A Tale of One Wedding

Here's a story about a wedding. It takes place in a brewery, which is not a terrible place for a wedding to take place, especially if both the bride and the groom are big fans of beer. (They were.)

This wedding wasn't supposed to take place in a brewery. The original plan was for it to take place in a church, actually. But sometimes plans go awry. The church -- for a variety of reasons, the main one being that the bride was kind of a shameless, beer drinking, living in sin kind of a floozy (the church was not accquainted with the groom, but at that point, was definitely comfortable with that) -- declined to allow the nuptials to take place under the watchful eye of Jesus and the Apostles.

As such, the wedding was relocated to the brewery -- it was already contracted for the reception, so having the wedding there as well seemed like it would be a perfectly natural thing to do.

So instead of stained glass and pews, there were tables and the sight of some very large, stainless steel tanks. Instead of a minister, there was a newly appointed Justice of the Peace -- a friend of the bride, and a good sport. Instead of organ music, there was a band.

And so there was a wedding.

Some of the bride's more religious friends did not attend, what with the whole "wedding in a brewery" deal.  (Some of these same friends probably pray for the bride's soul regularly, and with good reason.)

The bride was okay with it, though. She was also, by the time the wedding rolled around, okay with getting kicked out of church and not being allowed to get married there. Because, you see, she got it. If a religious entity wanted to deny her the right to get married, she could still get her license and have it done differently in a legal way. With beer, a band, and a party, and without religion. Because marriage, as it turns out -- both the original ceremony and -- in this case -- the later divorce -- are legal matters. (The bride, who would later become an ex-wife, would tell you that NOTHING demonstrates that marriage is largely a civil matter rather than a religious one in quite the same way that divorce does.)

North Carolina is voting today on an amendment that could potentially put into law a definition of marriage that would exclude same sex couples, and the push for that is, largely, a religious one.

As the former bride who got the boot and then got married in a brewery, I take this personally. Because getting told that I couldn't get married in a church was painful at the time, but I had other recourse -- all of which involved civil rights and civil actions -- and I was raised by people who taught me to believe that everyone deserved the same civil rights. Every single person.

Marriage equality is not about religion. Any church has the right to turn anyone away.

Marriage equality is about civil rights.

I don't live in North Carolina anymore, but if I did, I would be voting no on Amendment One.

And then I'd recommend some nice breweries as good places for weddings.