A June Wedding

On Friday, Iris and I will be driving up to Oregon for our niece's wedding to a nice young man we met last November when they joined us, with her parents, for Thanksgiving.

Weddings, as I'm sure you know, bring up lots of feelings for many people. Even our 24-year-old son is twitching a bit this summer as he goes to two weddings of people his own age: this cousin now, and, in August, one of his buddies from Berkeley High.

For me, attending a straight wedding always brings up the whole marriage equality batch of thoughts and feelings. I can't help it. Indeed, just getting to this wedding will involve us temporarily losing our legal married status, as we'll be crossing state lines.

This will be, of course, a June wedding. I myself liked the idea of being a June bride, so the first time I married Iris (1992), we too picked a June date. Stonewall Day, actually, the anniversary of the day in 1969 when a bunch of angry New York queens stood up to the cops and said, "We've had enough." As it happens, Iris and I have also been February brides (2004) and September brides (2008).

Our legal right to marry just in our own state is a matter of hot contention right now, and in the fullness of time, it will likely be taken all the way to the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, off to a little town outside of Medford, OR, we go. There, no one will question the right of these two young people to marry, and they will stay married when they cross the line into California where they plan to live.

We will go to this wedding, and we will rejoice for them. We will also be holding our own story inside of us.

I suppose all of the other people witnessing along with us will be doing the same thing with their stories. That's just the way that it is.