+5
I want to share with y'all a message I just received from my cousin Beverly, inviting friends and family to a Texas celebration of her marriage to Susan last summer:
"After 27 years together, Susan and I married -- fully, legally -- in Connecticut last summer. Now we are celebrating marriage rites and rights . . . Please join us for a picnic and music in the park as our families applaud the New England states which are, one by one, extending legal status to our relationships.
". . . Susan and I have waited anxiously for this opportunity since 1992, when Hawaii first kicked around the idea and then backed out. Our state [Texas] amended its constitution in 2005 to prevent same-gender marriages from being recognized. Shortly after that vote, [their daughter] Riley's best friend at school told me: 'My mom says it is against the law for you and Susan to marry, and the police will come get you if you try!'
"When we married Aug. 5, it was a moment we thought we might never know. It is one thing to be married as we were in our hearts, but marriage is not just an individual thing, affecting only two people. The marriage of a couple is part of the community, what makes it what it is as well. It means the world to us that in the United States, the New England communities honor our commitment to each other and acknowledge us as a part of the fabric. And now we know in our hearts, for sure, that the rest of the world will follow when it can."
I added the emphasis to my dear cousin's words because I've never heard it put better. And it is that one word--commitment--that will always separate marriage of couples, whether straight or gay, from polygamy.