Will Swaim tries to figure out why gay marriage isn’t already destroying the totally hetero deal he has going with his wife

A few years ago, my friend Steve asked me to officiate his wedding; not a churchgoing guy, he couldn’t imagine a stranger performing this intimate and, sure, sacred act. But I wasn’t a minister. We resolved this apparently insuperable problem, not with more schooling (I got a BA from USC’s School of Religion, banging out a senior thesis on how to radicalize North American Christian churches) or the sanction of any church, temple or mosque. We solved the problem of my non-ministerial status with a computer: It turns out that, in California, you can become a minister online.

The process took less than 10 minutes: the Universal Life Church asked for my name, address and my e-mail; warned me that “Applying for ordination in the name of a fictitious person or animal, or the submission of a person’s name without his or her permission is fraud”; and reminded me that “a computer cannot ordain you. Your request must be reviewed before your ordination can be done legally. You cannot be issued a credential automatically by a computer!”

And then the Web site directed me to click on the button marked “ORDAIN ME.”

And, verily, I did.

A few months later, in summer 2002, the Rev. Will Swaim married Steve and Shawna.

In September, taking advantage of California’s change of heart vis-à-vis gay marriage, my friends David and Randy asked me to marry them at Cal State Fullerton.

On the morning of the wedding, our doorbell rang. My nine-year-old daughter called me to the front door, opened already on two obviously gay guys—I could guess by their dress, expensive haircuts and something in their physical comfort with one another, and I was certain when the blond guy asked, “Are you familiar with Proposition 8?”

Proposition 8 is on your Nov. 4 ballot, and if it passes it’ll ban gay marriage.

I redlined in my enthusiasm for their energetic work to defeat 8. “I am so on your side,” I told the two gay men. “I’m completely for gay marriage.”

And then their faces went simultaneously kind of saggy—sudden loss of all identifying characteristics except confusion, maybe—and it became clear to me that, no, maybe, these were not the men I thought they were.

The other guy—dark hair in a faux-hawk, nice shirt, Seven jeans—cleared things up for me: “No, see, we’re for Prop. 8. It’s the Defense of Marriage Act.”

I said nothing.

He continued: “We oppose gay marriage because marriage ought to be reserved for one man and one woman.”

I stopped him as gently as I could, kind of wrestling the feeling of creepiness that conservatives must get when gay men show up on their doorsteps. “I couldn’t disagree you with more,” I said. “And it’s weird you should come on this very morning”—I chuckled, attempting to help them see the irony, to build maybe a little space for our common humanity in a moment of just weird coincidence—“because, see, tonight I’m marrying two gay friends.”

They said nothing.

“So, I’m pretty firm on this,” I concluded. “I’m against Prop. 8, and really you’d just be wasting your time here.”

“Well, that’s what makes America so great,” one of them said with this just pie-eyed kind of look, like that part of his brain that pumps out 5-hydroxytryptamine was suddenly producing patriotism. “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion.”

“No,” I said—still gently, I think. “See, if I win, if Prop. 8 loses, you get to have your opinion and live your life. But if you win, see, my friends don’t get married.”

That night, I married David and Randy. On Election Day, we’ll all decide—you, me, Randy, David, the two not-so-obviously gay men on my doorstep—we’ll all decide whether they’ll be among the last.

I’m just a mail-order minister, which might be why I’m wrestling with the logic behind Proposition 8. The campaign is based on just two arguments, really: that (a) straight marriages and (b) children like mine need protection from gay marriage.

The threat is, well, inevident—on a level with weapons-of-mass-destruction that don’t really exist.

I’ve been married for 11 years. More than most straight marriages, ours ought to be really T-boned by gay marriage—given my active participation in at least one of those marriages. But it’s not. I know this sounds weird but I stood up in the George G. Golleher Alumni House on the campus of Cal State Fullerton, held the joined hands of David and Randy and I felt . . . just joy, like this sense of rightness that these two guys, loyal to one another over the course of a quarter century, were at last granted the rights my wife and I have enjoyed since 1997. And I didn’t feel the slightest bit, what, ready to leave my wife for a dude? Or another woman? Felt only that we (my wife and I) had two more allies in the struggle of all couples I know to strengthen that slender filament of romance that’s supposed to support all the other crap that comes with marriage—the fact that we’re roommates with two sometimes competing aesthetics with regard to say interior design, separate (but compelling and workable) philosophies about money/thrift/risk and childrearing, crap, as I say, which is sometimes corrosive to the intense commitment at the center of the relationship and which is sometimes almost undetectable to us as the source of our anguish in that union—sometimes but not always, thanks in part to the reminders of friends (like Randy and David) who without words but by their actions tell us that we stay married and in love for just one reason: because we said stood in front of at least one witness and said we would.

There’s only one person who threatens that marriage, and he’s not gay. He’s me.

