Photo: My grandparents on their wedding day

I’m gay.  Though, to the chagrin of older generations, I prefer to refer to myself as queer. It’s what all the gay, cool, over-educated, hipsters are doing right now.

I’m Asian.

I’m engaged.  Yay!

I’ve also been told that I’m a funny person.  Though I don’t have the ego to describe myself as funny, I am flattered that others perceive me as such. So it’s with great sadness that I admit that I’ve never told the funniest joke of my life: “A Chinese girl informs her parents that she’s met the love of her life. Warily, her parents look up and say, ‘As long as they’re Chinese.’ She smiles brightly and reassures her parents, ‘One hundred percent Chinese and they’re coming over for dinner tomorrow!’ The next day she brings over another short, Asian girl and says, “Mom, Dad, this is my girlfriend, Janet.”

When I thought of it I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair. I couldn’t wait to bring it up. I could just imagine all of us bonding over picturing our parents’ inevitable mental meltdowns. And then I realized that I didn’t know any other queer, Asian people to tell it to.  The funniest joke of my life and I never got to tell it.

Now that I’m older, I actually do have a handful of queer, Asian friends that I could share the thought with, but it’s too late. Now that we’re 29 years old and actually entering life-long partnerships, it’s too close to home.

So it’s with some trepidation that I announce that I, a Chinese American woman, am getting married to a white woman. Whoops, missed the target for both ethnicity and sex.

I’m stressed about it. I’m also confused.

Photo on right: My parents on their wedding day

But it’s not for the reasons that one might expect. I’m lucky and my parents and family love my partner and could not be more supportive. I’m not even stressed about the commitment, I am a lesbian after all.  And for the most part, I’ve processed the fear of so publicly declaring that I’m gay.

I’m stressed about kissing a girl in front of my grandmother.  I’ve never even discussed dating even when I dated guys.  Just the thought of kissing a girl in front of her makes me blush.

I’m stressed about the food. I love eating. When I go on vacation, I structure my activities around where I plan to eat, frequently forgoing highly touted sightseeing in order to track down coveted delectables. When I was in Egypt, I had to be dragged to spend a day at the Pyramids.  There’s obviously no good food there; it’s in the middle of the desert.

Not surprisingly, when asked what the most important part of the wedding was, I replied, “The food.” When I think about what I miss most about being a part of a large Chinese community, one of the first things that comes to mind is the food: heaping piles of it.  So when I think of a wedding that reflects who I am, the food is paramount.  Nearly half of our wedding budget is going to food, but it’s still been impossible to find what we want.  The few Chinese caterers are only capable of serving in their own banquet halls.  The caterers that are associated with our venue make fancy white-people food. So we’ve settled with working one of them to create bougie, almost-Chinese food menu. #firstworldproblems, I know, but disheartening, nonetheless.

I’m confused about what the ceremony will actually look like. What would represent the emotional bond that I share with my partner? She asked me what Chinese weddings look like. I didn’t know. A tea ceremony? I don’t even know what that looks like. If the whole point of a ceremony is to create something meaningful, it seems inauthentic to include something that you, yourself, had to research.

And then the gay part. Are there two aisles? Who walks first? Does one of us not walk and wait at the alter?  Neither of us are religious; much like our un-saved souls, we have no guidance here. So we bought the only 5-star rated gay wedding book on Amazon. At that time, same-sex marriage had just been legalized in NY. The book was so popular that there were no copies in stock and we had to buy a used copy for more than the original list price.

I’m confused because until a few years ago, though I was in support of long term partnerships, I was against the institution of marriage, and here I am, not just getting married, but looking forward to it.

Whatever. I’ll get over it.

This is all to illustrate and reinforce what we know already: things change, culture changes.  Planning the wedding, joining my life with another person, has highlighted to me the delicate balance of maintaining traditions and creating new ones.  We continue to redefine Asian culture in the context of America.  What traditions do we hold on to? Which ones are shed purposefully because they are no longer relevant? Which ones are lost accidentally?  How does my white partner support me in that? At the same time, we forge ahead creating beautiful new traditions. I can’t wait to raise children in a relationship that reflects what I hope to be a world with increasing racial integration and acceptance.  As queer relationships become more mainstream, we continue to redefine what lifelong partnership means.  And all this change, all without the help from the government.  Shocking, I know.

I’m incredibly fortunate. I have a partner who inspires me to be a better person. I have a family and community who validates that and supports us building our lives together.  At the heart of it, that’s what’s important.  So even if I can’t get legally married by the time my wedding rolls around, it won’t break my heart.

That being said, I want to be absolutely clear: I want gay marriage. Even though I don’t believe that marriage should be a government institution, as long as it exists, it should be equal.  If straight people can get married, queer people should be able to as well. We all deserve the chance to get legally divorced.

However, if I had my druthers, marriage, at least at the level of government, would be abolished.  Because, marriage, to me, is all about relationships: between you and your partner, between you and your family, between you and your community.  The government has nothing to do with that. The government isn’t a friend of mine: I don’t cry on it’s shoulder after a bad day; we don’t get drinks together to celebrate good news; and I don’t ask the government for relationship advice.  The government has not given me any guidance on how to have an inter-racial, same-sexed wedding, nor have I asked it to.

What I do ask the government for is assistance in the logistics of everyday life: it helps regulate licensing in my professional field; I can turn to it for legal recourse if I’ve been wronged; and it can help me bundle a set of legal contracts to facilitate my lifetime partnership.  I don’t need the government to attend my wedding, but I would like the government help me designate my new partner as the default person who will share my resources, be entitled to health benefits, make decisions for me if I can’t, and continue to care for our children if I were to pass away. If I’m an adult of sound mind, why should the government care who I choose to give half of my stuff?

This allows us to separate the logistical rights of marriage, from the cultural importance of marriage. Culture is not only always in flux, but variable from person to person even in the same snapshot of time. And besides, last I checked, short of preventing us from trampling on each other’s civil rights, the government is not in the business of regulating culture. If anything it’s job is to create a framework so that we can all pursue our own happiness in whatever shape that takes.

Studies have shown that the societal support of a partnership confers a mental health benefit. Even straight couples that are not married seem to be, at least in broad strokes, at a psychologic disadvantage compared to their married counterparts. I think we should take that validating power away from the government, an institution that really, at best, represents only a slim majority of the country. It should be returned to the people who matter in a person’s life: their friends, family, and community.