Following this prize-winning essay, Sheila discusses the author’s craft and technique for creating a successful personal opinion essay.

I Do, Undone
by Catha J. Loomis

Shocked by a message on the answering machine, I dashed upstairs and turned on the computer, hoping for some online confirmation.

“Oh my God,” I yelled. “It’s true!” “It” was something we hadn’t expected to see in our lifetime. Amidst glowing grins and high fives, we began to make our plans.

On March 2, 2004 in Portland, Oregon, four Multnomah County Commissioners announced that they would immediately begin issuing marriage licenses to lesbian and gay couples. The County’s attorney cited Article I, Section 20, of the Oregon Constitution:

No law shall be passed granting to any citizen or class of citizens privileges, or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens.

Denying marriage to same-sex couples, the attorney had concluded, violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.

The love that once dared not speak its name was about to be proclaimed in a very public and affirming way.

Mary Anne and I had been together for 13 years when we stood in line to get our marriage license. “We’re getting married,” she shouted, her green eyes sparkling with excitement. “We’re making history,” I cried, proud to be among 3,022 same-sex couples who would receive marriage licenses over the next several weeks. Moments later, I turned to see my jubilant partner enveloping Commissioner Serena Cruz in a joyful, grateful hug.

We’d been discussing the issue for months. In May 2003, we exchanged wedding vows that our church – but not our state or country – recognized and supported. We’d contemplated traveling to British Columbia, Massachusetts, or San Francisco, where same-sex marriage was legal at the time. We wanted to be legally married, to publicly affirm our love and commitment, and to gain the more-than 1,100 legal rights and protections granted to married couples.

 When people get married, the benefits flow. Marriage privileges include spousal social security payments, adoption rights, immigration rights and shared medical insurance. Though some of us have access to domestic partnership benefits in our workplaces, and sometimes by creating special legal documents, the financial costs can be prohibitive. A few years ago, Mary Anne investigated covering me under her employer’s health insurance program. The benefit was offered, but we discovered that because we weren’t legally married, she’d have to pay my premiums, plus income tax on the value of the coverage.

Some benefits aren’t available at any price. Some are utterly priceless. Married people can make health care decisions on behalf of their partners and have unquestioned hospital visitation rights. Both now over 50, Mary Anne and I share the uncertainty of not knowing whether our medical and financial powers-of-attorney will be honored. If one of us dies or becomes incapacitated, will the other be allowed to care for her, make decisions on her behalf, or dispose of her remains? Straight people automatically avoid such quandaries when they say, “I do.”

The news that marriage was within our grasp, right in our hometown, surprised and delighted us. After three hours in a joyous line, we departed the County Building with our signed marriage license. On March 7, 2004, we stood with close friends in a double wedding attended by a last-minute assemblage of local friends and relatives.

Sadly, though, our story doesn’t end with “happily ever after.” Our intense pride and joy were bested by the anger and dismay of religious conservatives, in Oregon and across the country. Their backlash included anti-gay initiatives on the ballots of 11 states. In every one of those states, the measures passed.

In November 2004, the people of Oregon voted to enshrine discrimination in the State Constitution with the passage of Measure 36:

It is the policy of Oregon, and its political subdivisions, that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or legally recognized as a marriage.

Fifty-seven percent of our fellow Oregonians said “Yes” to Ballot Measure 36 and “No” to gay marriage.

On election night, the first returns flashed on a giant convention center screen, greeted by clinking glasses and cheers at the “No on 36” party. For that moment, we had cause to cheer. In our home county, 60 percent of the voters were on our side. “The number will start to plummet any minute,” I’d predicted, knowing that the largely conservative counties in the rest of the state would not be as kind, that polls showed public opinion evenly split.

It was one time I hated being correct. “This isn’t the Oregon I moved to,” Mary Anne murmured through clenched teeth, as pundits called it a done deal and a somber crowd headed home to console themselves.

Struggling for my own post-election consolation, I recalled a darkly humorous image: an old Bill Guindon cartoon. Several guys in softball uniforms slouch dejectedly in the dugout. One says, “It’s not losing that I mind; it’s losing to a gay bar.”

I do mind losing, and I ached at the margin of defeat. It wasn’t a softball game at stake. Measure 36 was about our lives and our rights as citizens.

