Over the course of the marriage equality movement, one key thing we’ve learned in state after state is that sharing our stories with others is critical. The single most powerful way to bring people to support civil marriage equality is by making the issue personal.

Marriage Equality USA recently launched “Getting to ‘I DO’: Our Journeys to Marriage Equality,” a collaborative project aimed at col­lecting and sharing a wide range of multimedia-rich stories about relationships, family, marriage, ad­vocacy, and equality.

Ted shares, for example, the bitter­sweet story of how marriage equal­ity came too late for him and Jack, his partner of more than 25 years. In 2009, Jack was diagnosed with cancer. Just days after a marriage equality lobby day in Albany that same year, Jack died. When the freedom to marry finally came to New York two years later, Ted—an ordained, former minister—noted his joy at having “the privilege of joining together the lives of two lov­ing persons,” even though he and his own “beloved” were denied that opportunity.

Sveta shares her journey to receiv­ing her marriage-based green card last year. She writes about a “surre­al” interview with USCIS in 2010. “Why can’t you just go to Russia?” an immigration officer asked her, after she explained, “I would be in danger as a member of a perse­cuted minority, if I were to be sepa­rated from my U.S. citizen partner of over a decade and deported back to Kazakhstan.” She continued, recalling the incident: “My wife was in the same room, but was not allowed to speak…I was asked to strike out her name and informa­tion as my spouse from my applica­tion for asylum.” Sveta concluded, “The Defense of Marriage Act ren­dered us legal strangers.”

Such stories are as varied and unique as the LGBT community. Many of the “Getting to ‘I DO’” stories focus on the joy of marriage itself, or how the authors felt the day their states finally recognized the freedom to marry.

We also have touching stories from allies, like Reenie, an interfaith minister who writes about how a burgeoning friendship with a les­bian seminary classmate led to ad­vocating for “same sex couples in their quest to be together.” Roger, a former Marine, shared a deeply personal story about his journey to support full equality for same-sex couples, and his regret that it took him so long to do so. Roger writes, “We don’t need to look backward for a chance to stand up for prin­ciples. Life isn’t about always be­ing right—I was wrong for a long time—but about learning from mistakes and making amends.”

Every story is unique, and we nev­er know which story will resonate with someone who is still unsure about marriage equality. By shar­ing your story today, you may be the change that helps someone fi­nally get to “I do.” Browse our collection of “Getting to ‘I DO’” stories, and then please share your own journey to “I DO” with us.

By Thom Watson, MEUSA Social Media Manager and Project Lead, Getting to "I DO" 

This article originally appeared in SF Bay Times, May 29, 2014: http://sfbaytimes.com/getting-to-i-do-sharing-stories-to-change-hearts-and-minds/ 

