Proud to be an American

Favorite Pride Photo
Mary, 2011

Now they've gone and done it, taken away one of my favorite subjects: marriage equality.  How can I complain and rant about the insanity of the state determining who I can and cannot marry? No longer must I point out that I don't care who you marry, as long as you're happy. There is no more comparing this quest to marry someone of the same sex to the idiocy that allowed states to tell us we had to marry those with matching skin color (not so long ago I'm afraid). Say so long to my lofty hopes and dreams that one day my children will find this subject as ridiculous as school segregation (oh wait, that might now happen). Gone are the cheers for Iowa and Illinois, and the boos for Kansas. Au revoir my old friend, I've never been happier to have so little to say.

But for all I've said thus far, it's here, most of it. My goodness, I've had so much to say, about marriage, as it can now officially be called.

Constitutional Law: 2025

On my schedule senior year in college: Spanish Literature, Math (the lowest level possible, for the 3rd or 4th time), some communications class, some English literature class, a political science class or two, and constitutional law, the only thing that really held my interest in that last semester. The final project was a very long and in depth paper researching a historic court decision, my assignment: Brown v. Board of Education.

Interesting case but as a 22 year old college student, whose class study partner was a person with brown skin, really difficult to understand. Brown originated not far from where I went to school, and was decided less than 40 years prior. My dad, who was in high school at the time of the Brown decision, tried to help me make sense of what I was reading but the truth was that it didn't make sense and it was maddening to think that the issues presented were ever so divisive as to require Supreme Court level intervention.

Someday, twelve years from now, my children might find themselves in a classroom, assigned to study and write about United States v. Windsor, and I hope they find it just as infuriating as I found Brown.