The victory of bigotry over equal protection helped give the Oregon Supreme Court rationale to strike down our marriage. On April 14, 2005, what four courageous Multnomah County Commissioners had brought together, the Court tore asunder in a ruling that voided our marriage licenses. The judges cited both prior statute and the new constitutional provision limiting marriage to opposite sex couples.

I want to believe that our opponents in this political combat are well meaning, if misinformed, people. It’s hard, though, to respect the fearful illogic that drove their cause.

The opposition argued that allowing us to be married would somehow damage their marriages. “Defense of Marriage,” was their battle cry. They publicly blamed us for the alleged “failure of marriage,” for demeaning the sanctity of the institution, even as straight celebrities made it a public mockery.

People who promote such arguments seem unable to separate “rites” from “rights.” They say that marriage is a religious sacrament, which it is. But it also bestows that bundle of legal rights that most married people take for granted.

The line between church and state has been terribly blurred by the practice of allowing ministers’ signatures to confer the legal rights of marriage. It is from the epicenter of this confusion that people use religious arguments to deny the civil rights of millions of Americans.

Our adversaries prevailed at the polls, but so far our straight friends have reported no quantum improvements in their unions. The comic banter helps, so we ask often. Mostly, our friends roll their eyes. One couple, still unmarried despite our teasing them about living in sin, announced that they now have an excuse and refuse to marry until we can. Another friend joked that she’d divorce her husband and boycott marriage until we can share the benefits.

More seriously, we cherish the acceptance and support of friends and loved ones – like the couple who regard us as “aunts” in their three kids’ extended family. Other friends told us they’d trust us to raise their son if something were to happen to them.

The day of the Supreme Court decision, my 81-year-old father called to say he’d heard the news, asking how we were doing and what would happen now. I hung up from that conversation with tears in my eyes.

After hearing my story, a fellow writer wrote, “My wedding ring feels tarnished now. Tarnished by a government that, for political ends, is taking the freedom of religion away from its citizens.”

Like my Election Day opponents, I am comforted and motivated by my faith. My faith, though, bends fiercely toward justice. The bending can be painful, so great is the temptation of anger and disgust. But I still believe in equal protection under the law, and under God.

I believe that every event, however painful, holds a lesson, an opportunity to grow. We are, as couples and as a larger community, stronger for the setbacks. Though legally invalid, our marriage is strengthened by the conflict, as we are emboldened to press on for marriage equality, determined drops on stubborn stones.

Our love can’t be voted away.

****

Successfully Arguing by Keeping the Reader Involved
by Sheila Bender

As a college composition instructor, I have often used Houghton Mifflin’s The Riverside Reader edited by Joseph Trimmer and Maxine Hairston in my composition classes. Volume Two, published in 1983, is my favorite, introducing essays in eight rhetorical styles, the argument and persuasion essay being the last, and in some ways, most complex of them. Underlying any argument, the books editors say, “is an assertion, a statement of belief or a claim that the writer undertakes to explain and support.” They go on to say, “…when people write to convince, they appeal to both the emotions and the intelligence, but they vary the balance of reason and emotion according to their audience and purpose…[Ultimately] the quality of any piece of argument must be judged not by some absolute standard of rationality, but by how well it fits its intended purpose with the intended audience.”

In “I Do, Undone,” we hear from the minority side of a hotly contested cultural and political issue. Catha asserts that equal access to the rights and protections of marriage, whether opposite-sex or same-sex, is a constitutional right. In explaining and supporting her assertion, she appeals to both the logic and to the emotions of the reader by offering information and insight from her personal experience as a partner, friend and family member. To be sure we stay with her as a citizen speaking for a right she longs to have, she uses details that appeal to our sense of fairness, and she honors the legal institution of marriage in doing so.

An argument and persuasion essay establishes credibility by providing evidence that its writer is knowledgeable about the issues. A successful opinion personal essay, especially when written from a minority viewpoint, requires its author to arouse readers’ empathy. Embodying arguments in personal experience, the writer offers readers an opportunity to feel the importance of the desired outcomes. Should some readers leave the essay with their opinions unswayed, they do at least soften and see the case and the author in a human light.

Reading about Catha and Mary Anne’s roller coaster ride of joy and disappointment, I was left examining not only my thinking about the issue of gay marriages, but also my thinking about human rights, legal benefits, the pursuit of happiness and the meaning of freedom for all.