By MEUSA Social Media Director Thom Watson In my previous column I noted I was about to get married. I hope you’ll forgive my ongoing self-indulgence as I write about my nuptials once more. One’s own wedding, after all, doesn’t happen every day. Admittedly, given California’s rollercoaster history regarding marriage equality, some of us have been married multiple times to the same person. Jeff and I even had a post-Prop 8 commitment ceremony that we called a wedding, in defiance of the amendment’s unconstitutional claim that we weren’t legally entitled to the term. But Jeff and I legally wed just once.  At 2:00 p.m., Thursday, September 26 – three weeks ago today and four years to the day from that non-legal commitment ceremony – we made our vows to one another at San Francisco City Hall. Originally, our congresswoman Jackie Speier was slated to officiate. However, due to the ongoing budget crisis in the federal government, the House of Representatives was called back from their recess originally scheduled for the week we were to marry, and Rep. Speier regretfully had to cancel. [caption id="attachment_447" align="alignleft" width="300"] Jeff and Thom with Stuart and John at the Cliff House, September 28. ©2013 Levi Smith Photography[/caption] With one week to go before the wedding, our very dear friends and my fellow Bay Times columnists John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney generously agreed to step in as co-officiants. Actually, knowing that John had officiated other weddings, and that he and Stuart were going to be there at our wedding – just as they’d been with us at City Hall after Judge Walker’s decision in August, 2010, when we hoped the stay would be lifted and we would be able to marry; on Valentine’s Day earlier this year when we spoke to a crowd at City Hall about the pain of still not being able to wed; and again at City Hall that joyful day this past June when we finally got our marriage license – we already had asked if he would be willing to officiate in the event the congresswoman were called back to D.C. We had planned to ask Stuart to be our witness. When John and Stuart arrived at City Hall on the 26^th, however, they surprised us  by asking if we’d mind if they performed the wedding together. We were touched by the suggestion, thrilled by the possibility, and particularly moved by the symbolism of having these two men stand together to pronounce the words that would make Jeff and me husbands. Four years ago we knew John and Stuart largely only as fellow marriage equality activists, heroes of the California marriage equality movement, and plaintiffs in the court case that first established the freedom to marry in California and set the stage for our own wedding this year. In the intervening time, though, they’d become our mentors, our comrades-in-arms, and our brothers. John and Stuart brought a deeply personal touch to the ceremony, and Jeff and I consider ourselves to be so very fortunate that in the end our two friends were the ones facing us on the balcony at City Hall. [caption id="attachment_448" align="alignright" width="300"] Thom and Jeff with friends at their Cliff House reception. ©2013 Levi Smith Photography[/caption] Two days later we hosted a reception at the Cliff House, the location of our 2009 commitment ceremony. Four years ago we’d been joined by about 65 friends and family members. Last month over 110 of our friends and family were present; there were several dozen more people, including at least a half-dozen more kids, who might have been there but for other commitments, distance, or last-minute illness. Four years ago, there was one teenager present and no younger children. Last month nearly a dozen infants, toddlers, and pre-teens, along with a couple of teenagers, attended our reception. Several of these children call us “Uncle Thom” and “Uncle Jeff,” even though we have no biological connection, just a loving one that recognizes family ties beyond those of blood. We live in a world where love and legal marriage between two men or two women increasingly is not something to hide or to “protect” kids from, but rather something to celebrate, truly a family affair. We live in a world where these kids will grow up to be able to marry whomever they love, regardless of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Honestly, not too many years ago I would have said I wouldn’t expect to see that world in my lifetime. But at the Cliff House last month, I saw that it’s already arrived. [caption id="attachment_451" align="alignleft" width="300"] Just a few of the friends Thom & Jeff have made within the marriage equality movement. ©2013 Levi Smith Photography[/caption] The increase in the number of people celebrating with us was due almost entirely to the new friends and allies we’ve made in the past four years through our marriage equality advocacy; we considered our reception, in fact, to be as much a day of celebration for the hard work of so many to return the freedom to marry to California as it was specifically for the two of us. To that end, we asked that in lieu of gifts attendees consider making a donation to Marriage Equality USA; I’m overwhelmed by our friends’ generosity and very proud to note that our equality registry to date has raised nearly $2,700 to help MEUSA in its efforts to win the freedom to marry for the 37 remaining states where couples like Jeff and me still are denied this important civil right. That includes states like Virginia, my birthplace and my home for over 35 years. Jeff and I left Virginia for California, his home, in no small part due to the extreme homophobia of Virginia’s government and the absolute lack of any protections there for LGBT people in public accommodations, housing, employment, or relationship status. It remains legal in Virginia to fire an employee, even a state government employee, to refuse service at your place of business, or to refuse to rent or sell a home, for no reason other than that you disapprove of someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The current attorney general, once (though thankfully no longer) the front-runner to be the next governor, has called LGBT  people “destructive” and “soulless,” while the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor has made homophobic comments that make “destructive” and “soulless” sound almost like compliments in comparison. Still, things are getting better, even back there in the Commonwealth, if more slowly than we might wish. [caption id="attachment_453" align="alignright" width="300"] I say, old chap, it's time to bring marriage equality to the Old Dominion, what? ©2013 Levi Smith Photography[/caption] Recent news that the legal team headed by David Boies and Ted Olson that defeated Prop 8 is now challenging Virginia’s refusal to treat loving gay couples as anything more than strangers under the law is particularly welcome and heartening. Someday Jeff and I may be able to visit my birth family – his in-laws – with pride and optimism rather than the worry and dread based on the state considering our marriage invalid that so often accompanies our visits back there now. Thousands of couples like us, we hope, will before long have their own relationships treated with the legal recognition that is their human and civil right. It would be fitting, certainly, if the state that in Loving v. Virginia fought anti-miscegenation laws all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and lost, thereby resulting in bans on interracial marriage being overturned nationwide, were to provide same-sex couples our own version of Loving and the same end to all laws banning same-sex marriages. It’s long past time for the Commonwealth fully to live up to its motto, “Virginia is for lovers,” without the invisible disclaimer, “Void where gay.”

