Amy: Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy! I’m Amy McPhie Allebest. Today we are presenting a four-part series on patriarchy and the LGBTQ community with the crux being the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, in 2015, which granted same-sex couples the right to marry, and effectively overruled states’ rights to prohibit same-sex marriage. My guest is my dear friend and classmate in Stanford’s Masters of Liberal Arts program, Matthew Nelson - Hi, Matthew! [Hi, from Oakland Amy!]. I am so deeply honored to be on this journey with you, Matthew. [There is no one I trust more with the map, compass, and provisions for this journey than you, Amy.] This week’s episodes will be a bit different from our prior discussions: First, we are devoting an entire episode to our personal stories on this topic, which we wrote in the form of personal essays and will share today. This will be Part 1 of the series. And for the first time ever, we’re recording this episode on video as well as audio! So watch for it on our website, and we may choose to post it on YouTube as well. On our second episode, Matthew (who is a master teacher of history) will explain the historical context and the details of our essential text, Obergefell v. Hodges, and on the third and fourth episodes, we will take the Supreme Court case as a point of departure to discuss some critical questions and issues within queer theory. So let’s begin. I will share my story first, and then Matthew, you’ll share yours.
My story begins with a quote from the book Fear and Trembling, by Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. In this passage Kierkegaard is talking about the faith of the Biblical prophet Abraham. A harder test was reserved for him, and Isaac’s fate was placed, along with the knife, in Abraham’s hand. And there he stood, the old man with his solitary hope. But he did not doubt. He did not look in anguish to the left and to the right, he did not challenge heaven with his prayers. He knew it was God the Almighty who was testing him; he knew it was the hardest sacrifice that could be demanded of him; but he knew also that no sacrifice is too severe when God demands it — and he drew the knife. -Søren Kierkegaard,http://web.jst.ufl.edu/pdf/fearTrembling.pdf ( Fear and Trembling)
In the Fall of 2008, my husband Erik and I were living with our four small children in the heart of Silicon Valley, not far from San Francisco, CA. Erik had recently finished his MBA at Stanford, and one night he told me that his friend and former classmate Dane wanted to come over and talk. Of course he could, I answered — Dane was kind, funny, smart, and didn’t seem to mind the kids running around. But I was nervous. The election was getting close, and the air was electric with tension. Every newspaper, every poster-plastered street corner, every conversation sparked with controversy over Proposition 8, a measure which sought to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. Erik and I were Mormon, and we had been asked by our Church leaders, whom we had been taught were spokesmen for God Himself, to donate our time and money to the “Yes on 8” campaign. And so we did. We donated money, we canvassed our neighborhoods, knocking on doors and handing out flyers, and we were planning to vote Yes on 8. We hadn’t talked about it with Dane yet, but he knew we were Mormon, and we knew he was gay. Dane showed up on our doorstep with chocolate chip cookies. I let the kids have a couple while we chatted (they were thrilled - it was bedtime!), and then I rounded them up and took them to bed, straining my ears to hear what the men were saying in the other room. After Dane left, Erik recounted the conversation, which was indeed the confrontation I had feared: Dane asked Erik point blank if he was going to vote against same sex couples’ right to marry, and Erik answered honestly that he was. Dane asked him how he could do that, and Erik...