Today I'm sitting in a Starbucks in my old neighborhood in Delaware County, as I'm meeting up with a friend in the area later tonight. Of course, when I lived around here, there was no Starbucks on this corner and the bank across the street was a pizza/cheesesteak place called SteakOut! (get it?!?) Anyway, this area has changed a lot in the 29 years since I first moved here from Chester County and it will no doubt change a lot more in the years before I die.
I admit it, I grew up in the liberal Philadelphia metro suburbs and was always so confused when I heard about places where gay people weren't wanted or where white people treated black people terribly. Hell, as far as I was concerned in high school, Lancaster County was pretty much the midwest. It was really hard to try to reconcile south-eastern PA and Pittsburgh with, well, the rest of the state. Some people call it Pennsyltucky and then there's the old joke that PA is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but Alabama in between.
I never thought I'd see so many states where I'm now considered married and I never dreamed that my state would be one of them. It was always a joke between my wife and I, when we drove up I-95 and went from being married in Maryland to a civil partnership in Delaware to just friends in Pennsylvania. Our marriage just leveled up.
The last two years have been a sick roller coaster for me; at first told that I'd be living with my wife within a month or two, then just another three weeks, then just another month...always a carrot yanked further down the road as I desperately ran after it. No matter how many times I was tripped up, no matter how exhausted I was from running, no matter the life and friends that fell by the wayside in my single-minded pursuit, I kept after that carrot even after I realized I was being used and abused. When I made the decision to stop running and get a real plan, life became a hollow waiting game, wishing for months to pass like minutes so I could really be with my wife.
Yesterday the chance was nearly ripped away again, though by faceless bureaucracy rather than a malicious narcissist. Yesterday a federal judge struck Pennsylvania's same-sex marriage ban. Yesterday I swallowed my pride and asked for help even though I felt so guilty and low for it. Today Gov. Tom Corbett said he will not appeal the ruling. Today I am saved.
In two and a half weeks I'll be at Penn's Landing in the city, celebrating Philly Pride like I've done nearly every summer since I was in high school. I'll get a keilbasa on a roll with hot mustard and a tall cup of beer, slather on some sunscreen and sit by the river, just taking it all in. It's a happy feeling that swells in my chest every year, just being in a place where I'm...normal. I'll browse the stalls and buy some beads and swag, sign a few petitions, take some photos, the usual stuff. This year, however, I'll be legally married in the eyes of the state, my state.
If you grow up in SEPA you're taught its history as soon as you can talk. "William Penn, you know, he was a Quaker, his religion didn't believe in war and wanted peace and happiness. He called his city Philadelphia and that's Greek for 'the city of brotherly love'. Philadelphia was once the capital of the colonies and they wrote the Declaration of Independence here! We're the Keystone State, we held the colonies together...see that bell, that's the Liberty Bell and it live here, in the cradle of American liberty!"
And maybe, just maybe, way back then 'American values' weren't a toxic tool to punish others. Maybe in good ol' Willie Penn's day, there was something to the virtues of freedom, peace, and liberty. It's fitting that right before I leave my beautiful city, green happy DelCo, and country that it finally became the place I always believed it was.
