Altar egos
Well, as I write this, it’s almost over. All those weeks and months and, yes, years of planning. All the decisions that had to be made — the details upon details upon details. The incessant racket. The constant disruption of our daily lives. And all that tearing down and building back up, just to bring us to this new chapter.
No, I’m not talking about the campaign season — though that’s been annoying, too. I’m talking about the fact that after eight years in our fixer-upper, my husband, John, and I finally had our kitchen renovated. I’m not saying I don’t know there’s been a run-up to an election going on. It’s just that I’ve been preoccupied by doing without a kitchen for the past few weeks: washing dishes in the bathtub (no, not with me in it, though that sounds like fun); mastering the art of coq au vin à la toaster oven; and searching for hours through boxes, trying to remember where I put my backup stash of El Yucateco chile habanero hot sauce, my strawberry huller, my 1950s Ice-O-Matic ice crusher and other essentials.
Because of these distractions, I’ve been able to tune out most of the campaign blithering and blathering, but every so often a morsel has been able to slip under the sheetrock and get lodged in my craw. For example, about a month before the election, I was in my new kitchen loading, unloading and reloading my very first dishwasher, making sure there wasn’t room for one more item — not even a lobster pick — and listening to a program on public radio.
Just an aside here: I’ve always been a little late to the game. I didn’t start my professional life until I was in my 30s. I didn’t get married until I was 40. I didn’t own my first home or publish my first book until I was in my mid-40s. Hell, I only recently found out who Honey Boo Boo Child is. But I have to say that buying my first dishwasher, at the age of 53, has utterly flummoxed me. As something of a professional bohemian (meaning I kind of work for a living), I’ve always thought there was nothing so bourgeois as owning a dishwasher. Besides, I love doing dishes. I can easily spend an entire morning standing at the sink, slopping around in all that warm soapy water and enjoying the immediate gratification of transforming that which is dirty into something clean.
And that was exactly the problem.
It became clear these Zen dishwashing sessions were eating deeper and deeper into my already abbreviated workday. So when the kitchen plans were being drawn up, I gave in and included a dishwasher. What I didn’t realize is that the presence of said machine would kick my manageable (so long as you don’t have to live with it) OCD into overdrive. Now, instead of spending the morning doing dishes, I spend even more of the day reorganizing them. In fact, it’s taking all my willpower right now not to go downstairs and move that cereal bowl I’ve already moved 20 times from the top rack to the bottom.
At any rate, I was in mid-reload when a conversation about same-sex marriage caught my attention. Jim Daly of the Colorado-based group Focus on the Family (which some have described as a right-wing evangelic powerhouse) was referring to it as “one of the most difficult topics in the culture today.”
Seriously? I thought, holding a mixing bowl between my knees while I moved an entire row of coffee cups clockwise to a new row. One of the most difficult topics? More difficult than how to end hunger or right injustice or provide affordable healthcare for all people? Clearly, he’s never had to choose between Social Butterfly and Moonchaser shades of yellow paint before.
Honestly, though. Are we really still having this discussion? First, let’s think about it. We all know about half of all marriages in the U.S. end in divorce. So, if this institution has such a high attrition rate, you’d think these pro-marriage people wouldn’t be so picky about whom they let into the club. Shouldn’t they be eager to pad their numbers any way they can?
Daly then said, “God’s design in human sexuality is male and female,” trotting out the old marriage-is-a-means-for-procreation argument. So what I want to know (aside from what I did with that pack of 200 coffee filters) is: Do these No-on-1 types think it’s OK for me and John to be married? As I said, I was 40 when we wed. I never had any interest in reproduction. (Really, one of me is plenty.) How does our marriage support the community and the family unit? Do we go to school board meetings? Coach soccer? Make cupcakes for bake sales? (Like, I might add, so many gay parents do.) Sorry darlings, but that would cut into auntie’s martini hour.
The No side counters that my marriage doesn’t do any damage to society, while gay marriage, according to Daly, “will do harm in opening that Pandora’s box.”
Again, you know where he’s going with this: If we allow same-sex couples to wed, the next thing you know we’ll be sanctioning bigamy, polygamy and matrimony between kinfolk, and — boom — there go all our summer weekends. We’ll be stuck attending endless weddings for our mother/sisters and brothers-in-law-in-law-in-law. From there, it will only be a small step to allowing people to marry anyone or anything they choose, including their pet goat.
I will concede the other side does have a point here. Have you ever tried to keep a bridal veil on a goat without her eating it before the ceremony is over? Can you imagination what her family would do to the raw bar at the reception? (No, not the oysters and shrimp, but the bar itself.) And what happens when a couple kids eat all the tin cans tied to the newlyweds’ bumper, and the groom and goat have to set off into their new lives with nothing but strings streaming behind them? Mayhem.
I have a suggestion. If we’re going to ban marriage, let’s ban it for couples between the ages of 20 and 24, whose unions are the most likely not to make it. (Nearly 40 percent will end in divorce, according to some spurious Web research.) And while we’re at it, let’s ban marriage for mean people. And those who don’t recycle. And people with bad taste in shoes. And with overdue library books. Or I have an idea: Let’s ban all those Bridezilla weddings until the couple can prove they can stick it out for, say, five years before dragging their friends and family on those ridiculous, weekend-long Vegas extravaganzas. In fact, why don’t we just ban the wedding industry altogether? If you want to get married, get married. If you want to have a party, throw a party.
You know why? Because it’s none of my business. Just like who wants to marry who is nobody’s business. What is our business is making sure all people have equal protection under the law. And I hope that by the time you read this column we will have passed our citizen initiative, set an example for the rest of the nation and started the process of putting this issue to bed once and for all. And if you don’t agree with me, I’ll chase you down the street with my rolling pin.
Just as soon as I can remember which box it’s in.
Elizabeth Peavey vows to be annoying here every month.
