The Importance of Titles

In high school, I was searching for a senior quote to select for the yearbook.  I had always wanted to be a politician, and continued to desire that goal.  Don’t ask why, I’ve always known how weird it was.  I ended up unfortunately choosing a movie quote, one, above all things, from Mel Gibson’s Braveheart. Knowing what the next few years held for the celebrity, it’s safe to say I deeply regret both the relatively lame nature of the quote and the source from which it’s drawn. 

So here it is, straight from the Oscar-award-winning film before the film’s maker became known as an abusive, anti-Semitic, woman-abusing religious zealot:

“Men do not follow titles.  They follow courage.”

Why did I choose it—well, I had spent a lot of time aspiring to titles in my youth.  By the time I was 18, I knew how to craft a resume (badly, I’m sure), and how to obtain a title or credential that I thought could get me higher in life.  I was an Eagle Scout, my troop’s Senior Patrol Leader, Class President, a Boys’ State delegate, I graduated Cum Laude, I was a Peer Leader, I was elected as a delegate to the regional Model Congress, I was awarded Best Delegate to the Harvard Model Congress.  They’re not overly impressive titles, but I spent virtually all my free time obtaining them as a teenager.

I somehow knew that I would need to remind myself that in my pursuit of titles, it was all just trivial.  I knew that I lacked the kind of courage I wanted to exhibit in my life, and that the titles were just over-compensation.  I also wanted to believe the converse, that just because I was denied my desired status in one place or another, that did not mean I lacked courage. 

Of course, when I got to college, I chose the best-sounding college I could get admitted to.  I was terribly concerned with the elite status of my college.  I joined a Greek fraternity, a Greek oratorical debating society, and a Greek letter honor society, served as an intern in Congress, and studied abroad in Germany.  I have been trying to obtain a Ph.D. ever since I graduated from college, and obtaining that elite status again.  I am a political scientist, and thus an institutionalist within even the social sciences, which study and systematize human behavior.  I have put a lot of stock in institutions my entire life.  I have put stock in those things that support and undergird society, and I have always been concerned with how I relate to the world through the institutions with which I associated myself.  They had to be the right titles, too.  Just because I was able to obtain a good job with a publishing house years later, it was not the title to which I aspired: Assistant Professor.  So, I could not live with that job forever.

While struggling to maintain my status within that corporation, though, and holding on to whatever title they would grant me, I met someone who taught me the meaning of courage, both hers and my own.  She showed me that the only title that really counted was “friend.”  While she pursued her truth and her dream, she asked me what I really wanted in life.  No one had asked me that question in a long time, and in that question, she showed me the kinds of choices I could still make, though I saw myself as trapped in the status I had obtained and was trying to preserve.  I saw that I could make a choice that was difficult, and was a real struggle.  I wanted to be with this person, and I wanted to live a good life with her, one that I had always wanted.   I wanted to get back to pursuing my dreams and my truth, and my family.  I had spent too long pursuing titles that I lost sight of which titles mattered to me and the why of those titles.

I left my job at that corporation for a teaching job at a small college for a fraction of the salary.  I wanted to go back to pursuing my dream, and living the life I wanted with my family, and the person who showed me how to find and how to use my courage, not my title.  I did it.  And I fell in love.  Now, and before I met her, I desperately wanted to live my life with my “wife” and to be her “husband.”  Those were the new titles I wanted.  And, being true to my old patterns, the job I found was one where I was called “Professor.” 

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the financial and legal advantages of legal marriage, but none matter more to me, and I know this because I know my own heart, the advantage of being able to communicate the important status of my most trusted friend, my closest companion, as my “wife.”  I realize that perhaps the greatest indignity that we force BGLT couples to endure is to make up new words for “wife” and “husband” when they want their own relationship to be recognized with the title that we all want.  Titles are supposed to grant respect.  But men (and women) do not follow titles, do they?  I don’t know how courageous it is to be gay in today’s world, I’m sure it takes a lot.  I do know how much I innately desire that respect and that status myself, and it’s an irrational desire, but I know it’s one that many of us share.  We all want to be respected, we all want to be considered equal by society.   Some, unfortunately, are more equal than others. 

And while I obtain the status of a title of “husband” and “professor” what does that mean? I want to love my family and love my job, and my job is to help people understand the world better, at least as much as I understand it.  It’s not my job, even as a person, to impose my perspective or my beliefs on others.  It is my job to exercise as much courage as I can in demonstrating that titles only are as important as we allow, and our titles don’t change who we are or even what we do.  Ceremonies recognize status, and I’m only just beginning to realize that I would rather ceremonies, even wedding ceremonies, could recognize achievement: that achievement that we have found and have decided to commit to one person for our entire lives, no matter what their race, religion, sex, or background.  We have found someone who we love and who loves us.  That is the achievement of a lifetime. 

During the past few months, I have been attempting to understand why the government and those who agree with the government’s policy of largely banning same-sex marriage are so dead-set against granting the title of “husband and husband” or “wife and wife” to loving couples, many of whom have and are actively raising children together.  Why deny people basic human rights, and disadvantage the children of those people?  It is so that with the title that the government can bestow, in that title there lies an immense amount of power over others’ lives, in hopes that one can make one’s own life matter more, and the titles one has obtained can matter more. 

My own insecurity reveals itself when I desire to make sure that we will still be called “husband” and “wife” by the general public, by our friends and family, whatever legal route we decide to take with our relationship.  I do want to honor the commitment of others who are not able to obtain the legal status of marriage and all 1138 federal rights and insurance discounts (see earlier posts), but do I want to deny myself and my spouse the honor of our commitment?  Am I denying our commitment by not allowing the government a say in what I call my family?   No.  A title does not give me a wife.  A title does not make me love her.  And a title certainly does not give me the knowledge or the skill to teach and to write and to do my job.  Who cares what people call us?  I want us to be together. I know she wants us to be together, and create and celebrate our family.  Should we celebrate that we could be afforded a higher status than some who also seek this same goal?  Should we celebrate our possibly legal titles?  No, but we can try to muster the tiny bit of courage to say that we are doing our best to honor their commitment while still taking the time to celebrate our own. 

And while it certainly does manifest some insecurity, I do plan on bestowing my own title on the woman I love, that of my wife, because that is how I see her and how I want to think of our life together.  Only she and I can decide whatever we want to name the love we have, and that’s true of anyone else in the world.