For years, first as an activist and then as an elected official, I had always wanted for myself and for my community the same rights, benefits and privileges along with the responsibilities and obligations of marriage but I was not sure that we needed to fight a war over a word.

My heart and mind were changed irrevocably after having read the November 2003 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. That court, not unlike the Supreme courts of Hawaii and Vermont before it, ruled that there is no constitutional basis for the discrimination of denying loving and devoted same-sex couples marriage licenses. They went on to say that our nation’s history has taught us that separate is seldom, if ever, equal.

But they then went on to say something even more powerful, something that I had never thought of before then. The justices stated that the only remedy to this identified discrimination is marriage and marriage alone. No parallel construct such as civil unions or domestic partnerships would do, they said, because it would “perpetuate a destructive stereotype that suggests that there is something inferior and unstable about the way same-sex couples love.”

Think about this for a moment. What is the one thing that all of us walking this planet have in common irrespective of our race, creed, color, religion, nation of origin, native language, sexual orientation or gender identity? What is our common humanity? It is our ability to love and our desire to love another human being in an intimate and committed fashion. That is what makes us human beings.

If we, through our public policy and lawmaking, are going to say that one group of humans loves in a way that is deserving of a marriage license but this other group just doesn’t love quite good enough so we will deny them their fundamental right to marry, then we are denying that group their very humanity. It was at that time that I decided that I was ready to fight a war over a word.

Mark Leno

July 2008