With all the squawking in last November’s election, things are pretty much the same. A year has passed. Shards of the sky do not litter sidewalks and fields across the state of Maine. The death knell has not tolled across our counties decrying the demise of the institution of marriage.
The vehement and virtuous among us have quieted. Perhaps they have moved on to other campaigns intent on saving our society, rescuing our churches, or cleaning up our sidewalks.
As the dust and detritus of the last election have settled, we can survey the landscape and see that, y’know, not all that much has changed.
Our children still scramble up into school buses as parents and school administrators argue over whether to allow them to play tag. There has been no report of scores of children flocking to declare that they are gay, though now several have the courage to tell their personal truth, and now we have the courage not to tell them to lie.
“That’s so gay!” Is heard less often in the schools and in the streets, more often receiving a “That’s so not cool!” reprimand.
Maine’s motto, “I lead,” has not quite seen our state in the forefront of the national shift in popular opinion, as Maine was among the last of the New England states to approve marriage equality. Still, we hold claim to being the first state in the entire 50 to extend to all of its citizens, by popular vote, the freedom to marry whomever they love. No insignificant claim that.
With the demise of the discriminatory “don’t ask don’t tell,” our men and women soldiers on the battlefield don’t have to worry that we think some of them are worth less than others.
Many of the rest of the states have yet to battle out the arguably inevitable progression toward national recognition of same-sex marriage, as case upon case, all the way up to the Supreme Court, recognizes and restates that all men and women are created equally worthy of civil rights. Indeed, Scotus has, at least 16 times, declared marriage to be a basic human right.
What has happened, though, in the quiet following the din, is a kind of easing of our populace as, perhaps unconsciously, we recognize that this societal shift did not result in the seismic cataclysm in our culture that some prophesied. The oddity of two grooms or two brides, standing atop the butter creme icing, somehow melted in the tears of happiness, love and joy. As both straight and gay couples flaunt their wedding glee in the announcement pages, we all seem OK wishing them happy lives and families.
Maine thought about it long and hard. We got here. We made it, mostly unscathed, to this place of letting go of judgments of doom and sin and others. Gradually, we’re relaxing in the acceptance that, well, y’know, just maybe we don’t have all the answers about how others should live their lives, how others should raise their children, and about whom they should love. Whether those others are our neighbors, our children, or even ourselves.
When it comes right down to it, maybe we needed another reminder that there are no “others” here. There’s just us, rainbow-colored, humanly flawed, mostly good, some sadly lost, some somewhere in-between, but, ultimately, just us Maine-ahs, scrambling on the bus, playing tag, and living our lives.
Lew Alessio is a life-long civil rights advocate. He lives in Greene with his husband, Jim Shaffer.
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