rainy Ohio February day.
The radio segment tugged at me in some odd way. I didn’t recognize it as a story idea just yet—I didn’t recognize it until the report that followed it: a report about President Bush’s Defense of Marriage Act, which sought to alter the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
And it struck me as interesting: here was a group of citizens fighting relentlessly for the right to enter into this “obsolete” institution, while the group of citizens who already enjoyed that right were treating it rather cavalierly.
The beginnings of a story started simmering in my brain. I caught myself thinking about marriage a lot, asking people questions at dinner parties and gatherings—“Why did you get married?” and “Why shouldn’t gays be allowed to marry?”—even running a contest on my Web site at one point, inviting readers to write a brief essay defending their answer to the question “Is marriage necessary?”
Every one of my books has begun with a social issue I care deeply about, so this seemed part of my process. But when readers asked, “So what’s the social issue in your next book?” they’d chuckle when I said, “Marriage.”
“Marriage was certainly not as ‘edgy’ as AIDS, alcoholism, and child sexual abuse—issues I’ve taken on in the past. But marriage is a social issue.”
The chuckling intrigued me. Okay, so marriage was certainly not as “edgy” as AIDS, alcoholism, and child sexual abuse—issues I’ve taken on in the past. But marriage is a social issue, and one that touches many, many more people than my previous topics.
The chuckling affirmed something my initial research had led me to believe: most people don’t spend much time thinking seriously about marriage. Even if they are married.
“I did—for a time—fall into that self-indulgent, boring literary trap of forcing my fiction into the straitjacket of my own life story.”
Oh, they spend a lot of time and energy thinking about weddings, but not about marriage.
Most married people I talked to couldn’t answer the question “Why did you get married?” beyond a “We love each other.” Most eventually admitted that they married because “that’s what people do.” So, why, then, in an era where we have the luxury of marrying solely for love, do so many of those unions end in divorce?
I’d been working on the novel for two years—already with my protagonist going through a divorce—when I got divorced myself.
My divorce caused some pretty serious rewriting. At first, I was such a mess that I couldn’t read or write. The novel sat for nearly ten months. When I returned to it, I was a totally different person and had to start over. I did—for a time—fall into that self-indulgent, boring literary trap of forcing my fiction into the straitjacket of my own life story. I will love my editor forever for her response to that draft. After having read one hundred pages of it, she said, “This ex-husband is not at all an interesting or satisfying character.” Instead of insisting, “But that’s really how it happened,” I laughed out loud, grateful that her honesty freed me from that trap. I rewrote again.
To this day, I could not come up with a clear defense for marriage’s existence, and neither could I come up with a clear defense of preventing same-sex couples from entering into it if they so chose. I have yet to hear an argument or a reason that convinces me. Some argue that the legalization of same-sex marriage will lead to people wanting to marry their children, multiple spouses, or their pets. Really? Is it so difficult to define marriage as between any two consenting adult human beings? Some argue that the majority of Americans is still against it. Well, the majority of Americans was in support of slavery when it was abolished; the majority of Americans was against women’s right to vote when it was granted (same with biracial marriages). To allow two consenting adults to publicly declare a monogamous commitment to each other—explain to me how that threatens marriage. The gay and lesbian couples I know in no way contributed to my divorce. They didn’t cause my marriage to crumble. In fact, the couple to whom this novel is dedicated has served as a model to me—while I was married and now that I’m not—of the kind of true partnership I want to have. Ted and Dave in every way epitomize the marriage vows they’re not allowed to take.
“The couple to whom this novel is dedicated has served as a model to