Rainbow over Delaware...and beyond

"Joe is running through the halls with a rainbow flagged tied on like a cape high fiving everyone." Tweet attributed to Jill Biden on a parody Twitter account.

We moved into Delaware on June 29, 2013 and two days later, same sex marriage became legally recognized. Delaware was the 11th state to do so. Same sex marriage would become legal in Pennsylvania (where we left) a year later after a ruling in Federal court deemed bans on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional. It is no secret that I felt religiously and politically stifled in the area where we used to live. The conservatism of Lancaster County is well known. When I was growing up our Congressional Representative was Bob Walker, known to be the most conservative voter in the House of Representatives. It is also an area where you are routinely asked What church do you go to?-- and church membership is a given. Note that the question was not Do you belong to a church? And in this case, church was a Christian church. Too many times, we had to explain Unitarian Universalism (our church home in Lancaster County) to people who couldn't fathom what we were talking about--even after we explained it.

So when we moved to Delaware just at the moment it was allowing same-sex marriage, it felt as though it was affirming us, too. I know that sounds silly, and I don't mean to make light of those who have real cause to celebrate the act of legislation. We are, after all, a heterosexual couple whose union has been recognized for 22 years before moving to this state. But something was lifted in us. We became a little more free to be the politically and religiously liberal folks we were.

Delaware has a few things to be proud of in this swing of the country toward marriage equality and one in particular: favored son and Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden. The democratic party hadn't been putting its neck on the line for the cause. They had been too quiet about gay issues since the whole debacle of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. What a mess that was. But Joe Biden came out for same sex unions during an appearance on Meet the Press on May 6, 2012. 
"I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same exact rights. All the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that."
His remarks sent the White House scrambling to update their official position, which Obama delivered three days later in an interview. Maybe Obama was going to do it anyway--eventually--if the pollsters said it would help him his election--but Joe, in his trademark bluntness got the ball rolling and set the rainbow flag to unfurling. A mere three years later, we are celebrating the historic ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States of America that makes same-sex marriage the law of the land.

Joe Biden was instrumental in this landmark decision for another reason--he was on the Senate Judiciary committee when Justice Kennedy, who wrote for the majority in the decision, was nominated by Reagan and appointed. For those of you who can remember back to 1987, Kennedy was not Reagan's first choice. Reagan first nominated conservative judge Robert Bork for the Supreme Court opening. The nomination sparked massive protests from The Senate Democrats and Joe Biden, from his seat on the Judiciary committee, protested the nomination. Biden felt firmly that the Senate vote was put into place to balance an executive agenda that veered too far from center. Bork was not approved, and Reagan nominated Kennedy instead, knowing that his moderate stances would appease the democrats.
Justice Anthony Kennedy writes for the majority opinion: No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

I didn't really understand the impact. States had been dribbling in in support of same-sex unions. And now you can get married in every state in the union. I understood that. It wasn't until I was on Facebook and saw the post of one of my friends who lives in Texas. Angie had married her longtime love a little over a year ago in New York. She posted WE ARE LEGALLY MARRIED WHERE WE LIVE! The Supreme Court had affirmed Angie and her wife. Said that they were who they thought themselves to be and that they could carry that identity with them over state lines, wherever they happen to be in this country. I am thrilled for her and for all my friends who are now able to marry and carry their union from state to state. To be honest, I felt a little squeamish about celebrating our wedding anniversary in this country knowing that it was a privilege that not all couples had. This summer, Mark and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. It will be a great celebration here in Delaware.

Small State, Big Heart

I know a lot of people don't understand how things in a small state work. Coming from Pennsylvania, I know I didn't. Delaware is intimate. By that I mean that everyone knows everyone. You are one degree removed from every other Delawarean. In some ways the state of Delaware seems smaller than Lancaster County. We have three counties here, the most populated being New Castle County where we live.  Delaware also includes Sussex and Kent Counties. I'm not sure what goes on in the county level government when the state is so small. That is something I want to investigate. Contrary to PA, Delaware cuts out the middle man of the county level wherever it can. It also makes for better streamlining of services. For instance, we have DELJIS which is the Delaware Criminal Justice Information System. This is state wide and provides timely shared knowledge of anything that goes on in law enforcement/courts throughout the state of Delaware. This is unlike Pennsylvania in which county systems are in place and may vary from one county to another.