By MEUSA Social Media Director Thom Watson One week from today, I expect my life paradoxically to stay pretty much exactly the same, yet at the same time to change utterly, in ways I’m not sure I truly understand or even can fully imagine. I expect my life to change, though, because people whose opinions in such matters I trust, people who already have undertaken the step I’m about to take, keep telling me it will. Next Thursday, you see, I’m getting married. On the one hand, my life will stay pretty much exactly the same. After all, back in June Jeff and I celebrated the ten-year anniversary of our first date. As of this month we’ve already been living together for a decade, nearly half of those years within the formal legal status of a California registered domestic partnership. We’ve already been paying joint state taxes; Jeff covers me on his employer’s health insurance plan; we share finances, the care and feeding of two cats, each other’s joys and sorrows, a warped sense of humor, and our bed. Obviously, marriage won’t change any of that. To be sure, we expect our day-to-day life the day after we say “I do” to go on largely just as it did the day prior. Nonetheless, I also expect next Thursday’s civil ceremony, the promises we will make, and the words and status that will be pronounced to and conferred upon us “by the power vested… by the state,” to be transformative. As Marriage Equality USA (MEUSA) noted in its amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court this past winter, “Same-sex couples who have been able to marry have experienced great joy and have found that marriage profoundly deepens their love and commitment to each other.” In a conversation with Chris Geidner, Edie Windsor, the winsome octogenarian plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that resulted in the eradication of DOMA Section 3, the federal law that before this summer had prohibited the U.S. government from recognizing same-sex couples’ legally valid marriages, put it this way: “I ask all gay couples who have lived together a long time and got married, ‘Was it different the next morning?’ And everybody says yes, and they don’t know how to explain it. Marriage itself, you know, it’s a magic word, everybody knows what it means, it means love and commitment and trust… but there’s this extra thing when it was always denied to you. But it’s profound. Whatever loving was there, it becomes really profound loving.” Our friend and fellow MEUSA love warriors Ellen Pontac and Shelly Bailes, who have been together for nearly 40 years, married in 2004 (though that marriage heartbreakingly was made “null and void” by the California Supreme Court) and again, finally, in 2008. Ellen agrees with Edie’s sentiment, describing the personal, social, and political transformative power of marriage like this: “Being married changes not only the fact that you can say, ‘I’d like to introduce you to my wife,’ but it changes the way you feel inside, and the way the world perceives you. We have both a domestic partnership and a marriage. Getting married has actually made us realize how inadequate being a domestic partner is. Now that we are married, we never refer to ourselves as domestic partners or even conceive of ourselves as such – we only refer to ourselves as married.” Jeff and I are incredibly grateful that we now have the right to enter into a legal civil marriage here at home in California, and to have that marriage recognized by both our state and federal governments. We’re excitedly and nervously expectant about making our vows to one another at San Francisco’s City Hall, a location with particular sentimental significance for California’s marriage equality advocacy movement and for us, personally, and about experiencing these profound changes in our relationship as we express our love and commitment in a formalized way that is a very old and shared tradition, yet simultaneously a very new and completely unique experience for each couple who takes that step. At the same time, we’re also aware that many of our friends, brothers, and sisters across the country still are denied this same opportunity, just as we were until this past June, and even in the midst of our celebration and joy we remain mindful of the hard work that remains to be done to bring the freedom to marry to everyone in this country, without regard to sexual orientation or gender identity, and whether one lives in a red state or a blue one. Emma Lazarus famously wrote, in words and sentiment later echoed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” That’s why I volunteer for a group that advocates for the freedom to marry, and why I will continue to do so even now that my own freedom to marry in California has been secured, and even after I have exercised that freedom for myself. It’s why Jeff and I, in lieu of a traditional wedding gift registry, have set up an equality registry to benefit MEUSA and to help fund the ongoing fight to win marriage equality across the nation. It’s the hard work of organizations like MEUSA, AFER, Freedom to Marry, GetEQUAL, and so many others, that trained, encouraged, and enabled Jeff and me – and thousands like us – to be our own fierce advocates for our equality and to fight for our freedom, and that have played such critical roles in making it possible for us finally to marry next week. It reminds me a little of that famous television commercial catchphrase of the late 1980s, “I’m not just the president of the Hair Club for Men, I’m also a client.” In that vein, I’m not just a Marriage Equality USA volunteer, I’m also a client. And I can endorse it not just in principle, but because it has worked so well for me personally.