The wedding present
by Will and Kathy
As we started to plan our wedding, people asked us what we wanted for a wedding gift. Because we have lived together for years, there is very little that we need in the way of material things. Our first impulse was to decline any gifts at all. But it soon became clear that "the gift thing" has a life of its own - and we feared that if we weren't proactive, we would end up with a pile of cut-crystal olive dishes, Cuisinart inserts and silver-plated who-knows-whats.
At the same time, the fact that we could get legally married when our gay and lesbian friends could not was troubling to us. This wasn't just some abstract concern. Many of them were invited to the wedding. How could we stand before them and do something they could not? In marrying, we felt like we were bending down for a cool drink of water at a fountain marked, "Whites Only."
We recognized that in being denied marriage, gay and lesbian people are being deprived of much more than the legal benefits that come with the union. They are being robbed, in yet another way, of basic legitimacy and the avalanche of goodwill we were experiencing simply for having decided to marry.
Both this dilemma and the gift dilemma became an opportunity when we decided to tell our friends and family that a gift to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) was what we wanted for our wedding. HRC was very enthusiastic and helpful and even set up an informal "fund" for us. We included information about the issue and HRC in our invitations and plan to at the wedding itself as well.
No doubt, we will still receive our share of salad bowls and candlesticks. But we also hope to generate some money for HRC and create understanding through the personal, immediate context of our wedding about the injustice of reserving marriage for only a part of our society.