Wedding Bells

Some dear friends of ours are getting married this weekend.  Hubs has known Iz since she was barely a teenager ten years ago through search and rescue.  I have known K and Iz for almost as long as I have been with Hubs.  They were just starting their now quite successful gardening business then.  They have been through their share of struggles and have come to this awesome point.  They love each other madly, they are starting to see real success in their business venture, they are surrounded by family and friends who also love them madly...Time to get hitched!  The only bummer is that our nation still has its head too far up its ass to recognize their marriage as legal and binding the way mine and Hubs is recognized.  Bullshit.  But, for this weekend I will suspend my sadness and frustration over the lack of true equality for all Americans and I will put on my party hat and my dancing shoes.  It is so important to celebrate the times like these.  It is important to celebrate with my dear sweet friends as they start their "official" life together as wife and wife (or as Wife and Isabel).  It is important because with every celebration we add another drop of not just tolerance but normal-ance to the water of the world.  If we keep celebrating we keep increasing the number of people who know and love a couple who "got married" even though the government hasn't caught up yet.  Before we know it everyone will have family, friends, co-workers who they love and respect who don't fit the puritanical definition of "marriage" as one man and one woman, and we will be forced to change the way the state and federal governments recognize the awesome and sacred union of marriage.  Maybe people like Rush will no longer get to marry since they clearly don't respect the bond as much as the two women down my block who have been together for 25 years....just sayin' its not the gays who are threatening the sanctity of the union, its the Newts and the Rushs.  Anyway, this weekend I will party like a rock star as we send these two awesome women into the next phase of their lives.  They will awake on Monday morning to find that nothing much has changed, yet everything is different and it is wonderful.  I will toast them and dance and pour love from my heart, and in the back of my mind I will hope that by the time my daughter is old enough to love someone enough to want to spend the rest of her life with them, she will be able to marry whoever she chooses and will have access to all the rights and responsibilities therein.