What's wrong with Civil Unions?

First off, let me start this entry by apologizing for being Missing in Action for the past couple of weeks.  I had to fly home for a week to take care of my family during a very difficult time.  After living a long life, I regret to tell everyone that my grandfather past away in his sleep at the age of 92.  He was placed on hospice care earlier this month after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and suffering from a failing heart.  To me, my grandfather exemplified the American dream of hard work; determination and not letting setbacks in life keep you down.  He was the product of Lithuanian immigrants who escaped the Bolshevik Revolution in Eastern Europe.  His father died the day that he was born from a global flu epidemic and his mother died when he was only 5 years old.  Homeless, my grandfather was adopted by another Lithuanian couple in Rumford, Maine, a small mill town in the Western part of the state.

 

While home for the funeral, I had an opportunity to catch up with some friends and family who are all LGBT supportive and agree with the work that I am doing.  As many of you know, Maine’s marriage equality law was rejected at the ballot box last November.  This loss was devastating for those in the LGBT community, including for my own family. My mom asked me, “what’s wrong with attaining civil unions first if they include all of the same rights that marriage includes and then go for marriage later on?” Surely, this question has been posed to many in the LGBT community including myself many times before. There are many arguments that we have heard numerous times before including the deficiencies of “separate but equal” that Brown v. Topeka Board of Education highlighted, and then there are the 1,000+ federal benefits that civil unions do not include, and the list continues.  However, for me, the struggle for marriage equality means more than guaranteeing the right of same sex couples to the plethora of protections that marriage provides, it is also about how we as a society treat and respect one another regardless of what we are. 

While writing this post, I continue to think of my grandfather and all of the social change that he witnessed in his lifetime.  My biological grandmother died in 1980 and my grandfather remarried in 1983 at the age of 65.  Certainly, it wasn’t the goal of my grandfather (and who I consider my grandmother) to reproduce and create a new family during their ‘golden years’.  They choose to get married to unite two families who had been devastated by the loss of their respective husband and wife.  Their marriage added onto my family branch and created a loving and secure relationship dynamic that lasted until my new grandmother died of cancer in 2001. Marriage offered them the political and social recognition that they desired and that they knew would protect them through life’s challenges and struggles.

I don’t mean to sound so egalitarian, but have we really come to a point in our society where we think it is ok to treat our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and other members of our community different just because of who they are?  Without a doubt, the road to full equality is never easy.  It takes determination, endurance, focus, and a clear vision of a better society in order to create one. I think that the words of former President John F Kennedy are correct when he said that “We don’t go to the moon because it’s easy, we go because it’s hard.”  Indeed nobody thought that sending people to the moon was a feasible and realistic goal back then but because of a little bit of determination and hard work we were able to realize as a nation what it means to break through the glass ceiling. 

The work that we are doing here at Equality California is not only educating members of the community about why marriage for same sex couples is the right thing; it’s also about sharing our stories and experiences as either members or allies of the LGBT community.  As a result, support for marriage equality in California is currently at 51% and growing.  We are disarming our opponents by introducing them to our families and talking to community members about why they or somebody they know should be able to get married. As my grandfather taught me, without hard work and determination nothing in life is possible.  These same lessons can be applied to the LGBT community in its struggle for full equality in society.  Thank you for everything that you taught me and my community Grampy!