Rendering unto God and Caesar at the wedding altar

By Jacob Slichter

In the spring of 2007, as the date of our wedding approached, my then fiancé, Suzanne, and I discussed the political dimensions of marriage. Specifically, we spoke of how two close friends, Joe and Priscilla, had forgone legal marriage altogether because of their objections to the discrimination enacted by marriage laws, bans on same-sex marriage and so forth. In lieu of a wedding, they had a commitment ceremony, a commitzvah as they called it, a label that announced the extra-legal nature of their lifetime union (with a nod to Priscilla’s Jewish roots). “That’ll make Priscilla’s family your out-laws,” one person told Joe. Given my religious belief, I told Suzanne, I wanted to have a wedding and be married, but Priscilla and Joe’s commitzvah raised questions we could not ignore, especially given our support for same-sex marriage.

Our ceremony would take place at Saint Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco, my old parish, where same-sex couples had been joined for years. The auspices of Saint Gregory’s presented no problem; California’s ban on same-sex marriage did. We considered removing the marriage license signing from the church premises and having a separate legal marriage at city hall, thereby keeping the state out of our ceremony. (As it turns out, this was already Saint Gregory’s practice.) Still, this would leave us partaking of legal rights denied to others, and after further reflection, we decided to adopt a modified form of what Joe and Priscilla had done: forgo legal marriage and instead draw up a slew of documents that would approximate legal marriage. If and when same-sex marriage became legal in New York (where we live) we’d get married. Meanwhile, we’d have a church ceremony and exchange rings and vows in public.

The next question was what to tell our wedding guests. What was the point of doing all of this if no one else knew? We briefly entertained a printed statement or an announcement, but we didn’t want to come off as scolding the married people in attendance. I was already wincing over having invited my predominantly atheist friends and family to a church wedding where they would be asked to say such things as “Amen” and “Hallelujah.” We decided instead to inform family and friends of our extra-legal status in conversation, over time.

Our wedding day arrived. We exchanged vows and rings as those atheists belted out their hallelujahs, and we found ourselves swept along a tide that followed us out of the church and into our new life together. Upon our return to New York, I began the process of exploring what it would take to assemble wills, join our finances, draw up hospital visitation agreements, and all the other arrangements necessary to approximate legal marriage. The lawyers I consulted estimated it would cost us thousands of dollars in fees. Put off by the expense, I bought a CD-ROM of pre-made legal documents, but quickly found myself overwhelmed and confused by the number of options. I wondered if there was a simpler, cheaper solution—a civil union in New Jersey? Unavailable to straight couples. We could get married in nearby Massachusetts, where gay marriage was already legal, but New York would not recognize same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts, so we’d still be partaking in a discriminatory system. The legal steeplechase occasioned discussion with friends and family about our marital status.

“Wait, Jake, are you married or not?”

“We’re married, but not in the legal sense.”

Straight friends puzzled. Gay friends chuckled. “Just get married. I would.” An email exchange on the subject left an old high-school friend bewildered. “Is Suzanne a man?” Frustrated by how our gesture seemed to arouse only laughter and perplexity, I also felt a rising urgency regarding the legal documents, especially a will. I worried about Suzanne’s financial security in the event of my accidental death. The crosswalks of New York City never felt so dangerous.

Finally, last May, our solution presented itself when Governor David Patterson decreed that New York would recognize same-sex marriages performed in states where it was legal. We picked a date, borrowed a car, and drove to Greenfield, Massachusetts where we lunched with my cousins before strolling over to the town hall. After submitting our application to the town clerk, we went to the courthouse to seek a waiver on Massachusetts’ three-day waiting period, assuming this meant waiting in line for a rubber stamp. But after sitting through separate interrogations with a uniformed court officer (who asked each of us if we were marrying of our own free will), we were ushered into a courtroom and found ourselves standing before a judge.

“You two live in New York?”

“That’s correct, Your Honor.”

“And yet you’ve decided to get married in Massachusetts. Why?”

At last, here was the perfect venue to air our thoughts on marriage equality. Perfect, that is, provided the judge didn’t mind the injection of politics into his courtroom, that he wouldn’t be outraged by our views, and that he wouldn’t therefore reject our waiver request. “Your Honor . . . I have cousins in the area. We thought it would be fun to see them.”

Signed waiver in hand, we slunk out of the courthouse, returned to the town hall, and presented the waiver to the clerk, who doubles as a justice of the peace. She led us outside, stood us under a tree, and beamed as she read from her script. “Marriage is a solemn . . . ” I had anticipated a ten-second procedure, not a three-minute mini-wedding that coupled the legal and spiritual realms we had labored to separate. “And now please join your hands.” We exchanged vows, again, the clerk pronounced us husband and wife, and as she handed me the certificate, I felt only the lifting of my recurring anxiety: getting pancaked by a bus and leaving Suzanne penniless.

So ended our adventure in nuptial social action. I began with my eye on principle and concluded by figuring out how to secure inheritance rights for Suzanne on the cheap, an irony that argues more cogently for marriage equality than anything we had said or done.

I realize that what I had really wanted was to emerge with a sense of mastery—to know we had stirred conversations and reflections, to feel the vibrations moving outward, but all of that seems to have eluded us. We take away only a deepened appreciation for what marriage rights entail—a small prize, but one more real than mastery.

Jacob Slichter is the author of So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star, a behind-the-scenes look at the music business. He lives with his wife, Suzanne Wise, in New York City. He has a Web site at www.jacobslichter.com.

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