On Dec. 9, I received the most surprising email of my life from the White House Social Office. I was invited to the signing of the Respect for Marriage Act. I knew why I’d received it, I just didn’t know how. I still don’t.
Aparna Shrivastava, right, takes a photo as her partner, Shelby Teeter, gives her a kiss, after President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act on Dec. 13 on the South Lawn of the White House. The law mandates federal recognition for same-sex marriages. Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
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The why is that I’ve devoted decades of work for LGBTQ+ inclusion and justice. I’m an Episcopal priest, and when I was in seminary in the early 1980s my best friend was a gay man. He came to dinner one night with his boyfriend, and they kept nervously and excessively thanking me for inviting them. When I told them to stop, they said: “You don’t understand. We don’t get many chances as a couple to socialize with straight people.”
That was my lightbulb moment. I thought to myself: “This isn’t fair. I’m a divorced woman but I can get ordained and I can get married. My friend isn’t allowed to do either.”
And so I became an activist for same-sex marriage within and beyond the church. As someone who’d been divorced twice and then a single parent for 17 years before entering my third (and enduring) marriage, I’d done a great deal of thinking about the institution of marriage.
I began thinking about marriage in terms of identity. We self-identify as married or single. And society sees us that way, and has constructed legal stipulations of the rights and responsibilities of marriage.
How could those who were denied the right to marry consider themselves full citizens?
In the early 1990s a group of progressive clergy in Boston, including me, got together to form the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry. As I signed the charter I thought: “Well, it would be nice to think so. It’s like signing up for a clergy trip to the moon.”
Ten years later, the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts decreed that same-sex couples had the right to marry. Chief Justice Margaret Marshall wrote: “The marriage ban works a deep and scarring hardship on a very real segment of the community for no rational reason … That same-sex couples are willing to embrace marriage’s solemn obligations of exclusivity, mutual support, and commitment to one another is a testament to the enduring place of marriage in our laws and in the human spirit.”
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I replied to the White House invitation without hesitation: of course. My husband and I flew to Washington, D.C., for the ceremony on Dec. 13. There we joined a very long line outside the South Lawn, passed through security, and joined a throng gathered in joy, gratitude and celebration. As I was pushing to get closer to where the speakers were, a gentleman reminded me: “We are all here.”
“But I’m short,” I protested.
“But we are ALL HERE!” he said again.
And we were, we were all there. Five thousand of us pressed together. Voluptuous divas in full regalia, favoring leopard skin prints with gold accents and gold makeup. Old men embracing and crying. Middle-aged men with years of fear and sorrow etched in their faces. Beautiful boys with beautiful shoes. Skinny people in jeans and hoodies. Rainbow hair and rainbow scarves and rainbow socks.
The speeches were profound and heartfelt, President Biden’s most of all. “Love is love,” he kept repeating. He talked about interracial marriage alongside same-sex marriage, emphasizing that human rights are human rights. Are you listening, Justice Thomas?
Everybody thanked us. The president, the vice president, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer. “We couldn’t have done it without you,” they all said, and we believed them.
At one point many of us turned to wave at the cameras rolling behind us.
“Why are we waving?” someone asked, and then answered himself, “Oh, we are waving to America.”
At last, at last, we felt America waving back.
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