My brain is still agog with joy at this morning’s SCOTUS ruling that marriage is a fundamental right for all. I have never understood the opposition to marriage equality. It served no purpose, protected no one and simply served to make some families lesser-than. Today’s ruling corrected that injustice. And I can honestly say I did not expect to happen in my lifetime.
I was born into a post-Stonewall world, so I have no experience of a time before gays and lesbians started the fight for equality. I was also around for all of the hideous homophobia and general hatred that followed the emergence of HIV/AIDS. That also means that I was around for the community solidarity that emerged from that (ongoing) crisis. I am not willing to go so far as to say that HIV/AIDS was or is a blessing in disguise. I cannot say that about a disease that continues to kill so many people worldwide. But I am willing to say that I believe it was a catalyst. And I do wonder if we would be where we are today without it.
We are living in a complicated time. A time when same-sex couples are being granted equal status while blacks in prayer are killed for simply being black. A time when pop culture celebrates a trans woman of color (as we should, she is awesome), but men of color are killed for being “thugs”. And I am in a position now where I need to make some sense out of this because I will have the responsibility of explaining this all to a child.
We do not know the race or color of the child who will be joining our family. And in some very important ways, it makes absolutely no difference to me. But in other very important ways it is a very big deal because the conversations I have about race and equality with my child will likely be different depending on her own racial and ethnic make-up.
A woman of color will most likely have a different set of challenges in her life than a white woman. That was a difficult, but important sentence to type. Difficult because it is a reality that I wish my daughter did not have to face. Important, because it is a reality that we, as a society, need to own and correct.
I remain hopeful that my daughter will grow up in a world where the cultural aspects of an ethnicity will be celebrated while the barriers associated with skin color diminish. And decisions like this morning’s give me hope. But we still have a far ways to go.