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Statement from Takei:
Marriage Equality Comes to California
By George Takei
Our
California dream is reality. Brad Altman and I can now marry. We are
overjoyed! At long last, the barrier to full marriage rights for
same-sex couples has been torn down. We are equal with all citizens of
our state!
The California Supreme Court has ruled that all
Californians have a fundamental right to marry the person he or she
loves. Brad and I have shared our lives together for over 21 years.
We've worked in partnership; he manages the business side of my career
and I do the performing. We've traveled the world together from Europe
to Asia to Australia. We've shared the good times as well as struggled
through the bad. He helped me care for my ailing mother who lived with
us for the last years of her life. He is my love and I can't imagine
life without him. Now, we can have the dignity, as well as all the
responsibilities, of marriage. We embrace it all heartily.
The
California Supreme Court further ruled that our Constitution provides
for equal protection for all and that it cannot have marriage for one
group and another form - domestic partnership - for another group. No
more "separate but equal." No more second-class citizenship. Brad and I
are going to be married as full citizens of our state.
As a
Japanese American, I am keenly mindful of the subtle and not so subtle
discrimination that the law can impose. During World War II, I grew up
imprisoned behind the barbed wire fences of U.S. internment camps.
Pearl Harbor had been bombed and Japanese Americans were rounded up and
incarcerated simply because we happened to look like the people who
bombed Pearl Harbor. Fear and war hysteria swept the nation. A
Presidential Executive Order directed the internment of Japanese
Americans as a matter of national security. Now, with the passage of
time, we look back and see it as a shameful chapter of American
history. President Gerald Ford rescinded the Executive Order that
imprisoned us. President Ronald Reagan formally apologized for the
unjust imprisonment. President George H.W. Bush signed the redress
payment checks to the survivors. It was a tragic and dark taint on
American history.
With time, I know the opposition to same sex
marriage, too, will be seen as an antique and discreditable part of our
history. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy remarked on same
sex marriage, "Times can blind us to certain truths and later
generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper, in
fact, serve only to oppress."
For now, Brad and I are enjoying
the delicious dilemma of deciding where, when, and how we will be
married. Marriage equality took a long time, but, like fine wine, its
bouquet is simply exquisite.
