If you haven’t already left your computer for the Labor Day weekend, start your holiday off right with this beautiful reminder of the goodness in the world:
Meg Liffick and Joe Ball, a couple from Indianapolis, had their wedding last Saturday in Indiana. The Midwestern state, like the majority of states in America, does not formally recognize the relationships of same-sex couples in any way. This clearly didn’t sit well with Liffick and Ball, so they decided to use a cherished wedding tradition to both call attention to the injustice of marriage discrimination and honor the loving, committed relationships of their LGBT friends. John Green, a popular novelist and friend of the couple, described their poignant gesture in a post on his tumblr (fair warning – it made this guy bawl like a baby):
When it came time for the couple’s traditional first dance, Joe read prepared remarks explaining that instead of dancing together, they wanted to open the dance floor to their gay and lesbian friends who are still legally denied the right to marry.
This was a large and very diverse wedding in a state that doesn’t even recognize same-sex civil unions, let alone marriage. And yet the ovation that these people received while dancing to The Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” was like nothing I’ve ever heard at any wedding. If there were dry eyes, I didn’t see any.
Change is coming.
Don’t even bother wiping the tears out of your eyes, though, until you take a look at the snapshot Green took of that dance (below). You’ll see four beautiful gay and lesbian couples, whom Liffick and Ball chose to publicly honor on their own wedding day by recognizing, affirming, and embracing their friends’ love for each other, even when their state (and maybe even their church) refuses to do so.
As Mister Rogers used to sing when I was small, there are many ways to say “I love you,” but in my view, this one is particularly touching.
By the way, if you’re on Twitter and would like to send the couple best wishes, click here for Meg and Joe.
Yes, I have tears in my eyes. It makes my heart lift to know that there are Hoosiers who really understand that everyone has the right to share their life with the person they love, no matter what their sexual orientation. I wish them both a long and happy marriage, and I hope that pretty soon the couples shown on the dance floor will also be able to legally say “I Do” very soon!
That picture is worth a thousand words, and more. I am glad there isn’t a video, I would be a big mess of tears. Cheers to the newlyweds. Y’all are awesome.
Thatis very sweet and it brought tears to my eyes as a married GLBT person who has never been able to dance with my husband in public.
Wow what a beautiful thin to do. I lived in Indiana and while there is a lot of prejudice, there are good people there.
My congrats to Meg and Joe and may they have many happy years together.
change does not happen in a vacuum… it takes courageous and righteous allies to be counted and stand up for progress…
kudos to the awesome couple…
This is an amazing testament to the goodness of some people. Thank you and Congratulations to the new happy couple.
Wow. This give me hope. Congratulations to the married couple, and may the four gay and lesbian couples be able to be married soon. Change is going to come! But why does it have to take so long? Gestures like this will help speed it some.
OK — just what I needed as an antidote to the nastiness that’s been in the news this week. Thanks for the report.
Congratulations to Meg and Joe, and deep appreciation not only for this gesture, but for being truly good people.
Take that, Brian Brown!
You are awesome! I wish you all the best and a lifetime of wonder and joy together.
With all the injustices we suffer, it is wonderful to hear about amazing, loving people who show their support for us in such a selfless and beautiful way. Will someone please hug them for me…for all of us?
I may or may not be able to speak for other straight allies. Some have family they are close to and grew up with that started their path.
Others have been industries or environments that are perhaps the kinds of places where gay men and women can be themselves.
I learned young, that experience is the best teacher and to be unafraid to get to know people in ways forged by mutual trust.
It doesn’t feel like courage to participate in advocacy. It doesn’t seem to take that, even when real risks are involved.
It’s humbling really, that what feels like a small gesture, has such strong and meaningful returns.
Very humbling, and so powerful.
I’m trying to encourage the naysayers, the anti gay, that they are missing something very powerful and gratifying.
I say that we are squandering the potential of talented and compassionate people in the march towards human progress and social justice.
No, it doesn’t feel like courage.
It feels like some of the greatest love we can ever know sometimes.
And that’s what makes me belief very deeply that is what God wants for us.
For his children to forge loving alliances and enjoy their differences and relish the diversity.
Fear and ignorance cannot teach morality, nor sustain it.
These are the tools of evil, and their result obviously tragic.
To love someone, is to be unafraid and willing to learn what you must.
No, it doesn’t feel like courage, but the gift of love made whole.
congratulations
The times, they are a changing!
Thank you Meg and Joe for this awesome gift of love!
