Marriage Matters to Us
by: TerranceDC
Thu Nov 13, 2008 at 13:03:28 PM EST
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=16BC00C7D2B625F3232F739804FF1D26?diaryId=8200also
http://www.bilerico.com/2008/11/marriage_matters_to_us.phpIt has been a strange couple of weeks. Just last week, I saw something that I never thought I'd see in my lifetime, and felt like I was witnessing it for all my ancestors who didn't live to see a hope fulfilled. But - with a "twoness of being" that DuBois probably didn't imagine when he coined the term - it was a deeply conflicted moment.
As a black man, in that moment I felt like more of an American than I ever had before, like a barrier to full citizenship and belonging had been raised. As a gay man with a husband and a family, however, I ended up feeling like less of an American than I ever had before; divorced from the celebrating and even the historic significance of the moment by a barrier to citizenship and belonging that fell more firmly into place even as the previous one was raised.
Since then, my response to the events of the past week have been informed by that "twoness of being," and a conflict that demands I prioritize one part of my identity over another. It's nothing new to black gay Americans, and we often come down on different sides of that struggle. Lines are drawn, and suddenly I have to be careful of what I say. While I can't say which side anyone else should come down on, some of the rhetoric of the past week - particularly around race and marriage - is troubling.
