I was on a bus traveling between Peru and Bolivia when Obergefell vs. Hodges, better known as marriage equality, was decided. I didn’t know it was called that at the time, didn’t know that the decision would be announced that day, didn’t see it on TV. I heard the news back in 2015 from an effusive text message from my mom. She was so excited, her message in all caps and flooded with exclamation marks. I remember feeling vaguely happy about it. Although I was (and still am) a gay American citizen, I had lived in Canada since the age of thirteen, where same-sex marriage had been recognized since 2005. I was shrouded in the privilege of living in one of the most gay-friendly countries on earth, with a supportive family. Marriage equality felt like old news to me.
A few days ago, my wife and I were driving from our apartment in Brooklyn to my parent’s apartment in Manhattan, listening to the radio. Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court was being discussed, and I felt panic start to swell in my chest. My wife noticed that I had gone quiet and asked me what was wrong.
“I’m worried we won’t be married anymore, soon.” I said.
My wife and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary last week, and recently we’ve been talking about what we’re going to do if the Supreme Court dissolves marriage equality. Where we will live, how we’ll find jobs. Whether or not we can stay in the United States.
When I returned from South America in the summer of 2015, I ended up moving back to the United States, first to San Francisco and then to New York. I was here on election night in 2016, in a room full of people that got quieter and quieter as we realized what the next four years would look like. The Trump administration wasted no time filling all levels of the courts with anti-LGBTQ judges, forbidding transgender people from joining the military, supporting employment discrimination against LGBTQ people and rolling back Obama-era employment protections, and endorsing discrimination against LGBT people when it came to housing, medical care, and schooling.
I went to protests, called my elected officials, voted in every election. I also got a Master’s degree, fell in love, made a great group of friends, and got married. I am on my wife’s health insurance as a spousal dependent. She is my emergency contact person for every doctor’s form I fill out. We share an apartment, a car, a last name. When we walk together in the street, we hold hands. There are a million things both big and small that I risk losing to powers outside of my control.
I’m not positive, but I have a hunch that every queer person has a horror reel in their head, a mix of news stories and scenes from movies and their own lives that all come together into a perfect dystopian nightmare. My personal highlights include the Valerie’s letter scene in V for Vendetta, the lesbian couple in Topeka whose foster daughter was removed and placed in an abusive home with 14 other children, photos from the Pulse Nightclub shooting, the bloodied faces of Melania Geymonat and her girlfriend Christine Hannigan, and the creeping dread I felt the entire time I watched The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Living in America right now, each day feels a step closer to that horror reel becoming a reality.
These days I find myself longing to go back and shake my 21-year-old self, sitting complacently on that bus, to celebrate more, to not take for granted that I should have the right to marry the person I love. As if that would have made a difference. And I know that I have been insulated by privilege for far too long, that the emergency bells urgently clanging in my chest have been ringing for years, for decades. But I am so, so scared for what the future holds, and if I can shake even one person out of their complacency, I want to do it.
Amy Coney Barrett is set to be confirmed to the Supreme Court on October 22nd, two days from now, and after that, all bets are off. I have only just gotten used to the weight of the word “wife” on my tongue, finally finished changing my last name on what felt like endless legal documents. When I wake up in the morning and when I close my eyes at night, it is with the expectation that I’ll get to do so next to the woman I love beyond all measure.
What is the word for a wife after her marriage is dissolved by the government?
Don’t make me find out.