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every married couple chose to do the same thing. In fact I’m going to suggest that to the couple every time I find out someone is getting married.
If we all did the same – we could start a movement!!!
I do not advocate same sex relationships and neither does the bible. “It is an abomination before God’s eyes”. I know a lot of people that are homosexual and I pray for their souls every day. God said “Hate the sin, but love the sinner”. I am not here to judge, but to follow God’s word. I have enough trash in my own back yard (my own sins), without looking over the fence at my neighbors. I am a Southern Baptist Deacon, been married to the same Lady for almost 40 years.
Sincerely,
Richard Leon Liffick Jr.
Piqua, Ohio
Beautiful! How regrettable that Mr. Liffick feels the need to use this as an occasion to express his narrow, heterosexist, reading of the Bible!
James Meredith Day
Brussels, Belgium
Richard Liffick, you need to find a better quality denomination. The white trash version, The Southern Baptists, has lowered you to the shameful level of a literalist. Find a better quality denomination, like the Presbyterians, the Evangelical Lutherans, The Episcopal Church or the United Church of Christ.
You cannot claim to love me, and hate me at the same time. You are a very rude and uncouth man for writing what you did, and I pray you learn grace and manners, and learn how to be a real man, not the hateful bigot you show yourself to be with yoor words in your post.
Good luck. I hope someday you can become a good person, a real Christian, and decent man.
I live in southern Indiana and have experienced acceptance and love from most people. I have been with my partner for 13 years and have never had the opportunity to dance together @ a wedding because of the few people in the crowd that may be uncomfortable seeing me dance with the person I love. I just want to say thank you and congratulations to Meg and Joe for sharing their special day with their LGBT friends. It will be a beautiful day when people, no matter who they love, can slow dance @ a wedding reception and it not be news worthy.
What loving people these are. Very tender gesture and it’s appreciated by sooooo many glbt people. Thank you.
Many many thanks and best wishes to Meg Liffick and Joe Ball! What an incredible gesture!
And lots of love and happiness to everyone – straight, gay, black, white, Hispanic, short, tall, bald, hairy, skinny, fat.. you name it!
Yay for Meg and Joe!
If God could speak to Richard Liffick Jr. (not that God would want to) God would tell that gay-basher to stop copying and pasting the same crap comment into the comments threads of endless LGBT-interest websites. He might also tell Liffick to STFU.
Yay for Meg and Joe!
I am not bashing any one. I said to Hate the SIN and Love the sinner. You can love some one and hate what they are doing. ie: a drug addict, a drunkard. a child molester. I stated my view and I only did it once and did not paste anything, if it appeared in other places I am not responsible. Maybe, just maybe someone agreed with me and linked it. I don’t know and as for my Religious beliefs, at least I have some. If you had taken the time to really read my post, you would have seen the part about the trash in my own back yard. And the Bible is to be taken as a guide and reference. so I follow what the written word says or at least I really try to. If what I say rankles your Ire then I suggest you get a thicker coat of skin. You don’t agree with me and I don’t agree with you. So we will agree to disagree.
Richard, there is no such thing as hate the sin and love the sinner. Our actions are not divorced from who we are as people, our actions are determined by who we are. Who we are attracted to is a core aspect of who we are – if you hate gayness you hate gays, there’s no two ways about it.
You can brag about what a sinner you are but don’t compare your wrongdoings to gayness. Gayness harms no one and is therefore not a wrongdoing, that you consider it a “sin”: is of no moral concern.
Richard how is a consensual relationship between adults anything like raping a child, or an addiction? That you think there is any comparison is just another example of your bigotry. You claim not to be judging us and yet you go on to say that we are the same as child-rapists. Your precious bible says it’s okay to sell your daughters into slavery.
When it comes to being gay, the sin and the sinner are the same thing. It is patently dishonest to claim to love one and hate the other. If you hate one, you hate both no matter what pretty words you try to dress it in.
You are not the victim Richard. You are the aggressor. You came here to insult and attack us with no provocation. You are a bigot and a bully and we are within our rights to defend ourselves from you.
Richard Liffick, I disagree with your Christian busybody lifestyle. Whenever I meet Christian busybodies, I don’t pray for them, I just tell them to mind their own business. But there is hope for all of you. I can attest that change is possible if you accept reason as your personal savior. And once you do that, the fear of a god will just melt away. And then maybe you won’t be so motivated to meddle in the lives of others.
