Loving Against the Odds

                          Gail S. Bernstein, Ph.D.


   I am always saddened by Valentine's Day media coverage in the
   community-at-large, saddened by the omission of so many of us who love
   in different ways, of so many of us who love against the odds. I
   remember the woman I knew in college whose Orthodox Jewish parents
   declared her dead and mourned for her when she married a man who was
   not Jewish. I think of the interracial couples I've known who've been
   ostracized in both home cultures. I remember my friend who, for two
   and a half years, spent his days helping people with AIDS get the
   services they needed and his nights caring for his partner with the
   same disease.


   Most of us were raised, as I was, to love only within certain socially
   acceptable boundaries. I was taught commitment was important, but only
   with Jewish men. For others it meant people of a different race were
   not approved mates, or those of a different social class. It almost
   always meant people of the same gender were unacceptable. When we step
   outside of the constraints we've been taught, it's because love
   doesn't always fit between the lines.

   Many commentators were shocked and offended by the mass wedding
   conducted in conjunction with the recent March on Washington for
   Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Rights. I wonder if they really thought
   about the meaning of that event. The people who stood together in
   couples and took wedding vows, women with women and men with men, were
   demonstrating that they learned the same lessons I did about the
   importance of commitment. They were demonstrating their belief in the
   value of family. Those were people who are willing to invest time and
   thought in making their relationships work. And, they were people who
   take those lessons seriously and apply them to the love they found,
   even though it places them outside the boundaries they were taught to
   observe.

   Here is what I would say to the critics who profess to be shocked by
   our vows and commitments. You can't have it both ways. You can't claim
   we're incapable of making commitments, claim our love contributes to
   the breakdown of the social fabric, and at the same time refuse to
   honor our commitments. You can't preach respect for one's partner and
   lasting vows from every pulpit and then profess horror when we do what
   you've been saying the world needs more of. And you cannot expect to
   promulgate all those mixed messages without having your hypocrisy
   named. Moreover, I find it hard to believe there is a deity who would
   deny people comfort and safety because they do not love in a
   prescribed fashion. There is entirely too much pain and tragedy in the
   world already. I'm no theologian, but I cannot believe there is any
   harm or sin in celebrating love and building a family.

   So here's to all of us who take love where we find it, and make
   families however we can. Most important, here's to the woman who's
   been there with me from patched jeans and hair down our backs to
   middle-aged and gray, from hippie days through graduate school and
   beyond, from folk to country, from Madison to Vermillion to Denver,
   always with love and always in the midst of numerous members of the
   animal kingdom.

   A heartfelt Valentine's greeting to us all.


               About the author, Gail S. Bernstein, Ph.D.


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