06/28/13: Perched in the soul

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

JustMarriedWEDNESDAY, the U.S. Supreme Court said what I already knew to be true: Marriage is marriage.

It’s not as if the justices haven’t said it before. In a challenge to laws in Virginia — and 15 other states — prohibiting interracial marriage, the court ruled that such statutes violate “the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause” and “deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law.”

How appropriate that the court saw fit Wednesday to refer to the 1967 Loving vs. Virginia decision — and to use similar language: The Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, “violates basic due process and equal protection principles” and is “a deprivation of the liberty.”

I can only imagine what interracial couples felt after hearing the court’s ruling in 1967. I don’t have to imagine what it felt like Wednesday.

Jubilation. Gratefulness. Hope.

From his jail cell in Birmingham, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The court’s ruling made it clear that it considered the language of DOMA to be that of inequality. I was jubilant to be a witness to the overturning of the injustice of DOMA, particularly in the face of such strong opposition.

I am ever mindful of those who came before me and on whose shoulders I stand. I am grateful they took on the challenges of their time so that I could have opportunities.

Without the efforts of the National Woman’s Party and others, being female would relegate me to second-class citizenship. Without the efforts of the civil rights movement, being black would relegate me to second-class citizenship. And without Edie Windsor, my marriage would relegate me — perhaps forever — to second-class citizenship.

Emily Dickinson wrote:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all

More than anything, that was the effect of Wednesday’s decision on me and probably on all the other couples who happen to live in one of the 37 states in which gay marriage is not currently the law. Wednesday’s ruling has no direct effect on us, unless we move to one of the jurisdictions where marriage equality is the law.

But the ruling gave us hope  — hope that we will see, in our lifetimes, not only federal recognition of our marriages but also recognition in our home states, where we live, work, play, pray and love.

We’ve already seen a sea change in public opinion: Today, the majority of Americans support gay marriage. That was not the case in 1996 when DOMA was signed. Nor was it the case when Virginia enacted its constitutional amendment in 2006. And it wasn’t even the case when Windsor filed suit in 2010.

If history is any guide, there will always be those who are against marriage equality, just as there are those today who are still against the equality of the races and the equality of women. It is the law of the land that the races are equal. It is the law of the land that women are equal. And it will soon be the law of the land that gays are equal — and able to marry the ones they love.

Wednesday’s ruling marks the 15th time the Supreme Court has ruled on marriage. How many more times — and in how many different ways  — does the court have to conclude the same thing: that the union of two people is a marriage?

I think just one more time. The next time, the court will rule under the 14th Amendment, as it did in Loving, that “to deny this fundamental freedom … is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”