Bliss and Bigotry

I wanted to see this threat to the very foundation of civilization close up.

"We met over a noodle kugel that I made that she liked," said Deborah Gar Reichman.

I nodded. Ms. Reichman broke into a wide smile and moved forward in her chair, warming to the topic: her engagement to Shelley Curnow.

I had dropped by their third-floor walk-up in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn. Very frankly, the two women did not look like revolutionaries. "We're worrying about where to register and arguing with our parents over the guests they want to invite," Ms. Reichman said.

President Bush and others are adamant in their contention that allowing two men or two women to wed would imperil the institution of marriage, which Mr. Bush described as "the most fundamental institution of civilization." The hard-liners on this issue seem convinced that something awful will be unleashed if gays are allowed to walk down the aisle and exchange vows of everlasting love. On Tuesday the president said the nation "must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America."

I kept staring at Ms. Reichman and Ms. Curnow, trying to locate the threat that others perceive in relationships like theirs. But they never came across as menacing. They just looked happy.

In a world beset by ignorance and poverty and suffering, a world wracked with wars and terror attacks and ethnic strife of every kind, it seems crazy to be twisting ourselves into knots over the desire of good men and women to transcend the prison of themselves and affirm their love for another by marrying.

That kind of desire is a good thing, isn't it?

And those of you who are already married, tell the truth: the marriage of Deborah Reichman and Shelley Curnow (planned for May 22) won't make your marriage any weaker, will it?

The opponents of gay marriage are on the wrong side of history. The interests of civilization are not served by driving mature love underground. And the interests of the United States, which is supposed to be the quintessence of a free society, are not served by enshrining bigotry in law.

Rosie O'Donnell marries girlfriend in San Francisco

"I find this proposed amendment very, very, very, very shocking. And immoral. And, you know, if civil disobedience is the way to go about change, then I think a lot of people will be going to San Francisco. And I hope they put more people on the steps to marry as many people as show up. And I hope everyone shows up."

O'Donnell and Carpenter, who have four children together, walked hand in hand down the grand marble staircase in the rotunda to thunderous applause from hundreds of spectators who came to witness the city's first celebrity same-sex wedding. O'Donnell was wearing a powder-blue blazer, black shirt and black pants; Carpenter wore a gray pantsuit.

As the San Francisco's Gay Men's Chorus serenaded the couple with a few bars of "Going to the Chapel," O'Donnell smiled and said, "We really did. We got married."

O'Donnell said she decided to marry Carpenter, a former dancer and marketing director at Nickelodeon, during her recent trial in New York over the now-defunct Rosie magazine. During the case, she referred to Carpenter as her wife.

"We applied for spousal privilege and were denied it by the state. As a result, everything that I said to Kelli, every letter that I wrote her, every e-mail, every correspondence and conversation was entered into the record," O'Donnell said. "After the trial, I am now and will forever be a total proponent of gay marriage."

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