A Gift Of Joy

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Standing before the happy couple and a small group of family members, I began to officiate at the wedding ceremony which the two men and I had written. Their eyes were misted. They had been together for ten years, and finally my state had passed a law saying that marriage between same-sex couples was legal. The joy in the air was almost palpable.

My subconscious made its way to the surface. My great-grandfather, a 19th century merchant in China from Massachusetts, had courted my great-grandmother for ten years before they  eventually married. She was the third of four generations on my mother's side to work as a medical missionary in China. Her father, a Presbyterian evangelical minister and medical missionary, finally gave her permission to marry, but would not officiate at their ceremony; the Unitarian merchant was to him the dreaded heathen. Through the merchant's letters, I had sensed the same joy when they finally married that I now felt on this wedding day.

In the background, the boats in the harbor were still in the warm spring day. So different from the sailing ships of the 19th century, crossing oceans at their peril. I felt my ancestors looking over my shoulder: the Unitarian merchant who embraced all belief systems; his wife, the Presbyterian medical missionary who had spent her life providing medical care to Chinese women who had none. Chinese women were thought to have no souls and no intellects, so why provide medical care?

My mentor in the theater died of AIDS in 1984. They didn't call it AIDS back then; we knew it as a disease that was sweeping the homosexual community. No one stepped up to look for a cure at first. Like the 19th century Chinese women, homosexuals were thought to have no souls and no intellects, so why provide medical care?

Every ten years, according to Chinese lore, we awaken from a dream. My great-grandparents finally married after ten years of courtship. The same-sex couple standing in front of me were finally marrying after ten years of being denied their civil rights. The medical world had finally stepped up to find a cure for AIDS and was getting the disease under control. We are awakening from a dream of prejudice and discrimination to begin a new dream, of equality and reconciliation.

Even though same-sex marriages are increasingly becoming legal in many states, some ministers today refuse to officiate at their weddings. As one who believes that God is Love, am I not spitting in that God’s eye if I refuse to honor the love in every being?

Before my mentor died, I sat by his bedside and told him that I knew of no way to thank him for the doors he had opened during my career. His moral support, at a time when women were undervalued in the work place, had instilled the courage I needed to pursue my dreams.

"There is only one way to thank someone," he said. "Do the same for someone else."

Today, I was opening a door and providing moral support for others who had been undervalued. As the sun shone upon them, my subconscious quieted, my ancestors faded away, the men recited their vows, I pronounced them a married couple, and went home filled with their gift of joy.