fiscally responsible and has a sky-high approval rating here.
If the national republicans took a page out of his book, they'd be a force to be reckoned with. Too bad they're following the Talian's playbook instead.
Saludos,
Kim G
Boston, MA
Where we wish we could just send Jindal to join the other mullahs in Iran. He'd feel so much more at home.
Glad to hear that you have some moderate Republicans in Mass. They are a rare species and becoming more so by the day. The GOP primaries seems to be who can be the most extreme and nuttiest of all, though Ted Cruz is hard to top.
DeleteSadly the world is very slow to change. Eventually little by little it does.
ReplyDeleteActually, as Retired Teacher notes below, change in gay rights issues, particularly in the realm of public opinion, has occurred pretty fast, though sometimes it doesn't feel that way.
DeleteActually, the change has been quite rapid and dramatic. Ten years ago who would have thought that the US would be on the verge of legalizing marriage equality nationwide, that a majority of the population would approve, or that same sex marriage would be enacted by one country after another in the Western world? There will always be dinosaurs who oppose, but they are becoming, more and more, the minority.
ReplyDeleteAnd hopefully, just like real dinosaurs, soon extinct.
DeleteThat is pretty amazing. Just a few years ago states were approving "Defense of Marriage" amendments right and left. And Ireland! Who would have thought?
DeleteJindal is an embarrassment to the people of Louisiana. How he ever got elected is a mystery to me. If there is any state in the USA that has a live and let live attitude, it is the southern part of Louisiana. I know, I grew up there. One day at a time is my motto about things that need to be changed and which on a daily basis seem to be......I remember when I bought a house after my husband died, hence making me a widow, the mortgage papers identified me as a "single white female". I was outraged. Who knows what it is like nowadays? They year was 1979, but I've never forgotten it.
ReplyDeleteDear Single White Female: I wonder if Jindal has ever attended Mardi Gras in New Orleans and seen what goes on there?
Delete