A right for all to marry

MY FRIEND Francis Saba was born in this country 56 years ago. He's married, has a business, owns two houses with his husband Victor Rivera, pays his taxes and votes in every election.

But it wasn't until the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage yesterday that he felt as if he were a full American citizen, entitled to all the rights the Constitution guarantees.

"Today, I finally feel like I'm part of the actual fabric of America," said an emotional Saba, when I called to ask if he'd heard about the court's decision. Of course he had. He'd been mowing the lawn when his phone started exploding with calls from friends, eager to share the news.

It was the same lawn upon which he and Victor said their vows last July, after Pennsylvania legalized same-sex marriage.

It had taken me forever to find an appropriate card to give them. Most of the cards said things like "As you start your life together," and "Congratulations on this beautiful beginning."

But Fran and Vic, who is 55, have been together since 1980. They know each other's habits, quirks, dreams and desires as intimately as any long-married couple does. They've gone gray together, walking hand in hand through career changes and family illnesses, relationship milestones, the passing of loved ones.

Their wedding wasn't a "beginning." It was an "It's about damn time."

The Supreme Court ruling means others will get to enjoy what straight people have enjoyed since this country was founded:

The right to marry who we love and to all of the protections that marriage guarantees.

That right is such a given for straight Americans, it's impossible to know what it has been like for gay folks to have been denied its privilege.

My friend Yasmine Mustafa has thought a lot about privilege. She fled the bombs of Kuwait with her family when she was a child and became a U.S. citizen in 2012. She remembers two big things about that day: Her utter joy to be an American - to feel like she finally belonged - and the inability of her American-born friends to grasp why she was so happy.

"They were ambivalent," says Yasmine, CEO of ROAR for Good, a mobile-technology company. "But my immigrant friends really got it. They know that we don't realize our privilege until we've lost it - or until we've gained it."

Yasmine's keen insight rang especially true last week, as a nation of those who enjoy privilege finally seemed to realize some of what we take for granted.

In the South, long-overdue debates have begun about the offensiveness of displaying the Confederate flag - a symbol of hatred and white privilege - on public properties whose agencies are supposed to represent all of us.

When the flag inspires a white kid to mow down nine black churchgoers in order to start "a race war," it's time to admit that the right to safety and dignity are rights deserved by all not things to be hoarded by a privileged few.

It's obscene that it took the murder of nine innocents to shake the privileged awake. If those flags come down, perhaps the nine won't have died in vain. But, oh, the terrible price they paid.

And on Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld provisions of the Affordable Care Act that will never be needed by those who are privileged with good health and even better health insurance. Thank goodness the Supreme Court's ruling looks out for the rest of us.

All in all, it was an extraordinary week, one that Charlie Massucci and Joe DiDio will never forget.

The men have been together for 45 years. Six years ago, they wed in Greenwich, Connecticut. Yesterday, they rejoiced that their rock-solid union is now recognized in all 50 states for what it is:

A commitment to be proud of - and emulated.

"I never thought I'd live to see this day," said Charlie, who'd gathered with others at the National Constitution Center to celebrate the ruling. "This is a big step. A huge step. People have needed to walk a mile in our shoes."

This week, the Supreme Court's nine justices did just that. Five of them decided it was time to extend the privilege of marriage to all.

"No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy movingly in the final paragraph of his opinion. "In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. . . . Marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death.

"It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."

Morally, of course, it was always theirs.

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