THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9606020304
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: 69 lines
Last weekend's wedding was lovely in all the usual ways.
The flower girls in frilly dresses.
The parents, the siblings, the nieces and nephews, the church members, the friends, all gathered together, 300 strong, to wish the couple well.
The recitation of vows, the exchange of wedding bands.
The promise to stay together from this day forward, 'til death do them part.
For Maj-Britt Johnson and Lisa Pires of Norfolk, the wedding was another step in affirming their values:
Commitment. Faithfulness. Love.
Yet, at the same time, their union, in the eyes of many, was a terrible example of something wrong with this country.
That's because both members of the wedding party were women. And even though the union had the blessing of the Unitarian church, the marriage was not legal in America.
Not even close.
In this country, their walk down the aisle represents an issue where government, politics, religion, love, family, values all collide.
It was ironic, perhaps, that Johnson and Pires married on May 25, closing out a week of heated discussion over same-sex marriages in this country.
It was a week in which President Clinton, who has leaned toward gay rights in the past, declared he would sign a proposal to deny recognition of gay marriages. It was also a week when the Supreme Court struck down a Colorado amendment that denied legal protections to homosexuals. And a week when radio talk shows and newspaper editorials and TV commentators crackled with debate about same-sex marriages and gay rights.
Johnson and Pires did not get married to prove a point to the rest of the nation.
The wedding, rather, was a show of love to one another.
The couple has been together seven years. Pires left her home state, a job and her friends and family in Massachusetts three years ago to move to Norfolk, where Johnson had gotten a job as minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Norfolk. Last June they decided to marry, and spent a year planning the wedding.
No hasty decision here.
In fact, it's only been in recent years that either considered marriage. ``I had accepted second-class citizenship, even though I didn't recognize myself as accepting it,'' Johnson said.
Pires, too, believed marriage was ``a straight thing.'' But as the years went by, and the two grew closer, a wedding seemed in order.
``Once you're in a relationship for all these years, something else has to happen,'' Pires said. ``There needs to be a commitment.''
Why should the values that marriage stands for - stability, monogamy, responsibility - be the private privilege of the straight class?
It's frustrating to Pires and Johnson to think that if one of them gets sick, the other may not be allowed to make medical decisions for her. They can't declare one another beneficiaries on health insurance policies. They can't run their wedding announcement in this paper's Celebrations section.
Still, all that took little away from their wedding.
As Pires puts it: ``Politics is politics is politics.''
But love, well, love is something different.
Now they move on to the things that married couples do: Buying a house. Setting up a joint bank account. Deciding what happens if one of them gets sick, if one of them dies.
Getting on with life, together.
I wish them well. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Maj-Britt Johnson, left, and Lisa Pires didn't marry to prove a
point to the rest of the nation. They did it, they said, out of
love. by CNB