Richard Swerdlow: A Right to Be Happy

Richard Swerdlow shares why it’s important to protect same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights.

June is Gay Pride month and cities across the world, from Sydney to San Francisco, are celebrating with parades.

I was born during the Eisenhower administration, before parades and Pride months. And growing up, I never imagined one day LGBTQ people would be able to marry, and that I’d enjoy the same rights as everyone else.

But this June, while pride events bring rainbows from coast-to-coast, in nine state legislatures across the country, measures have been introduced supporting overturning the 2015 Supreme Court decision which established same-sex marriage as a right nationally.

My husband and I have been a couple for 38 years. We met at a party, where I liked his red hair and he liked my ambition to be a writer. We moved in together when gay marriage was still the punchline to a joke. Referred to as “partners” by straight friends, and “boyfriends” by gay friends, I was relieved when we became “husbands” in 2015.

Marriage isn’t easy. We’ve been through good times – buying a home together – and bad, deaths of parents. We’ve weathered ups and downs of our respective careers as a public health doctor and a public school teacher. We’ve fought and we’ve made up, we’ve yelled and we’ve cried, together we’ve swam and skied and traveled the world. A lifetime has gone by, and we are both retired now. Four decades of companionship and commitment.

And during Pride month, my marriage is once again a matter of legislative debate, with strangers deciding on my right to be happy, with lawmakers using terms like “state statutes” and “due process clauses.”

I’m not sure I understand all the jargon going on in state houses around the country. But there is one thing I do understand after 40 years – love. Everybody has the right to find their one and only, and to live their own happily ever after.

With a Perspective, I’m Richard Swerdlow.

Richard Swerdlow is a retired San Francisco teacher.