So I’m not buying that my marriage needs protecting from anything but myself, is my point here. And on the issue of children—and their needs where the marriage of gay men and women are concerned—I went to District Weekly Child Expert Emma Swaim, my aforementioned daughter:

You know what gay marriage is, right? It’s when a boy and another boy get married. How about a girl and a girl? That’s lesbian marriage. They’re actually both called ‘gay marriage.’ Oh. So, you know that some gay people are already married. Yeah. What impact has that had on your life? [ . . . ] You understand ‘impact’? Like ‘effect’? Yes. What ‘effect’ has gay marriage had on your life. Um, nothing. Any effect on our marriage—mommy’s and mine? No. Do you think our marriage would be better if gay people couldn’t get married? No. So why do some people say that? I don’t know. Because they’re stupid. That seems a little harsh to me. Well, you asked me. You didn’t ask you. [Emma’s mother intervenes at this point to agree that maybe “stupid” is harsh.] There has to be a better reason. Because they’re jealous. Why are they jealous? Because they’re not married. What if they are married? Because it’s not in their beliefs. Isn’t belief a good reason to make a law the keeps gay people from getting married? Their beliefs? No. Adults should be able to marry whoever they want. ‘Whomever.’ Yeah. Whoever they want. The word is ‘whomever.’ Who cares. [Emma’s mother intervenes at this point to argue for greater precision in language.] What if it’s just your belief versus somebody else’s belief? Who gets to be right about gay marriage? I’d just say gay marriage is fair. What if some people say they don’t like it anyway? That’s their problem. This is America. People who don’t like gay marriage say it’s bad for children. How? That’s why I’m asking you. I’m not sure. I guess because they’re worried their children might become gay. I suppose it’s possible, but that’s not very likely. Why? Because people who like boys just like boys. Gosh. Don’t be stupid.

While earning that degree in theology, I can’t say I spent lots of time thinking about homosexuality. I was far more interested in women—women, it turns out, or rather my affection for them, proved far more dangerous to my marriageability than gay men who were, as far as matrimonial exposure goes (as my daughter says), well, whatever. But I did write an essay on the question of Biblical perspectives on homosexuality and their relationship to public policy.

Part of undergraduate education is learning to write five pages (250 words per typed, double-spaced page) where three would do; I can spare you some 1,000 words and tell you this: the parts of the Bible that proscribe homosexuality are, in fact, fairly limited. Most of your God-Hates-Fags Christian evangelicals (and supporters of Prop. 8, and the folks behind Chick Publications) will direct you to the Book of Leviticus, where, sure, after you sort through oft-ignored directions on the proper handling of sacrificial goats, “creeping things,” menstruating women and literally, like, hundreds of other dietary, clothing and weird and obscure laws (“thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed”), you will indeed find a proscription on gay sex, namely that “a man shall not lie with a man as he lies with a woman” (18:22). The punishment, Leviticus says, “is death” (20:13). My particular insight (born of a late-night conversation with a roommate struggling toward queer identity) was that a man does not lie with a man as he does with a woman (think about it), an observation professor of theology Jack Crossley called “clever” and “Talmudic” but “probably not as powerful” as my conclusion: that religion can’t be the basis of law in a secular society because the Founding Fathers, having witnessed wars of religion in the Old Country, were not eager to see full-dress reenactments in this one. In fact, vis-à-vis the First Amendment’s bright-line division of church and state, religion probably shouldn’t even be allowed (you’ll pardon the expression) a back door into the conversation about law.

And yet you’ll find that many of Prop. 8’s backers are open about the biblical basis of their arguments in support—and probably, when April 15 comes around, claim federal-exempt tax-status because they’re churches and (says the IRS code) they stay out of politics. In August, just to single out my own church, Catholic bishops endorsed Prop. 8, declaring that “same-sex unions are not the same as opposite-sex unions” and that only a relationship that can produce children should be called marriage. I’m calling my Catholic parents tonight to encourage them to get a divorce.

But a friend of mine—gay—says these arguments about the constitutionally limited role of religion aren’t likely to resonate in the white-stucco homes of suburban voters. He says the best argument against Prop. 8 is this: It’s simply too expensive. He paid Look Graphics (Long Beach) $500 for a thousand bumper stickers of his own design. Each urges the people who drive behind you to vote no on Prop. 8 to “save California $684 million”—because that’s how much one study says the state will lose in revenue from gay marriages.

I told him that that’s a little like opposing the extermination of Europe’s Jews on the basis of its impact on global warming, but he insists. “It’s got to be a pocketbook issue,” he told me.

Maybe. But I can’t shake the feeling that opposing Prop. 8 on financial grounds is a little like accepting Jesus as your personal savior out of some gambler’s calculation—not because, you know, God is good, or even because being good is better than being bad, but merely because you, personally, don’t want to run the risk of going to hell forever. Wait a minute. Let me take this call: I’m learning that that’s precisely why many Christians believe in Jesus.

So maybe my friend is right. But and if he is, then there’s also this weird possibility: If Prop. 8 passes on Nov. 4, Sacramento—that is, California Attorney General Jerry Brown—will invalidate the state’s gay marriages. In August, Brown said that won’t happen, said Proposition 8 is not retroactive. Or said he thinks it’s not: “I believe that marriages that have been entered into subsequent to the [May 15] Supreme Court opinion will be recognized by the California Supreme Court,” Brown told The San Francisco Chronicle. “I would think the court, in looking at the underlying equities, would most probably conclude that upholding the marriages performed in that interval [before Nov. 4] would be a just result.”

But read your sample ballot, and follow along with us to the part where the initiative’s supports assert that “your YES vote on Proposition 8 means that only marriage between a man and a woman will be valid or recognized in California, regardless of when or where performed.” That makes it possible that Californians will wake up Nov. 5 to an amazing public spectacle—thousands of gay people lined up for the planet’s first mass divorce, the obverse of a Rev. Sun Yung Moon mass wedding, all these people who made all these individual commitments to love, honor and cherish one another now told that there’s nothing stopping them from doing so, but we sure as shit won’t make it any easier for them. No, we’ll be telling them on Nov. 4, we prefer our gays eccentric, wearing assless-chaps and flannel shirts, cruising bars and engaging in a meth-fueled singles scene, or lonely and isolated—so much easier that way for us to complain about their unwillingness to just, like, settle down in a kind of nuclear arrangement.

Tags: California, gay marriage, politics, Prop 8