The Lady Geek's Topic of the Day: The Lady Geek is Anti-Marriage/Pro Gay Choice

Another Special Message from The Lady Geek

The Lady Geek is Anti-Marriage/Pro Gay Choice

Greetings dear readers from the City of Brotherly Love! It is a lovely summer day here in Philadelphia as my children and I return from a fun day of shopping. Currently, I am relaxing in my favorite armchair, eating a cherry water ice and contemplating a topic that’s been plaguing this country that I love so much.

Gay Marriage

 

In the early days of this great country of ours, slaves were “encouraged” to marry because it was believed that married slaves were less likely to be rebellious or run away.  Yet slave records show that of 2,888 slave marriages in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Louisiana showed that over thirty two percent of slave marriages were dissolved by masters a result of slaves being sold away. So, yeah, even then a large percent of marriage ended in divorce. Marriage was a sham to our black ancestors. 

Through the course of America’s racial history, the act of sexual liaisons between whites and other races were not only accepted, but expected. When children were born of the unions, the children were defined as an ‘acceptable’ consequence of events, yet there was only one law for different colors of adults: Thou Shall Not Inter Marry.  So you could live in sin, you could rape or take a lover of another race and create children, but you were not to marry someone of the opposite race ever.

As you may or may not care, this Lady Geek is of mixed heritage. I was created by a Black/Native American man and a White woman and raised by a Native American/White mom and Barbadian dad. When my mom was born, it was still illegal for a couple of differing races to marry. Can you imagine being forbidden to marry the person of your dreams because of something as trifling as the color of your skin? Yet that was the reality of many parts of this country in the 1920’s and it remained that reality until 1968, because of a landmark court case, maybe you’ve heard of it, Loving v. Virginia. 

In 1958, Richard Loving (white) and Mildred Jeter (black) of Virginia fell in love, got pregnant and got married. They were arrested, placed on one year of probation and had a twenty five year incarceration facing them unless they agreed to leave their home state and never to return as a married couple. They fought for their rights for an entire decade until the case, championed by Robert Kennedy, reached the United States Supreme court where not only was the sentence overturned, but inter racial marriage became the law of the land. 

Even though it’s my right as a black woman in America to date and marry whatever color person I want, it’s also my right not to.   Marriage has never made sense to me, although I'm an old fashioned girl at heart. As a child, I always knew I'd get married, have children and maybe even stay together for a few years of fun before leaving when the relationship had run its course, and yes, even to my child’s mind I knew it would end. 

This Lady Geek is anti-marriage and for good cause.  There has been no standard in my life that says a piece of paper should dictate the legality of my feelings towards another human being nor that having that piece of paper guarantees that the feelings of love, respect and commitment will last an entire lifespan between two people. In fact, my parents were married for fifty years, and miserable with each other for the last thirty, claiming that they stayed together for us kids. Seriously, I used to pray for these two people that shared an equal love for my siblings and me to divorce so that my home life could be relaxed and happy like the sitcom families on television.

Sixteen years ago, my husband and I asked God to come into our lives, approve our joining and bless our household and progeny.  It was a lovely moment shared between him, me, our one year old daughter, the evangelist performing the ceremony, about two other people and of course, God. 

Yet it wasn’t then and isn’t now considered a marriage outside of Pennsylvania’s common law boundaries. We never had that piece of paper, you see, the one binding us for all eternity by the laws of this country and marking us as ‘legal’ in America. Yet here we are, sixteen years of betters and worst’s later, and still the respect, understanding and love endures and passes on to our beautiful children.

Our life together is so good that we are actually considering getting that piece of paper after this fifth baby is born in October. Even if we do, it will be because his mother is insisting on it, not because I believe in that piece of paper, as far as I’m concerned, that piece of paper will cheapen all that we’ve accomplished without it.  I don't take what we have lightly. I realize exactly how unique our situation and how perfectly ironic and possibly hypocritical it sounds when I still announce that I am anti marriage.

I truly hate marriage. It's an institution more alike an asylum than a state of emotion, determination and feeling. 

As far as I'm concerned a piece of paper doesn't define any relationship. It's a formal binding that disregards the human emotion and makes you a number in 'Big Brother's' grid that I prefer not to be a part of. It's a license to control and manipulate and define what parcel I or he gets when it ends. It means nothing. A simple piece of paper that I, a woman born in the seventies, take for granted as my natural right, a piece of paper that my great grandparents had to fight to earn, a piece of paper that a bunch of humans still want the right to have.

Personally, I believe the gays have it right. They get commitment ceremonies. The few I've been two have been lovely affairs between them, their reverend, their closest friends and family members. There are two people, inviting God to bless their choice, bless their relationship, and bless their future. These two people of the same sex have given us all the honor and privilege to witness the most beautiful of beautiful. 

People who aren't allowed to be married by way of paper and have nothing but each other and a desire to spend eternity together.  It's simple and done with the fullest and purest of intention. 

See, that's where the trouble starts again. To me, a multi-racial woman in America, marriage is a choice. A right hard earned from my black half's struggles and fights and revolutions. A right that I am able to take for granted.

I have been allowed, since 1968, to choose a commitment ceremony sans paper or a wedding ceremony with paper.  To my homosexual brethren in a lot of America, there is no choice.

I am very lucky to be straight. I wouldn't choose to be gay, let alone gay and in love, that would be like stepping back seventy years and volunteering to be the black half of a bi-racial couple, or stepping back two hundred years and being mated but not married to my co-slave. 

People have said interracial families are wrong, that they upset the natural order of things and should be prevented from living, from loving from being happy because love isn't to be found between the races. People have suggested through the ages that children from inter racial couples face identity crisis, that whites who adopt black children are robbing them from their culture, that it's all just wrong. 

People say homosexual love is against the natural order of things, is wrong, and that homosexuals should be prevented from living their lives in any way that they feel fit because they love someone of the same sex. People say that any children they adopt will be warped and twisted, that loving who and what they love is against the American way.  

Well. It's 2012. Blacks can vote, can 'live in sin' or marry whites, Indians, Native Americans, Asians, anything except farm animals last I checked.  Gays should be allowed to strap on the handcuffs of that stupid piece of paper. It should be their right. They are Americans too. Period.

I don't understand why anyone would say that people getting that piece of paper is against anything.  I hate the institution but I don't want to hurt or harm or judge or prevent or kill an entire sector of humanity just because I don't agree with the literature. That would be like killing all left handed people because I only like right handed people.  Or like killing an entire religious segment, say...Jews, because I only want blonde haired blue eyed 'Christians' to live on the Earth. 

Hey, didn't someone already try that?

Anyone remember what happened to this dude?

The way this country's going right now? We're looking at another March on Washington at the least.  With all the killings, the starving, the homeless, the abuse, the ugly of this country, are we really taking the time and tax dollars to keep marriage illegal? Seriously? America, what is wrong with you?

Written By: MaryAnn Paris

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