More Same Gender Wedding with a Little bit of Olympics

Before we start. I so don't heart Jenn Stuczknski's coach who decided to berate her right after she WON the silver medal, coming in second to a fabulous Russian Olympic champ and world record holder.

Here's what he said (while playing with his blackberry):

It’s the same old same old, you’re losing takeoff at the big heights. (shrug) Whaddaya gonna do? (shrug, looks away) Gotta learn to keep takeoff. You got caught at that meat grinder. I did not - and I told 10 people - I didn’t wanna be caught in a meat grinder between 65 and 80. You had to, though. You weren’t on, your warmup didn’t go well. You were at 55. You got caught up in that meat grinder. Whaddaya gonna do? (shrugs, looks away) Whaddaya gonna do? (shrugs, looks away) Didn’t have the legs. Her legs are fresh. Hey, it’s a silver medal. Not bad for someone that’s been pole vaulting for four years. (looks down at his blackberry)

Whoah. Not even the Karolyis would be that brash. Dude, your athlete just WON a silver. You, yourself, acknowledge that she's only doing this for four years. Do you think berating her IN FRONT OF A ZILLION EYES ON TV, immediately after the competition is useful? Ok. Breathe.

As this is the second ceremony joining us in (not so) holy matrimony, I've been thinking about what a gift it is to have a same-gender wedding. Let's face it, when society (and the law) doesn't support your relationship, you're already breaking the rules. That gives you a lot more license to break or ignore a whole other sets of rules. Because we are a same-gender couple here's a list of things we just didn't care about:

1. The Wedding Party - Thank god for that bad Patrick Dempsey movie "Made of Honor." All of the publicity for that movie had "bridesmen" come out of the woodwork. All of the sudden there were all of these articles on how awesome it is to have someone of the opposite gender a part of your side of the wedding party. Originally, I was going to have both Lord and Lady Lancaster stand up with me since I was a groomsman at their wedding. When Lord Lancaster couldn't be at the wedding, Rootbeer and Pauline (who were already doing so much to put the wedding together) stood up with me along with Lady Lancaster. On J's side, he had two childhood friends and his brother stand up with him. There was no, questions about the prepoderance of folks of the female persuasion in our wedding party and noone was saying we needed to include so and so.

2. Walking Down the Aisle - J and I walked ourselves down the aisle hand in hand. We'd lived together for two years by that point. We were giving up our old life or changing our lives in any material way. The only difference is that our community of faith and our community of friends and family formally recognized us as a couple.

3. Our names - We kept them. End of story. Noone was going to give us any shit for it.

4. The guest list - What's interesting is that we had the opposite problem of figuring out who to invite. I had to check with my relatives about inviting people who were more peripheral in my family's life who may not know that I am out. It was heartwarming to hear from relatives who were saying "you CAN invite great uncle so and so and his five children."

5. The Whole Wedding - Our families were remarkably opinion free about our wedding. The fact that societally, we were making this up as we went along, meant that our families offered us a lot of support but few opinions. There was not a peppe of "this is how you should do it" from any side of our families.

Yes oppression sucks but as someone once said, "the mainstream is slow moving, it's the tributaties where all the fun is."