I attended a gay marriage yesterday morning. It was a total San Francisco experience. For some inexplicable reason, they held the wedding in Golden Gate Park, in early November. For those of you who don’t know SF weather, that’s pretty hit or miss. In this case, it was a solid miss – everybody was soaked.
Awaiting the wedding were two homeless dudes sleeping in the gazebo. Someone shooed them out before things got underway. Just before the end of the ceremony, a group of Chinese tourists wandered right into the wedding, complete with cameras – they were a bit harder to shoo as they seemed to think this was staged for their amusement.
The wedding itself was…unorthodox. Think a mixture of Yogic/Veda combined with readings from gay love poetry.
But in SF, none of that is unexpected. What was truly amazing was that there were two families, one a group of evangelical christians from the reddest of the red states, the other a very blue family from a red corner of California – and everybody got along. In fact, SF-oddities aside, it was just like any other wedding I’ve attended over the years, with people crying, kids fidgeting and well-wishes all around.
I guess if those two families can acheive mutual tolerance and understanding, it’s really only a matter of time before the rest of the nation will come to the same point – regardless of the outcome on Tuesday (and Prop Hate).
On a related topic, I had some interesting discussions during the reception. On the red side, I chatted it up with a nice lady whose kids had just ‘left the nest,’ and who sold her home and was preparing to live in Georgia (ex-Soviet flavor) as a ‘missionary.’ Other than asking her an innocent question (“Aren’t Georgians already christian?”) I kept the conversation light and encouraged her on her ‘adventure.’
On the Blue side, I spoke with one gay couple over the dinner. One of the gentlemen had the most unusual background – he grew up in Yuba City (very red town in California), child of a Sheriff, an evangelical family whose Uncle was a preacher. It was interesting swapping stories with him. As a wimpy kid (I was a year younger than my peers) in Junior High in Southern California, I was frequently the the target of bullying. The worst thing you could be called, the lowest of the low, was ‘faggot.’ This dinner caused me to reflect that no matter how awful the bullying I faced was, it was easier being a straight wimp being branded a faggot, than actually being a homosexual, given the circumstances.
Anyway, on behalf of my recently married friends, and any ‘odd couple’ that finds love together, grab a glass of bubbley and share in my toast “Here’s to tolerance!”
