Since we’ve gotten engaged, I’ve found it personally upsetting that we are getting married in a country where our gay friends still can’t legally get hitched. This has always been a issue I cared deeply about, but I was a little blindsided by how personal it suddenly became. Now, David and I are not those heterosexual couples that have decided to wait to get married till everyone can get married (clearly). We think there are more practical ways to fight for that kind of equality. But it bothers us both. We feel a little like we are crossing a picket line. Part of our more intense then expected feelings probably stem from the fact that we happen attend a LGBT focused synagogue here in SF. We know that when we get called to the Torah the Friday before our wedding, we’ll be standing in front of our community, the vast majority of whom don’t have the right to the legal, financial, and cultural benefits we are about to receive. And that just sucks.
So, we are trying to figure out how we want to deal with this during our wedding. We want to find a way to address this issue without getting too preachy about it. I tend to feel that a wedding is not the right place to drag out my soapbox and climb up onto it. So we are weighing options. We might put a small statement in the program. We’ve heard of people incorporating a reading from the Massachusetts Marriage Law into the ceremony, but its not super poetic, and it feels a little heavy handed for me.
What do you think internets? Does this bother anyone else? Has anyone come up with a good (and poetic) way to handle this issue? I’m all ears. And for those of you that live in countries with better laws, Mazel Tov. You don’t know what you’re missing.
