On Being Honored by the Lamda Independent Democrats

I was honored to receive the Peter Vogel Award from Lamda Independent Democrats on Sunday, April 10.  It was a great pleasure to receive the award from Kolot Board member Judge Debra Silber and to have so many Kolot members there to wish me well, as well as to read with delight a lovely ad from Kolot in the journal.  And I was truly honored to be among an outstanding group of honorees receiving other awards at the same event.  I thought you would be interested in the words I spoke there.  Those of you who were there will recognize that I expanded a bit on the story of the Garden of Eden, in part urged by your comments.  That is always how we move forward, isn't it - by urging each other on?

Thank you all.  Many thanks to Debra Silber for her lovely presentation; it is my honor, Deb, to receive this from you, and to join the long line of outstanding activists who have received it before me, including so many (I am happy to say) who are members of or connected to Kolot Chayeinu.  I am so happy that so many Kolot members are here as well, because I could never do what I do without their support and friendship.  That goes double for my beloved partner of 21 years, Kathryn Conroy.  We were married under a huppa last year at 20 years and know that we are truly married and are only waiting for the State of New York to recognize it.

Mostly, I am incredibly honored to receive the Peter Vogel award. I didn?t know him, but my friends and Kolot members Phil Saperia and Skipper Edwards did, and they told me about this warm and gentle man who worked tirelessly for equal rights for us LGBT people while forming a deep, loving ongoing partnership with Don. Zikhronam livrakha, may their memories be for a blessing. Alan Fleishman reminded me that Peter was one of the early heroes in the work against HIV and for LGBT rights, so we all stand on his shoulders.  I feel like I stand taller for it.

As Debra said, I am standing here because last spring I took a very public stand for gay marriage rights in New York.  I?ve never seen so much press!  But what was really moving that day on the steps of City Hall was the wedding itself: two wonderful women, Ruth Finkelstein and BC Craig, with their 4 year-old son Sam really getting getting married as their friends and family and Kolot members and a zillion rabbis looked on and wept, really getting married even though as I said then, ?By the power vested in my by the state of New York to do any wedding but this one.?  It was an amazing day, and it added to the amazing days in San Francisco and Massachusetts and New Paltz and for a little while in spring we thought we were going to have legal gay marriage all over the place.  Now it?s spring again, and we are wiser, perhaps, but we are going to have it.  It?s just going to take a little longer than we hoped.   We Jews spent 40 years in the desert after the parted sea, forming strategy teams and contacting elected officials to get to true liberation.  So another spring looks like a drop in the bucket.  And I want you to know that on May 24th busloads of clergy people are traveling to Albany to try for another amazing spring day in our long exodus.

Exodus means "coming out" and so we are in this fight.  I know there are a lot of people who think this marriage stuff is a distraction from working on the really important issues.  I understand what they say, but it looks to me like the fight for marriage equality carries with it the fight against so many kinds of discrimination at once that it is really an efficient way of moving forward.  And while exodus means coming out, the Hebrew name for that book of the Bible is Shemot, names. In Hebrew, the emphasis was on who came out, and the "big Who" that made it happen.  HaShem, we say, The Name, referring to God.  And I do think it is with God¹s help that Ruth and BC, Phil and Jim, Skipper and David, Emily and Patty, and yes, Kathryn and I have gotten married and will some day be married legally.  May it come bimheira b? yameinu, speedily in our time.

I invoke God deliberately, in part because we have a pretty good relationship and in part because God is invoked so often by those who oppose us.  So it is crucial to say that there are hundreds and thousands of people who connect to God and who believe that gay marriage is right and good.  I have gotten so sick of hearing phrases like "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."  So I want to end here with a little story I wrote, a corrective of sorts in response to those hate-filled voices.  Some of this story was written long ago, and some just the other day [and some after the event].  A Bible story for us all:

On the day that God made earth and heaven, no shrub of the field being yet on the earth and no plant of the field yet sprouted, God had not caused rain to fall on the earth and there was no human to till the soil, and wetness would well from the earth to water all the surface of the soil, then God fashioned the human, humus from the soil, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living creature.  And God planted a garden in Eden, to the east, and placed there the human.  And God took the human and set him down in the garden of Eden to till it and watch it. And God said, ?It is not good for the human to be alone, I shall make him a fitting partner to be beside him.?  And God took more of the humus from the soil, and fashioned another human, and blew into this one?s nostrils the breath of life, and this human too became a living creature.  And the first human said, ?This one at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.?  And the two of them were naked, these first humans, and they were not ashamed.  And the human, who was named Adam after the adamah, the soil from which he came, called his partner?s name Ezra, for the help he had brought to his life and soul.  In another corner of the garden lived Eve and Lilith, those first women, also born of the breath of life and the earth beneath their feet; they too tilled the soil and grew their food and flowering plants, and they were beginning to raise another generation.  Their children would grow to play with the children of other pairs, this time of men and women together, play peacefully and without the angry calling of names.

And so they all lived, tilling the garden and enjoying its fruits, until a snake came into their lives bringing shame and uncertainty, and their bliss was destroyed.  Ever since, the descendants of Eve and Lilith, Adam and Ezra, later mockingly called Steve, have yearned to return to that garden, to the life of partner with partner, matching helpers both.

So to you, their descendants, I say, it is now our job to redeem their dream and make real that return.  As we make our exodus from the narrow place of shame and uncertainty, we remember all the names and pledge to carry them to the broad expanse of freedom.

In hope,