Editor’s note: This article is by David Mailloux, with whom I co-founded “The Great Nationwide Kiss-In” last summer. David is now a board member with Join the Impact Massachusetts, and a co-founder of The Maine LGBT Civil Rights March. He is also my friend.
The voting for Crate and Barrel’s “Ultimate Wedding Contest” ended last night, with same-sex couple Jonathan Howard and Gregory Jones coming in a very close second-place. Final voting results, which count for just 20% of the judges decision, were 21,562 to 20,759, a difference of only 803 votes, or just 3%.
Hi there.
I know you technically don’t know me from Adam, but you do know me. I come into your stores every single day. I look like the mild-mannered academic who wants a nice set of dishes for his next dinner party with the folks who might recommend him for tenure. I look like the quiet, closeted accountant who needs a new kitchen set since his mother has heckled him for years to purchase a new one. I look like the fortunate college student whose parents make six figures each and every year, who can afford to shop in your store weekly with his allowance to deck out his perfect apartment. I am the boyfriend who dreams of registering with your establishment in the days after successfully proposing marriage to the man he loves.
The bottom line: I am gay. And every single one of the people I described is gay. But they could also be straight, with just a tiny switch of the pronouns or modifiers. That’s what I’m talking about here. One of the top couples in your Ultimate Wedding Contest is gay. They are two gay men who live an ordinary life with extraordinary circumstances. They are a psychologist and a retail store manager who live in Washington D.C. but their love, their future marriage isn’t recognized in 90% of the states in this country, nor is it recognized by the country they call home.
I live about 500 miles away from Jonathan Howard and Gregory Jones, and I am an activist. My primary goal in this lifetime is to see a time where Jon and Greg, these two regular 20-something guys, can be married and have their marriage recognized throughout our land of the free and home of the brave. In order for them (truly) to be recognized, we have to change the viewpoint of our society. We have to educate our citizens in the reality that gay men exist, they are real, they have not chosen who they are as much as straight people have chosen who they are, and they are deserving of the beautiful reality that many straight married couples live every single day.
Jon and Greg are in love, as much in love as any straight couple would be. Their love is undeniably, unquestionably real. They have spent nearly three years with each other in both the best and worst of times. In August of 2008, as Jon walked home from a fun night out on the town with friends, he was attacked by a random group of men who clearly held issue with his sexuality. He and one of his best friends were beaten in the middle of what is arguably the friendliest neighborhood for gay men in the city of Boston. When Jon was discovered by a passing motorist, an unidentified man was stomping on his head, and one of his best friends was running for his life, covered in his own blood from this disturbing attack. And as that passing motorist jumped out of her car and approached the scene, Jon lay in the street, nearly dead, because someone hated the way he was born.
I write this through tears because no human being alive should have to suffer through such an experience. I write this through tears because Jon is just an ordinary guy, this sweet and real human being, who happens to be gay and he suffered through this disturbing attack on his well-being, and his confidence, and his life, worse than anyone I know might have experienced. But, when this happened, the beautiful partner he had chosen just a year before stood by his side. He found his unconscious partner in the middle of the night at a local hospital, stayed with him, and brought him home when it was all over.
And through the tears and the nightmares and the trial of his attacker and the regular life they lived in between, they stayed in each other’s arms. They never strayed. They believed in the power of true love. They emerged from an existence fraught with hurt and pain as activists, believing that nobody should have to experience their hurt, believing in a world where their love would be recognized as real and as solid as anyone else’s.
I know these boys who now live in D.C. and I consider them my brothers in a fight that I may never win in my lifetime. I often wonder if my time is limited, if I might never experience the love, the passion, the beautiful realities and disasters of their relationship. I possess a jealousy that one should never have of their friends, but I feel that jealousy with love and admiration at the same time. I believe in their love. I believe in their lives.
And even though they might not have the highest number of votes at 11:59 p.m., CDT on March 31, 2010, I can assure you: they are your guys. They are your winning couple. And not only that, but they are very likely the beginning of the end of our struggle. Because they are a gay couple in love, two men who live like everyone else, who deserve your recognition – these two 20-something guys who have a lifetime of beauty and sharing and… undoubtedly… many sets of Crate and Barrel dinnerware ahead of them.
Jon and Greg are the beginning of the end of our struggle because they took their beautiful love and dared to put it in the spotlight. They will change the landscape with their ordinary, yet extraordinary world. And they can make many people realize that they are just like everyone else. And once they alter our landscape with their love, once they educate people with their normalcy, they can encourage a life worth living for thousands of gay and lesbian couples throughout this beautiful country who have feared the everyday reality of Anytown, USA. And the equality for which I have bled, for which thousands upon thousands of gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender people have bled and died, may very well happen.
Dearest contest coordinators, it may sound as if I’m suggesting that you make a political statement with your contest, but I’m really not. I’m just asking you to realize that two gay men, just as well as any straight couple, can represent you, represent your company with the grace and ease that will bring you both success and fame. Besides that, though, I have a dream that the battle my friends and I, my brothers and sisters have fought will not be in vain. I pray that I’ll live to see the day that a couple like Greg and Jon can find the recognition they deserve, in light of the pain they have suffered. I have a dream that our society will recognize that Greg and Jon are as regular, as ordinary, as beautiful as any other couple in the world.
Someday, there won’t be talk of gay marriage or same-sex marriage. Someday, couples like Greg and Jon will be married in every one of our 50 states and nobody will think twice about it. The horror of the early days of their relationship might be forgotten, replaced with the realization that they are exactly the same as their brothers and sisters nationwide. And they will walk into your store and not even think twice about who they are, because their lives will recognized as simply, as perfectly as everyone else.
Please think about this. Please choose my friends, my brothers as the winning couple. Please step alongside us and change the world. In the end, we will have made a difference. We will take the first steps together. And they will be beautiful.
Regards,
Dave Mailloux