From the opening sentence of Catha Loomis’ essay, “I Do, Undone,” readers are invited to keep reading and find out the content of the shocking message the speaker received. We don’t know if shocking means bad news or good news. Catha builds the suspense for us by using the pronoun “it.” When we read the news, we are relieved to find out it is good news for the speaker–in fact, the kind of dreamed-for news she has put on the back burner because it is less draining than actively hoping.

Then the essay takes a turn from the present to the past and fills readers in on how the couple handled things while it didn’t seem they’d be able to get a marriage license in Oregon. We receive some compelling facts–among them that that there are 1,100 legal rights afforded to married couples. That statement made me want to know the benefits I have as a married woman. It also serves to level the playing field–same sex or opposite sex, we all want the same things from our marriages under the law. In my mind, I return to the quote the speaker provided from Article 1, Section 20, of the Oregon Constitution: “laws must grant privileges that belong to all citizens.”

When the speaker discusses one of the problems she and Mary Anne had concerning life insurance, readers who have spousal benefits might start to think, “What if? What if I had a problem keeping benefits?” Readers who have been anxious over benefits feel familiar with the speaker’s problem. This essay is arguing for acceptance of same-sex marriages by quietly building connections and bridges with its readers.

After naming areas that we commonly think of as the rights of marriage partners, Catha lists ones married people would not be able to think of not having– the right to visit partners in the hospital and to have power of attorney for their incapacitated partner. Instead of sharing these rights, Mary Anne and the speaker share only uncertainty concerning them. The speaker is able to evoke the love and commitment between herself and Mary Anneby bringing up this situation. And again, building bridges, she moves heterosexual readers to consider what they would feel like if they suffered the loss of those rights.

Providing information on how conservative voters put up legislation to alter the Oregon Constitution to make gay marriages once again illegal, Catha once again allows numbers to carry weight in her argument: sixty percent of the voters in her county are against altering the Constitution. She is not in a minority where she lives. For a moment we hover, wondering, “What will the other counties come in as?” But we do not wonder long as the speaker tells us she hated being correct. When she allows herself to write about the leap of association she makes to the cartoon where the straight team bemoans losing to the gay team, she has her say about wishing to be a winner, “I do mind losing…Measure 36 was about our lives and our rights as citizens.”

Whether you are for legal recognition of same-sex marriages or not, by this time in the essay, you know what is at stake for the speaker and Mary Anne. But disappointment is not the end of the essay or of the emotional story. The essay raises the question, “How does one live in a culture that has taken away what is perceived as a right?” In Catha’s case, by analyzing the opposition’s logic and by allowing herself to believe they are not ill meaning people, merely misinformed. Why should gay marriages be said to lead to the failure of marriage as an institution, she asks, when heterosexual couples regularly make light of their vows? As a reader, I immediately think of her 13 years of commitment, even when there was no legal underpinning.

When the author shows the responses of those who care about the couple and lists the ways in which the couple is entwined in an extended community of loved ones, that bridge is being built again. Readers recognize devotion and commitment. The quotes by her father and friends deepen those feelings.

Where can the author go from here in the essay? She has made her argument; she has confronted the opposition; but still it is not the end of the emotional story. There is another step in consciously figuring out how to live in the culture that refuses to recognize her partnership as a legal one–continued, renewed, strengthened commitment. The essay’s last line, “Our love can’t be voted away” is as much a digging in of the author’s heels as a platform for the rest of the essay to stand on.

Writers sometimes write to change attitudes. Certainly, this essay compels its readers to think about what not being able to be married means to the author and her partner. Sometimes the persuasive essay wants to refute a theory. This essay acknowledges that marriage may be under attack, but successfully names more likely causes than gay marriage. Sometimes the persuasive essay wants to arouse sympathies. Certainly Mary Anne and Catha are real people, not ideas. Catha’s essay builds empathy for their situation. Sometimes the persuasive essay wants to win agreement. This essay certainly provides experience that helps one see that marriage is a commitment to live a valuable life together with a beloved. As our society offers incentives and protections to those engaged in the institution of marriage, this essay gets us to consider the idea that those incentives and protections should accrue to all who make such a commitment.