Freedom To Marry Week

My wife, Leah, has a blog and follows some other blogs. I saw this on one of those, Tales of A Female Husband. So here is my blog about Marriage Equality.

As you can see, I married the girl of my dreams. We were married in California on 10/25, a couple of weeks before Prop 8 passed. I have posted on my sadness and outrage on this in a previous post so I won't go into that here. I just want to talk about marriage equality and what it means to me.

When Leah and I got married, we wrote our own ceremony. We put in a part about what marriage means to each of us. This was my piece:

Marriage is a way to let the world know, I love this person. It is an awesome feeling and a great responsibility. It is not something to be taken lightly. It means giving of yourself to someone else, trusting in that person and knowing that she is giving of herself and trusting in you, as well. You have to be strong when she can’t and she needs to be strong when you can’t. But, even though it is a great responsibility, it is also about happiness and fun. It is saying to someone else I love being with you and I plan on spending the rest of my life enjoying us. Marriage is an amazing institution and I am so happy to be a part of it. I want that responsibility. I want to be able to say, “this is my wife.” I want to be able to laugh, cry, get mad and know that someone else loves me. And with that, I am marrying the one person who has added to my life a sense of completeness.

See, while we are all fighting for our right to marriage and all the rights that go with it (believe me, I know, over 1,300 in NY alone,) when it comes down to it, marriage is about love. It is about the dream we all have as children, to one day marry the person we love. To walk down that aisle, or be greeted at the end of it. To look into your beloved's eyes with tears of joy. To hold her/his hand and pronounce "I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you." And to hear those words, "I now pronounce you....(beloved wives, in our case.)

The rights that come with being married are extra bonuses. Don't get me wrong, I am fighting for those rights as well. I just recently spoke with my state senator's chief of staff all about this and I will post on that next time. But, what I am talking about here is just the real, in our core, reason we all get married. Because we love someone and can't imagine our life without her/him. Marriage is the way we can show that. Marriage is the way everyone in the world knows that. I married my wife because I love her and can't imagine myself without her. Pure and simple. I love you, Leah!