How Are We To Teach If We Never Really Learn?

I remember the fundamental lessons Ella was first taught within the context of her earliest social experiences- at MOPS and play group: 

 1. Every person has worth. 

 2. We share what we have with everyone in the group regardless of whether we agree with everything he or she says or does or whether we like his or her outfit or even whether we are having a good day. 

3. We do not denigrate. We do not belittle. We do not mistreat. Period. 

 I recall sitting in the circle with the other moms doling out the goldfish, painstakingly counting to be sure everything was fair and everyone got his or her share. We did not give a few more to the kid who knew his colors or the child who could recite the alphabet or the sweet one we favored secretly because already we could see a proclivity for extreme politeness. And the children noticed. And when it was time to divvy up the toys the moms could just sit back and watch because those children knew that every one of them had better have something with which to play. They did this not because their mothers were menacing or they feared reprisal, but because deep down in their tiny little souls they grasped that this was the correct way to do things.

 With the recent DOMA ruling, the Supreme Play Group has decreed that as far as it is concerned, all the children in all the playgroups in the land are entitled to the same number of goldfish. And if one playgroup has officially sanctioned a union between Sally and Sue or Billy and Bobby, well then the federal playgroup poobah is going to count those goldfish just to be sure that those two get exactly what they are supposed to. It matters not whether the playgroup down the block recognizes them as belonging to each other. It matters not whether all the members of the playgroup like it. 

 I, along with the rest of the nation, have heard and read a great deal about same-sex marriages in recent months. For me,the debate cannot be a purely academic one, because it affects people with whom I learned those same fundamental lessons enumerated above, people with whom I graduated from high school, cherished college chums, and treasured colleagues. And essentially, despite what the talking heads want you to think, this argument is not about where you worship or how you vote or what you believe about the way our bodies were designed to work. The debate is a human one with a million faces that all boils down to one simple question: Do you believe every man, woman and child is entitled to be treated with fairness and dignity? If you do, then we all get our goldfish. 

 We claim to have answered this question as a country with the Emancipation Proclamation and Brown vs. Board, but as long as we are asking a segment of our society to continue to defer the dream, the question remains open, the heart grows sick, and the nation suffers. 

 Sadly, the state of Virginia is less concerned with fairness than the moms in my old play group. Granted, we were stellar, but I digress. Today a woman I respect more than she even realizes and for whom I have a profound fondness learned that despite the demise of DOMA, the state for which she has labored tirelessly and to which she has contributed immensely will not allow her to receive the benefits due her by virtue of a legally binding marriage. She doesn't get her goldfish, and it only makes the goldfish the rest of us are snacking on while she is forced to wait for hers taste stale. She and her sweet wife no longer feel welcome in a place enhanced by their very presence there. And should they ultimately feel compelled to leave, the loss will be profound. And so I grieve with them. And the only words I have are these: Virginia is clearly having a bad day. It is acting out. And all the children notice, Jan and Suzie, all the children notice.