Another thought that comes up: Mark and I wonder what it would have been like running at the Delaware State Meet for track and field in high school.  Our district meet in Pennsylvania (maybe even our 2-county "county meet") was bigger than the whole state contest here. Do they even have county meets in Delaware? How hard is it to qualify for the State Meet? It's fun to be a big fish in a small pond. A year and a half ago, Mark and I walked across the state of Delaware at its middle. It's fun to brag that you've walked across an entire state. It only took us four hours.

Being a small, closely knit state, this also means that people band together in good times and bad. The recent death of former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden is an example. Everywhere I go, people I know are recounting their experiences with the politician and his father, Vice President Joe Biden. (Joe Biden lived in Arden in his youth. Occasionally and without fanfare, he passes through here and wanders into Gild Hall to see the old place.) The shock and mourning for Beau are real. And it isn't just about the traffic headaches that this funeral is causing in Wilmington. People remember young Senator Joe Biden taking the train home every night from D.C. to be with his young sons, survivors in the automobile accident which killed Biden's wife and daughter. They remember Beau's service to this country when he went to Iraq as a Major in the National Guard. We had high hopes that he would become Governor one day. Many examples show just how the Bidens care about the people of Delaware, and the feeling is mutual.

I must admit that I feel a bit like an in-law at this Delaware Family Reunion. I haven't been with the family very long. But the standoffishness is on our part. Delaware has been a welcoming family and has claimed us as their own. Maybe we will never rise to favorite son status or have the kind of funeral that closes roads, but we are slowly making our own web of friends and acquaintances. A small eco-system. One of its state nicknames is the Small Wonder. I agree, and I am happy to call it home.

Degrees of Delaware and Arden time

We are barely in Delaware, but we are here, a few miles over the line. Near the point where the furniture stores and computer stores hover (Really, I bet they cast their shadows into Pennsylvania) and vie for your sales-tax-free spending dollars.

I went to college in Delaware, but I saw that more as college culture. I didn't get a sense of what it meant to live in a different state. So what has changed for us in Delaware besides acquiring the country's ugliest license plate? We thought we were getting away from scrapple, that Lancaster County classic that is revered and hated in equal measure, but apparently scrapple is even a bigger deal in Delaware. They even have a festival devoted to it, though it shares a billing with apples. I have mentioned the beach culture and how, even in Wilmington, the ocean pulls people away from their normally scheduled lives. And don't call it the shore. That's New Jersey.

In Delaware, I have been at events where the governor is in attendance, and he is approachable. When you govern over three counties, as opposed to Pennsylvania's 67, it makes you more available to your constituency. All Delaware politicians are. Everybody has a story about Joe Biden. I am convinced that any Delawarean could call him up today and the call would go through--straight to the man. That's how it works in Delaware. It isn't Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (a Pennsylvanian). In Delaware, you are only one or two degrees removed from another Delawarean. It isn't an island, but until the 1950's and the building of bridges and I95, Delaware was not readily accessible to those who lived outside of it. You had to really want to come here, and you had to really want to leave. It was a bit of an isolated population.

Sometimes, it is hard to figure what cultural differences are Delaware and which are purely Arden. In Arden, we have Arden time. It's a slippery thing, time. In Arden, you tell people you are going to start the procession or the egg hunt at a certain hour.  However, if you actually start it when you say you will, expect a few disappointed children whose parents were operating on that buffer of anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes that fall within Arden definition of on-time. I'm not sure whether to chalk that up to a more relaxed south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line way of life or to the artist/hippie disdain of rules. Or maybe it is a little of both. Mark and I have acquired more tie-dye shirts than ever before. We are trying to to meld into this new informality. "Trying" is a funny way to say it. Who has to try to be late? It isn't as though we are having to go the other way and fit into stricter codes of conduct. My hair would never stand to be high-society. No sommelier is ever going to look at me and say, "Let's push the expensive wines." This new relaxed way of being fits us, but learning to let go is an art. In letting go of standards of time and of formality, even just a tiny bit, you find out where all your tensions and hang-ups lie. It is a good lesson.