My partner and I (both lesbians nearing age 60) are getting married Saturday. Legally. By virtue of the courage of 124 Vermont state legislators in voting to override the Governor’s veto last May.

Think about that. 124 people decided to do the right thing, and as a result, my partner and I are getting married.

I’ve been an activist since the 1970s & 80s, a strong feminist since I was in high school and helped fight a school board ban on girls wearing slacks to school. A lesbian almost since then (with a brief foray into born-again fundamentalist self-repression).

You may have seen my photo last spring, an AP shot that was published all over. I was holding a sign at a news conference that read, “If we’re equal, will you trade your marriage for my civil union?” I never, ever thought I’d end up being a poster girl for marriage. Marriage was “mahogamy,” the patriarchal ownership by men of the means of producing farm workers and inheritors. It certainly had nothing to do with what I wanted for my life.

M & I have been together for 29 years and 8 months. We’re a family. We’ve built a family of choice — actually several overlapping and successive families of choice — over the years. Our families of origin came around to accept us — mine since I graduated college, hers since around 1995. They all came to our civil union celebration 9 years ago.

I didn’t expect the civil union to make a difference. We’d been together 20 years at that point.

[more on the flip]

But it did. It felt as though the public profession of our commitment to each other in front of friends and family crafted a frame around our relationship within which we could go even deeper. The fact that it apparently made some of our rural small-town neighbors more comfortable with us — my theory is that they finally had a category for us, a name for our relationship — was gravy.

That civil union is still in effect. It hasn’t gone away. But it counts only within the borders of the state of Vermont.

So, we’re getting married. It’s a low-key, very informal event, something we view as the state — and we hope soon the federal government — catching up on equality’s paperwork.

And make no mistake, equality is the issue. As long as government is allowed to call our relationships something other than marriages, it’s discrimination, no matter what benefits come with it. Separate isn’t equal.

The odd thing is that — except for M & me — all of the people involved, the folks who are coming as witnesses and the friend officiating as a Justice of the Peace, are straight.  

I’m not expecting this wedding to change anything for us, but I might be surprised again.

This weekend also includes National Coming Out Day, the National LGBT Equality March on Washington, and President Obama’s speech to the Human Rights Campaign dinner. We’ll be there in spirit while enacting our own steps toward equality.

And our heartfelt thanks to all who called, wrote, emailed, persuaded, cajoled, and lobbied — and to those 124 legislators who voted — in favor of equality at last.