Queer Love as a Revolutionary Act

Rose and I :)

My partner, Rose, and I are long distance, and on my last trip to visit zir in Chicago, I bought a sticker from Women & Children First, a Chicago feminist book store. It says “cultivate lesbian joy”. Then, during my Christmas visit with my family in a small town between Buffalo and Rochester while frantically hacking away on my computer to clear my inbox before I put my OOO up, my cousin read aloud “Cultivate Lesbian Joy”. Ever the PE teacher, my cousin says,

“Let’s all go around a circle and list the ways YOU could cultivate Lesbian Joy.”

To which I responded,

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

To which, of course, he did not listen but then answered with,

“Make them a sandwich!”

And you know what, he was right. Someone should make Lesbians sandwiches. It’s hard out here.

For the first two weeks of the new year, I have been organizing and planning my Get Gay Married digital footprint, making sure I have access to wedding photos from my busy fall, updating my testimonials, giving my website a facelift, finally getting around to blog posts I’ve had sitting in drafts for years, reaching back out to folks who needed more time before they hired me— gearing up for hopefully another successful year of Getting Gay Married. All to the tune of a murdered Lesbian mother and poet in Minnesota and yet more discussion about trans athletes and where they belong.

It feels crazy to be sitting here at a desk in my apartment trying to figure out how to talk about myself so queer couples will trust me with their weddings when the status of gay marriage hangs in the air. We know how quickly things happen in this administration, so I find myself asking when it will happen rather than if. When will being a queer wedding officiant and planner in Philadelphia no longer be a thing that anyone needs or that becomes a danger to myself and others?

I can’t tell you how many clients say to me that they are rushing to get married because they’re afraid of what gay marriage looks like in the future. I’ve listened to my queer friends talk about the bureaucracy of having to get legally married in three separate states before they could be officially married in 2014 in the state where they lived. They talk about the post-child-birth-paperwork nightmare they experienced because their wife had be listed as a parent instead of a mother and they had to sign away the child’s “paternal rights”.

I think— how can I distill the inevitable legality and nonsense in the future and make it easier for queer people to get married? I think about the purposefully complex lawmaking that will get signed into effect that I will struggle to understand so that I can accurately weigh in which states recognize gay marriage as legal. I think about how structures of celebrations might change and the challenges that will come along with that. I think— Okay. I’m just going to continue to tell my clients that there aren’t any rules or timelines and that right now there is still gay marriage and when there isn’t, we’ll figure it out. I think— it’s just like abortion, drugs, sex work— regardless of government regulation, they still happen! Right?

But at the same time, I think— I say all of this from a place of privilege. As a person without children do I even understand what it would mean for a parent to not have legal rights to their own child? As a person without a chronic illness do I understand what it would mean if my wife didn’t have jurisdiction over my end of life care? Am I pushing to keep going because this is a way I make money and I’m just trying to pay my rent and stay alive? As policies continue to get passed down at an alarming rate and violence increases across the country I live in, I think— When do I stop doing this? What is the point?

And then I think about Rose. And I think about the joy they bring me. And I think about our community. And I think about the 15 dykes that went to the woods with Rose and I to celebrate zir birthday and how the Air B&B ran out of water and everyone out dyked themselves and had so many helpful solutions in record time so we could continue to read tarot and listen to Lucy Dacus in the grass. And I think about my dear friend’s gay ass wedding in Medford, Oregon and her gorgeous community of Lesbians and how one of them GREW all of their wedding flowers and how I find it absolutely impossible to believe that these two wouldn’t want to celebrate their love and promises to each other even if for some reason it became illegal.

And I think— queer love is a radical act. It is a revolution. It is all that we have. And regardless of what laws are overturned and or how I pay my rent or what comes next, I will always believe in the necessity of celebrating queer love. I will continue to love queer individuals and encourage celebration of their love and communities, regardless of what that looks like.

I am not so daft to think that continuing to celebrate queer love without the protections that marriage allows will fix everything. Nor is anything I am saying a new concept to queer history or activism. But, I’m here to say, I’m planning on continuing getting gay married— planning on doing as many gay weddings as I can. I feel dedicated to uplift and protect the sanctity of queer love and I look forward to doing it with so many iterations of queer people and celebrations as I can.