Then Comes Marriage by Roberta Kaplan Page B

happened as our gay friends started getting married.
    Rachel had been to a lot of straight weddings in her life, and even when she loved the bride and groom, she hated the weddings themselves, because they made her feel excluded. Once we started going to the weddings of our lesbian and gay friends, however, that changed. These weddings were full of wondrous joy. Everyone there, not just the brides or the grooms, was filled with gratitude, love, and awe. For the first time, Rachel felt not only included but actually engaged in these weddings. She began to understand that marriage was not simply a social construct or legal partnership with rights and benefits—something for a lifelong activist such as herself to fight for in Albany—but a personal promise that is shared with the community.
    Rachel also came to realize that there had been another, deeper reason behind her disdain for marriage, that there was also an element of self-hatred involved. For years, the idea of getting married had embarrassed her. It was not only that it felt like scrabbling for second-class status; on some level, it also felt unseemly and almost cartoonish. She had carried inside her the assumption that she did not deserve the right to marry. But now, witnessing these other profoundly happy celebrations, something shifted. She began to see how the power of marriage was more than merely symbolic or legal—marriage meant something very fundamental about your commitment to another person, your integration of all of your family relationships, and most of all your very sense of self.
    When Rachel realized that getting married was a legitimate—even healthy—thing to do, she decided that it was time. One morning in the spring of 2005, she looked at me and said, “We’re having a child together. Let’s get married. I want us to publicly celebrate our commitment to each other. We don’t have many rights, but whatever rights we do have, I want us to have them together as parents.” That was good enough for me. A few weeks later, as if on cue, Rachel became pregnant.
    Suddenly, Rachel and I were transformed from domestic partners to engaged parents-to-be. We had a wedding to plan, baby books to read, and a nursery to design. I was ecstatic. Actually, we had two weddings to plan: one small, legal ceremony in Toronto, to be followed by a large Jewish wedding at Rachel’s parents’ home in Rhode Island.
    We flew to Toronto on Friday, September 9, 2005, and in the presence of Rachel’s family and two close friends, we took our vows in the modest wood-paneled office of the city clerk. Following Lavine family tradition, we went out afterward for a wedding feast at a Chinese restaurant, just as Rachel’s parents had done after their wedding, but that was the extent of the celebration; within twenty-four hours, we were back in New York. My parents did not make the trip, but I was not surprised or upset by that. I knew that they were planning to come to the Rhode Island ceremony the next week—which was already one more wedding of their daughter than I had ever expected them to attend.
    Not only did they attend, but they also invited several dozen of their friends and family from Cleveland. Yes, fourteen years after she’d banged her head against the wall, my mother embraced my Big Gay Wedding and happily took part in it. At our Jewish ceremony, the traditional Sheva Berakhot, or Seven Blessings, were recited, and we invited various family members and friends to read them during the ceremony. My parents read one, standing up in front of 150 guests on that beautiful fall day, to support us in our marriage.
    Our dear friend Rabbi Jan Uhrbach married us, which was itself a courageous act. Because she is a Conservative rabbi, Jan was technically not supposed to be officiating at weddings for same-sex couples at that time. (The Conservative movement did not change its position until later in 2006 after a close