The Facebook Buddha says the only things that matter are "how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you."
While there's no real evidence that the Real Buddha ever said anything like that, it's a pretty thought that jibes fairly well with something my grandmother used to say about there being only three times in a well-lived life when a decent person's name should appear in a newspaper: When they are born, when they get married and when they die.
Following Granny's dictum, the Daily Record column that appears in our newspaper may be the single most essential item that we run. It is a dry, comment-less, agate-set recounting of the facts, informing the public who was born and who has obtained a marriage license. (It doesn't perfectly conform to grandmother's criteria as it also lists marriages more or less gracefully let go. Some of us occasionally scan the column to see who has filed for and who has obtained a divorce.) The obituaries share the names of those who have died nearby.
The Daily Record is not a column I read regularly, because in our house, there is a order to how we go through our morning newspaper. Karen starts with the front pages and works inward; I start with the comics and work the crossword. Sometimes while I'm solving it (and I always solve it, in ink, usually within a half hour), I'll ask her if there's "anything good" in the news sections and she gives me a precis. "You have to read this," she'll say, of some Spencer Willems-bylined true crime piece or Debra Hale-Shelton deconstruction of academic folly. And, after I get through with the letters to the editor, John Brummett and Rex Nelson and the others, I usually read what she mentions.
But Wednesday morning I didn't have to ask. Karen simply brought me the Arkansas section of this newspaper, folded open to the inside page that carries the Daily Record.
"Here," she said.
"That's wonderful," I said.
"Isn't it?" she said.
What we were looking at was the list of marriage licenses issued at the Pulaski County courthouse since Monday. I counted 174 couples listed in the column, instead of the usual four or five. But what was more remarkable than the sheer number was the variety of the hometowns. People had come from Beaumont, Texas and Shawnee, Okla., to obtain marriage licenses from Larry Crane's office. From Southhaven, Miss. From Paragould, Chidester and Vilonia and other little places all over the area.
As I hope you already know, most of these--169--were issued to gay folks. Late on the afternoon of May 9, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza filed a ruling to strike down both the 2004 constitutional amendment and 1997 statute designed to ban same-sex marriage in Arkansas. His ruling was concise and unequivocal, invoking the U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down a portion of the federal Defense of Marriage Act as well as the landmark 1967 civil rights case Loving v. Virginia, which struck down that state's anti-miscegenation statute. In a paragraph that might one day be misattributed to Facebook Buddha, Piazza wrote:
It has been over 40 years since Mildred Loving was given the right to marry the person of her choice. The hatred and fears have long since vanished and she and her husband lived full lives together; so it will be for the same-sex couples. It is time to let that beacon of freedom shine brighter on all our brothers and sisters. We will be stronger for it.
And so, for a few days at least, there were a few courthouses in Arkansas where gay couples could solemnize their domestic situations. Then, on Wednesday, the State Supreme Court stepped in, not to issue a stay, but to point out a technicality that theoretically puts county clerks at legal risk if they issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. On Thursday, Piazza said he was going to take care of that by ruling the state law unconstitutional as well.
I suspect this will be cleared up in a matter of days--a couple of weeks at the outside--and marriage equality will once again be featured in Arkansas. I share Chris Piazza's faith that we will not backslide into the sort of fearfulness that makes us deny our fellow citizens the opportunity to fully participate in society. Gay people deserve to get their names in the newspaper when they enter a committed relationship--they deserve the same kind of tax advantages and legal benefits that accrue to married couples.
I do not fully understand the need some people feel to vilify gay people and the things they do in private; it seems clear that, for whatever reason, a certain percentage of humanity has always sought same-sex comfort. We might be curious why this is so. We might debate whether the causes of homosexuality are primarily biological or socio-cultural. We might wonder at the fluid nature of human sexuality and the spectrum of desire. But in the end. common sense compels us to accept that there's nothing "sick" about being gay. I don't think it's a lifestyle choice, but so what if it is? Like the poor, gay folks will be with us always. Unlike the poor, they're not something we should be trying to do something about.
Gay marriage in no way abrogates anyone's religious freedom. If you want to have a mean little church that doesn't recognize gay marriage, that won't allow your clerics to perform same-sex ceremonies, so be it. If you want to pretend that all the sinners and their enablers are going to hell for not doing it right, peace be with you, bro--I don't want to waste my time arguing with you.
But marriage is a legal construction as well as as a religious one. And you cannot impose your crabbed and withering doctrines on the state. And there are churches where love is a core value, who will pick up the slack. And there are civil ceremonies as well. You can choose what side of history you want to be on. You can gnash your teeth and wail about how you're being victimized because a few people have a chance to be happier, to feel a little less marginalized and "different" than they did awhile ago--or you can, for a moment, be proud of Arkansas.
Isn't it wonderful?
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Editorial on 05/18/2014