Still a New Jersey Outlaw

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies.

Meditations on Marriage

The two boys/men with whom I was most intimate, but didn't marry, both have wives and children. One of the guys is a gorgeous, athletic Leukemia researcher, who went through high school and his undergraduate years at Harvard in six years, rather than eight. The other is a handsome, musical business mogul who can do innumerable push-ups on his knuckles -- or could when we were 20 -- and who sold his business for US$150M, and now, is the CEO of a global green energy company.

The person with whom I have chosen to share my life -- for nearly 18 years so far -- is beautiful, as well as the funniest person I've ever met, and is kind and graceful, with nearly a photographic memory for anything she has ever read, and she has three Masters degrees and a Doctorate.

In not being allowed to marry, Pat and I have a good problem compared to people of any sexual orientation who've not found the love of their life and who have no marriage prospects at all. Ahhh, that's the gratitude I was hunting for in the midst of the shameful news that New Jersey's Senate voted against same-sex marriage.

This morning, I heard an interview of Elizabeth Gilbert on NPR. She was discussing her "champagne problem" of trying to follow her mega-bestselling book with another. Apparently, she wrote the bestseller about getting divorced and liberated in the process, and the new book was about how she needed to marry her boyfriend in order for him not to be deported.

*That's* your champagne problem, I thought bitterly, listening to her. She has no appreciation of her freedom to marry her boyfriend in order to stay united. Bi-national, same-sex couples have not got that similar right. For that matter, neither do same-national, same-sex couples.

It is doubtful that I will read either book, but I did prize Ariel Levy's recent review of the second one, especially this paragraph:

“Committed” is an unfurling of Gilbert’s profound anxiety about reëntering a legally binding arrangement that she does not really believe in. All this ambivalence, expressed in her high-drama prose, can be a lot to handle. (One generally doesn’t indulge another person’s emotional processing at this length unless the jabbering is likely to conclude with sex.)

Why the paragraph appealed to me: It was written by an openly-lesbian journalist, who in this article wrote, referring to an old-school lesbian separatist, "If I weren’t female and gay, I doubt very much that she would have spoken to me." And I might be projecting, but I want to believe that Levy felt the same impatience as I did about Gilbert's actual champagne problem -- of having the freedom to marry the person she wanted to marry, but just being tiresomely expressive of her fear to do so.

During low points like today, as I have time to feel hurt and righteously-indignant about the New Jersey Senate's inhumane decision, I fall prey to what-if-ing.

What if I had married the doctor? What if I had married the green CEO? Well, my partner is a doctor, too (in Education), and as an active Master Gardener, she couldn't be any greener.

Sunny Day

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

At Least in My Head, Anyway

It has been rainy outside for much of today, and it's dark now. A noticeable number of my Facebook friends designated their status as "sleepy" or "reading" or "relaxing."

What's sunny, for me, is coming out of my funk about the recent initiatives that didn't go my people's way. Two leaders helped me shift my attitude: Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum and Tracy Baim.

Last night, during Shabbat services, Rabbi Kleinbaum reminded us that the White House, where President Elect Obama and his family will soon live, was built by slaves from Africa. She called it a miracle -- the history of our country's progress.

And she said that if anyone felt upset at how various religious communities voted on the ballots we cared about, then we should stop and consider that certainly, as recently as 30 years ago, the [whole] Jewish community would have voted the same way.

Rabbi Kleinbaum said that it's a shame how religious people are being demonized -- my word, not hers -- when there's a whole bunch of progressive, religious communities out there. My dear friend Marni just introduced me to another voice among them today: a blog by a rabbinical student, "The Velveteen Rabbi: When can I run and play with the real rabbis?"

And Tracy Baim, who is among the best journalists and GLBT community voices I'm honored to know, wrote a great reality-check, too. What was our part in the failure? Why weren't we a more racially inclusive community all these years? Writing this feels potentially inflammatory of my comrades in the GLBT community, but I'll speak for myself when I observe that the GLBT Community has all too often, historically, looked like the G Community in terms of visibility, and especially the gay, white male community.

Pat just taught me the word in American Sign Language for "Jew," which she learned at her ASL class the other night: It's a matter of taking a fist and dragging it down from one's chin, i.e., to suggest a beard; I am Jewish and cannot grow a beard...at least not yet! My parallel is that all too often, when people think of Jews, they think of men. Jews are also female.

Women, historically, worldwide, have been less visible and less audible than men. There needs to be no bitterness on my part about the lack of visibility, but rather just a commitment to help change it. Likewise, personally, I've benefited from white privilege and I need to be even more conscious of trying to include people of color in my communities.

Rabbi Kleinbaum's point was huge last night: Congregations like ours, with progressive leaders, have had a hand in helping a number of the Jewish community shift our thinking to be more inclusive over the past 30 years. That's not what she said explicitly, but that's what I understand as I reflect here now.

And that message makes me feel so sunny because it empowers me. Tracy Baim's message empowers me likewise; From her points, I infer: Don't blame others for not getting what you want. Rather, be more inclusive of others and then they'll be more inclusive of you over time.

Maybe we'll see New York and New Jersey enable same-gender couples to marry relatively soon as the result of behaving as Rabbi Kleinbaum and Tracy Baim encourage.