An old friend contacted me through myspace some weeks ago. A friend I have not really seen nor spoken to since junior high, or perhaps even grade school. We were friends through a relatively conservative church setting within which our parents had placed us, and through which we shaped a great deal of our perspectives about the world.

She contacted me from British Columbia (Canada) to invite me to her wedding and after several more communications, to ask me to be her maid of honor. I was absolutely thrilled by the idea and booked a flight directly after my last college final in order to make it there less than 24 hours before the wedding.

About a week later I received the formal invitation in the mail and, upon opening it and scanning its contents I realized… she was marrying a woman.

It seems such unions have very recently been made fully legal in Canada, meaning, same sex partners are entitled to all the same benefits, taxes, laws, shared health care, etc. etc. as opposite sex partners, legal equality, regardless of one’s sexual preference. This was interesting enough in itself, but my true fascination lay with her and her experiences because of this marriage and our shared religious history.

For those of you who have not been raised in such religious tradition, homosexuality is referred to repeatedly in the bible as “abomination”, though, granted, these passages are often taken out of context, the basic Christian Institutionalist belief in the “sin” of same sex relations remains.

I arrived in Victoria and was immediately swept up in the flurry of pre-wedding preparations including, picking out bouquets and even assisting in the choice of lingerie. I was simultaneously honored by the value placed on my opinions and overwhelmed by the weight my old friend was willing to place on me when we had not truly spoken in almost a decade. Then I realized, I was the only one. Her best friend had declined to be her maid of honor or even attend for religious reasons, her family, also, were not attending. I was the single solitary representative from her past in California.

She began the remaking of our friendship with a statement of absolute freedom, “ask me anything”, she said, and I did. “Am I the only one?” I asked, and she nodded. I paused and pondered that for a moment, then asked, “You’ve cried a lot haven’t you?” She twisted her head around to look at me in the back seat and I caught a glimpse in her eyes of the accuracy of my statement. “You have no idea,” she said.

She spoke of some of the communications she has received from her past, from old friends and previous churches condemning her marriage and her love of a woman and I began to see the enormity of what she was undertaking, or rather, what she was willing to endure. A short while later I had the pleasure of meeting her fiancé, and her fiancé’s two children. They were two beautiful spunky little blonde girls of the ages of 6 and 9 whom my old friend would be adopting symbolically through the marriage while simultaneously working to legally adopt them. My friend is the same age as I…. 24.

And her belief in God, and Christianity remains, as does her fiancé’s (now wife’s) similar beliefs.

I had a short afternoon with my friend’s (now) wife where I was privileged to hear the story of their relationship from her eyes. She had been married previously to a man and had always considered herself ‘straight’. Her and my old friend were good friends for a year or more before any expression of romance was exhibited. They both had been in relationships with solely men previously, and both were under the religious perspective of homosexuality. “When she expressed her romantic love for me I wanted to protect her, didn’t want to ‘lead her into sin’ and considered the fact that she might just be confused,” said my friend’s wife. My friend expressed to me is a separate conversation that, speaking those words of romantic love took her a long time and when she did, she did so with absolute certainty.

“Kissing her that first time…” my friend’s wife summoned the memory and all the emotions that went along with it, “…the room spun”, she said. She had never felt such passion, such magic before. Neither of them had.

A guest at the wedding and I engaged in a perspective discussion of same sex marriage as, he also professed Christianity. “Well, I realized that the most important thing I could do was just love them,” he said, “but, I mean, it is a sin.” I nodded my religiously structured agreement and moved off to other activities, but I could not get that statement out of my mind. It played over and over in my head… and I felt myself start to get angry. I felt protective, like a she bear over this newly wedded lesbian couple, and I found my mind demanding to know how he dared to make a statement such as that. I found him later on in the festivities and verbalized these thoughts to him. How can you say that? How can you know that? How can you stand in a place of judgment like that over strangers, much less your friends… those you love??? And as I continued my inquisition I realized I was not asking him these questions, I was asking myself. It was at that moment that all my previous conceptions and ideas about the religious ‘correctness’ or ‘right’ or ‘wrong-ness’ of homosexuality fell to pieces. I realized I didn’t know… anything really, and how dare I stand in a place pretending like I do.

Their older daughter came up to me while I was sitting on the computer in their home and handed me a photo frame that still contained the generic opposite sex wedding photo with which it came. She asked me if I wanted to get married and I stuttered an uncertainty, she then asked me, “If you got married would it be to a boy or a girl?”. I was floored by a consideration I have never previously entertained and, looking into her bright young, non-judgmental eyes I was forced to respond truthfully, “I don’t know.”

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