Cold feet
Why I almost got married (and why it's probably better that I didn't).

By Lynn Rapoport

THE ROMANTIC ITALIAN dinner, adjustable heart-shaped ring, and off-script Friday the 13th proposal were everything a girl would have dreamed of if she'd ever given it any thought. But the moment I knew for certain I wanted to get married was the morning I woke up to the news on the radio that President George W. Bush didn't want me to – and was game for editing the Constitution to make sure I couldn't.

If I'd been driving a car, I would have hit something. If I'd been in the Oval Office, I'd probably be in jail or dead right now, felled mid-tantrum by Secret Service agents. As it was, all I could do was swear loudly and get on the phone to the County Clerk's Office to make an appointment to get married.

It's childish. I know it is. Just because Bush tells me I can't have a marriage license, I feel compelled to go out and prove him wrong. But it seemed like the least I could do to counter his attack was reconsider my 19-year stance against wedded bliss, get down on the connubial battlefield with my girlfriend, and say "I do."

If you'd asked me a year ago, this isn't where I would have said I'd be. Until last week I'd only walked down Market Street to protest war, celebrate Halloween, and look for cute girls at the Dyke March. Last Thursday I marched for the right to marry, waving a Focus on Your Own Damn Family bumper sticker and laughing as my housemate, a queer 21-year-old intern with COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere), made up slogans like "Hooray for gay!" and "Why aren't my parents married?" to drown out the sound of people singing "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

Recently transplanted from a Missouri college town and proudly wearing her Queer Spawn T-shirt, she said it was the first political rally she'd ever attended. I was glad I could share the moment – her unbounded exuberance helped me get through a few low points, like when Molly McKay from Marriage Equality California (an otherwise excellent woman) got up on the steps of the California Supreme Court and exhorted us all to be "love warriors"; like when the organizers insisted on leading the crowd in a medley of "Stop in the Name of Love" and "What the World Needs Now Is Love."

I have a bad attitude. I don't deserve to get married. So it serves me right that our 8 a.m. April Fool's Day appointment has most likely been canceled by now. It serves me right that we got turned away back in February after standing in the dark outside City Hall for three hours. However, I do feel for the woman from the dog park I ran into in line there and for my chiropractor standing behind her, both of whom started weeping after we were told we might as well go home. I feel for the grim-faced guys in the black tuxes and leis on the front page of March 12's San Francisco Chronicle, who got called up by McKay to the courthouse steps to vent their frustration with a system that lets Britney say her vows on a midnight whim but won't legally validate their lengthy relationship.

I feel bad for them. But for the record, I felt worse when one of the grooms began addressing America on the subject of his violated civil rights. "We're normal people," he said for the cameras, arm around his boyfriend. What he seemed to be arguing, to all the freaked-out straight folks, the ones who find it disgusting, the ones who think history and biology are on their side, the guys who think lesbians are hot, the parents who no longer speak to their children, the religious leaders who recite the version of the future in which some of us turn to cinders in hell, was that he wants the same things they want, that he is more like them than unlike them. Faced with that vision, it was hard to remember my wedding vows.

I understand this is what would make him a good test case to take to trial and me a good person to stand in a crowd of people watching history be made. So I will. For the woman from the dog park, my housemate's father, and even the normal guys, I want us to win. And I want the right to try again someday, whether it's six months from now and I still have a statement to make, or six years from now and I've changed my mind about public declarations of love, when everyone and their gay grandmother has gotten married and become a statistic for the 2010 national census.

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