By Charlie Smith, Charleston
My cousin Wil sent me a YouTube clip today of Keith Olbermann making some observations about how marriage has dramatically changed in this country. Olbermann talks about how on Nov. 4, 2008 we elected a president whose parents at the time of his birth were legally unable to marry in 16 of our 50 states. On this same day, a majority of the citizens of California decided to relegate gay and lesbian people to that same station in life in which Barack Obama’s parents were forced to live just 47 years ago when the soon-to-be leader of the free world was born.
Olbermann’s comments reminded me of something that I don’t think I have ever revealed in public about myself. Something in fact that I have rarely ever mentioned privately even to my parents and sisters. In 1993 my partner of six years, a very handsome and wonderful man whom some of you knew, asked me to marry him. I did not know what to say when I heard those words. I wasn’t necessarily opposed to the idea, but I’d just never really thought that anyone would ask me that question. Why would someone? I mean I’m a guy…and guys were the askers, not the askees…and I knew that I would likely never be asking anyone…at least in the sense that the target of that question would be a woman. I did not know what to say to him, so I said what I always said when my partner asked me to do something that was obviously important to him…I said “Of course I will!”
My next big surprise came when I discovered that Carlos did not intend for us to have a small private ceremony with a handful of our closest friends as I had envisioned. He wanted us to join 2600 other couples in front of the IRS Building in Washington, D.C on April 24, 1993, during the March on Washington to be married by the Reverend Troy Perry, Founder of the Metropolitan Community Church. This was the wedding that became known at the time as the largest same-sex wedding demonstration and celebration in history. And so on that crisp Saturday morning in our nation’s capital we donned our Sunday finest and did just that.