Some weeks I have to puzzle over which piece of My Favorite World to play with in this sandbox. Not so today. Nothing has ever been easier.

That picture at the top is my good pal Kati. She looks pretty damned giddy, right? That’s because today, in this strange cracker box of a state that is Florida, marriage between gay men and between gay women is now legal, the law of the land, no longer taboo, absolutely fine, mighty damned skippy, and just plain right on.

Put it another way: Got a license? In love? No problem. Get married. How has it ever not been that way?

Kati is a duly licensed Notary, and today, the first day in Florida on which ALL human beings in love were allowed to wed despite other busybodies’ biblical panty bunching, Kati wielded her mighty stamp of Notary and officiated for several couples — there were hundreds statewide — who wanted to mark today as their Wedding Day. (And thanks to Kati for permission to use her gorgeousness to attract people to my bloggy little vineyard.)

Scores of people in love, committing to one another in the eyes of friends, family, society, and if applicable, their God. This is so absolutely fabulous that I feel like Kati looks in that photo. My Favorite World, made all the better because one more arbitrary barrier to equal participation in My Favorite World is just dust now.

MFW!

I’m an aging, straight, white Southern man, squarely in the tea party demographic, raised during the years when the word ‘gay’ first began to mean what it means now, a time when so-called minorities began to push back against the imposed normatives that had defined our culture for generations. It was a time when my predecessors – the white, straight men of my father’s generation – began to lose their firm grip of control, and the anxieties that they visited upon their sons and daughters in response were insidious and damaging in ways both subtle and not so. I grew up in a time when such thinking was normal. I had to learn to oppose these blind prejudices within myself. I was lucky. I’ve had a life full of wonderful friends, teachers, guides. I’m sure I was something of a project.

But today, we live in a world that is a far sight better than it was just yesterday. All because people in love get to celebrate that wondrous, awe-inspiring gift. And the fact that my kids get to grow up breathing the air of a more tolerant world – a place where people in love face just that much less of an obstacle to fully participating in their/our lives – makes me very, very happy.

Forget your June wedding traditions. January 6, people, that’s the day of mass hitching, overwhelming loving, and long-overdue ecstasy and embrace. Next time J and I get married again (I think it’s three so far, but one loses track), I want a January wedding.

My Favorite World!

Create PDFPrint