Sunday, October 31, 2010

Day 18

Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.

I could get all angry and soapbox-y here, but I don't think I will.

Gay marriage was just a vague thing to me for awhile....of course I supported it, but didn't really care about marriage itself one way or another. I probably would get married one day, but if I didn't, no big whoop. What is it but a formality? (That was rhetorical...)

At Grinnell, they showed free (sometimes new!) movies every weekend. My (mostly guy) friends were excited about an upcoming doc, "Chicks in White Satin," by Elaine Holliman. All we knew was the title, and that it was about lesbians, so we figured we were in for a hot movie of some sort.

The filmmaker herself was in attendance and available to talk to the audience at the end, as she was a Grinnell alum (much the same as Peter Coyote did the previous year after a Roman Polanski film he was in. Totally disturbing movie).

But the movie, which had been nominated for an Oscar, was so much different than any of us expected. There were lesbians, but instead of a free-for-all orgy, it starred two women who wanted to get married. It went through their wedding preparations and obstacles, and ended with the union.

I'm not going to get into the politics of this, because I wasn't even thinking of that at the time. What touched my cold 19-year-old heart the very most was when I realized: these women are *dying* to get married....because they WANT to. Not because it's expected of them by society, but DESPITE a thousand obstacles from the same damned society that tells me I should probably be wed by the time I'm 30. They just simply want to be committed for a lifetime. Nothing more, nothing less.


And that's pretty effing cool.



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