"Please stop trying to convince me that the vote on the proposed gay marriage amendment does not have any impact on my marriage now that I have to explain that the wedding ring I wear is symbolic of the relationship I have with my wife and not my husband."

-- Dave Lawley, Methuen, Mass.
Letter to the editor, Boston Sunday Globe, June 24, 2007

The June 14, 2007, vote by the Massachusetts legislature to uphold gay marriage in the Commonwealth was a historic moment in a civil rights struggle that is far from over. In the more than three years since gay marriage became legal in the state, more than 10,000 weddings have occurred. As a Justice of the Peace in Massachusetts, I officiated at my first gay wedding a few months after it became legal and will have the privilege again this month and in August.

In these same three years, heterosexual couples have continued to wed without interference, other couples in the Commonwealth have become engaged, some have separated, and others have divorced. I’m not the first to point out that over that time span the sky has not fallen. What the couples I have met with in poignant pre-wedding meetings have taught me is that love, hope and possibility are at the core of their intention, not gender.

Accepting gay marriage for many is not easy. I have seen how some family members attending a same sex wedding have had to travel a greater emotional distance than other relatives had to travel geographically. Having to address feelings of resistance to attending your nephew’s/sister’s/son’s or daughter’s wedding to a same sex partner is part of the growing pains a society goes through to flush out the toxins of prejudice and fear. Even in the home of Lynn and Dick Cheney it appears that love and support for their daughter has triumphed over bigotry.

For many Americans who have seen our views about race evolve over the years as we began to investigate the color of our fears, the time is at hand for taking the next step in a deep inquiry into our homophobia. Because some of us can’t see past the sexual dimension of a same sex relationship, a type of amnesia has set in that obscures the healing power of love; a blindness obscures an appreciation of the sweetness, the miracle, of any two people finding one another and deciding to make a life together.

In the wedding ceremonies at which I officiate, I always meet individually with each half of the couple to ask, without their partner present, what they love about the other. I take notes and weave their sweet words of caring, admiration and appreciation into a narrative each hears for the first time during the ceremony. It’s a wonderful moment. It should come as no surprise that the love each feels for the other is the same whether expressed by a gay or lesbian partner or a heterosexual one. So, here’s the answer for those who worry that they’ll being stopped on the streets by a demand to explain the symbolism of their wedding rings.  Love, it turns out, doesn’t have a gender.

Rob Okun is Executive Director of the Men’s Resource Center for Change and Editor of  Voice Male. He can be reached at (413) 253-9887 Ext. 20 or by e-mail.