Gay marriage approved in Maine :: Hoorah!

I've been married for almost five years and I still get a kick out of hearing Paul say "This is my wife, Leah."

I can't imagine not having the right to be married to the person I love, not being able to make that public commitment in front of your closest friends and family. Sadly this is the situation for many happy, loving and committed couples in the USA.  Yesterday that changed in Maine.  Thanks to so many awesome Mainers voting YES to question 1 "Do you want to allow the state of Maine to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples?"it means that Maine is now united in allowing EVERYONE the right to get married. And that's a good thing.

I've been lucky enough to photograph a number of same-sex weddings  in Massachusetts where gay marriage has been legal for some time now. Just last month I photographed the most amazing gay wedding on the Cape, the couple were surrounded by friends and family including their two beautiful sons. I asked one of the brides what she was most looking forward to about the wedding, she smiled and said "I just can't wait to walk back down the aisle together, the four of us, as a family."

One of my favorite writers is A.A. Gill and he recently wrote a brilliant essay on gay marriage for Vanity Fair, it was irreverent and funny as that's what he does best. He proposed trading gay marriage for divorce to appease the religious right but he also struck a chord with the following, "Marriage is supposed to be a basic building block of society, marriages come together to give the nation-state its tensile strength. Marriages make families, and families marry one another, creating a web of security and morality.... Surely the right thing would be to get as many people into marriages as possible.

Priests today will often pointedly draw your attention in their homilies to the truth that a wedding is the public admission of a private fact. Marriage is an oath made by a couple before God; it doesn’t need a piece of paper or a stamp, a license or a government, to make it more binding or blessed. Gays have always been able to marry before God. The problem has never been God; the problem is the rest of us, and that simply comes down to equality. You can’t be a little bit equal. Equality is an all-or-nothing deal. An equal right to be married before the law must be both equal and a right, without favor. It must be color-blind, and it must be gender-neutral."

I think that says it all perfectly. That's it for today. No wedding pictures of a gay marriage in Maine because it's not happening until January 2013. I, for one, can't wait!

Kudos and thanks go to Mainers United for Marriage who did the most amazing grassroots work through volunteers talking face to face to voters to help them understand the facts about this issue. I know they're still trying to cover some basic costs of their work and there's a donate button if you feel so inclined :)

1 comment

  1. Well said, Leah! I completely agree. And thank you for sharing the bit from piece by A.A. Gill.

    ReplyDelete