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Over and over again in the testimony of those against repeal I heard courage. There were many stories shared, about sacrifice, about pain, about discrimination. Told of themselves, of their mothers, their children, their brothers, their friends. Stories about celebration and hope, too. In them you felt the collective struggle of the often difficult movement from second class citizen status to true equality.
Also present in significant numbers was the moral courage of the religious left, a group virtually invisible in popular culture but powerfully present today.
The running theme of all the pro-marriage speakers was courage. For some it was the immediate courage of never having spoken publicly before about such a thing. For others, the experiential courage that showed through loud and clear in the retelling of a struggle.
The impression given off by those who would do away with our marriage law could not have been more different.
(I'm not talking about professional right-wing Culture Warriors like Kevin Smith and Maggie Gallagher; their testimony had all the depth of feeling of a used car salesman's pitch, and as a result their words were forgettable.)
To a person, those that were in favor of repeal were eminently sure of themselves. Sure, now and then (and this was particularly true of the state reps who showed up to pre-empt citizen testimony) there would be window dressing in the form of some grossly inaccurate history, or some erroneous reference to the founding fathers, or some dubious "research," or some bizarre appeal to personal victimhood, but by and large the feeling they gave off was Absolute Certainty in their belief that Granite Staters they will never know do not have the same rights that they do to get married. And while not exclusively, it was almost always fueled by religious fundamentalism, often explicitly so in their remarks.
To me, the exemplar of this Absolute Certainty was none other than repeal bill sponsor Representative David Bates himself.
(Although he showed a lack of principle when he followed the house leadership's wishes and asked that his own bill be retained; at least Rep. Baldassaro had the guts to say it ought to be voted on now).
While the testimony of those in support of marriage often moved me to tears, Rep. Bates' opening remarks sent a chill down my spine, especially when he, after questioning from a member of the Judiciary Committee, calmly and confidently declared that the majority rules even in matters of the the rights of minorities. I fear any man or woman with the level of supreme surety and apparent absence of self-reflection I witnessed today in him. History is littered with the wreckage of that kind of mindset.
The opposite of fear is courage. More than anything, courage was what echoed through Representatives Hall today some seven hundred-fold, and that is what I will most remember. In one way, this tremendous outpouring of support for marriage felt like the fruit of the original labor involved in getting the law passed in the first place. Today I witnessed the ripple effect of the ever-expanding circle of freedom and equality. While the weak, insecure Bill O'Brien statehouse may now hold marriage in the balance, I learned that in the long run they can never win.
(birched first)
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