“You can love some one and hate what they are doing. ie: a drug addict, a drunkard. a child molester.”
How are any of these things similar to falling in love with a person of the same sex and then expressing that love to them in romantic, emotional, and physical manners the same way people do with those of the opposite sex? I seriously don’t get the logic here.
An easy way to look at it: Pretend that a religious sect has declared heterosexuality to be a sin on par with molesting a child or becoming a drug addict. Making love to your wife/husband, showering them with affection, pledging to spend your life with them, these things are sins just like child molestation and being a drunkard.
…how does this make sense in people’s brains?
Regan – great, great words. As always.
Richard, ” I am not here to judge, but to follow God’s word. I have enough trash in my own back yard (my own sins), without looking over the fence at my neighbors.”
Then why are posting messages here?
If only, if only – “loving the sinner” meant staying out of their backyard so long as they are harming no-one else.
Learn your place Liffic. If you said something like that in an office you would (rightfully) be escourted to the door with your stuff sent to your home later in a cardboard box.
The reason? Bigotry has no place in American society.
Even if it is religiously based
Learn this now. Years ago, in the south, old fools said they had to beleive in segregation and racism because their literalist reading of the Bible said to (a fact conservatives try desperately to forget).
Most of America (especially those under 55 or so) already correctly see you as a bigot. Your grandchilren will do so also. Correctly so.
You cannot hate gay people and claim to love us. Being gay is an inherent, and not sinful, part of who we are.
Get a better quality church. Stop trying to put your prejudice into law if you support anti marriage equality, and when you have matured, become a true Christian, and a real man, then come here and apologize to us.
till then, you have nothing to offer us. Understood?
Don’t like reality? Don’t like the image I am showing you, which deep down you know is true? Grow a thicker skin. Want to live somewhere where you can say you hate us, any part of us (and thus all of us) and not get called out on it? Russia. Move to Russia.
You would fit in well.
Is Richard Liffick related to the bride?
Miss liffick– if ou do have your own sins, why on earth do you have time to tell us about ours? Shouldn’t you should be repenting somewhere, getting right with god, or something like that?
Didn’t Jesus have something to say about that?
I guess I just cant leave it alone, liffick.
Thank you for being the poster boy to demonstrate one of the truths about bigots
And bigotry. Not that you’ll care, but then, this really isn’t for you.
Not all bigotry is hate, or fear, ignorance, or unconscious this-is-how-I-wa-brought-up, or stupidity,deflection, or disguised as religious belief, or the front man for lust for money, power, and dominion over others, though I’m fairly convinced that you don’t have to scratch too deeply on any of these emotions in order to find some of the others.
A good deal of bigotry is simply the bigot’s completely unwarranted belief in his always assumed, self assigned, but otherwise completely imaginary superiority.
Cristian over Jew or Muslim, man over woman, white over black, Serb over Croat, straight over gay– and many others. The reasons don’t matter, because there aren’t any, not really. There’s just the assertion of superiority, asserted without factual evidence, frequently backed up by force. It’s an old sad story.
You, for example, truly believe in your own superiority, and are clearly, proudly ignorant. You tell js you’re a sinner, but you have just enough time to “love” us and inform us that we had better repent. In your mind, that makes you better. In your betters’ minds, though– people of compassion and intelligence, you’re just a garden variety bigot and for some unfathomable reason, proud of it.
I don’t expEct you to care, but should your attitude ever come back to bite you, if it hasn’t already, I don’t want you to be able to say no one told you.
I am a strait Catholic who is Voting NO on the Marriage Ammentment – I know this has nothing to do with that, but when I read the Bible I hear that God Created us ALL in his own image. I see Jesus befriending all the out-casts of society, calling the pharisees hypocrites. We pray in church for equal justice for all. I know several very loving and committed same sex couples who have every right to everything the institution of Marriage has to offer…AND every right to dance together in public. I used to think differently, until I opened my eyes and looked around. Is it not proven that homosexuality is bioligical? Young teenage boys and girls do not choose to be bullied, outcast, picked on etc…because of their sexual orientation. I know many youth, all good christians who struggle with this daily, afraid to tell their parents for fear of the outcome. Never before have I felt this strongly about an issue. Remember when it was a sin (well maybe not a sin, but boy it may as well have been) to marry someone of a different race or religion, we’ve gotten past that now lets get past this. Thanks
Michelle, thank you for taking the time to write your kind words.
Meg & Joe, I have a hunch — just a hunch — that you two are going to make awesome parents someday!!!