I never thougth I could feel this way...

Amidst all this conversation about whether gay people should be allowed to marry--whether society should allow it, something critical is being missed.

What's missed is that the desire to marry someone is simply the end of a long and beautiful process of falling in love--a process that has a beginning. It begins with the irrepressible attraction that first draws us to another human being. All of us, gay and straight, know that attraction. It intoxicates and disarms us; it gives us weak knees and sweaty palms; it makes us write bad poetry and stay awake dreaming of that person's face and body. It's a love that crowds out all rational thought. It's a love that swoons.

My favorite song in high school was a pop song by the band Too Much Joy called "Crush Story." The song embodied for me the experience of head-over-heels infatuation with another human being. The crush is the primal, innocent attraction... a seed of love, illogical and impossible to push down--like trying to hold a beach ball under water. Pop music is the soundtrack to the crush, because in its rhythms and harmonies, it echoes the ebullient energy of the crush--driving, optimistic, simply beautiful.

As long as there are gay crushes (and ask any gay person... there ARE), you're not going to stop the movement for gay marriage. We talk about the "institution" of marriage, but it's much more basic than that. As long as gay teenagers are swooning for one another, getting weak-kneed and sweaty-palmed and writing bad poetry, they're going to dream of sharing life together. Any of us who remembers our first crush can acknowledge the shared humanity and utter humility that comes with falling head-over-heels in love.

As long as there are crush stories being written, those stories will dream of a happily-ever-after. I hope our culture will humble itself to see that marriage is the maturation of something much more simple and primal--something common to gay people as well as straight--something beautiful and intoxicating and lovely--marriage is a crush that's all grown up.

I heard a great song a few months back by the Scotland Yard Gospel Choir that takes the time-honored tale of the crush and gives it a great gay spin. It's called "I Never Thought I Could Feel this Way for a Boy." So in all this conversation about gay marriage, I try and remember that the impulse to marry always has and always will begin in the irrepressible and finally undeniable experience of the crush...