Rebekah and Emily
“I never wanted to get married just because I could.”
“Because we don’t want our divorce rates to match their divorce rates.”
“We’ve had to fight really hard for this!”
Rebekah and Emily nearly married on January 20, 2017, Donald Trump’s inauguration date: “Trump getting elected was definitely a motivator to get married as quickly as possible,” Rebekah explains. “But then there was too much going on with the Women’s March and all.” Rebekah and Emily then turned to numerology to settle on their second choice for a wedding date, February 4, 2017. However, soon afterward they learned that according to Chinese astrology, February 4 was an ideal day to “dig a grave,” not to get married. Instead, Chinese astrology recommended February 18. Finally, though, when Emily noticed that February 24, 2017—“2417”—matched the couple’s current address number, she took it as a sign. The wedding went off without a hitch—the ceremony even incorporated a flash mob set to Taylor Swift’s “Style.” In retrospect, she and Rebekah are grateful they did not pick a wedding date according to Chinese astrology: February 18, 2017 was the date Emily’s father passed away from cancer.
“Sometimes I worry that being married puts us on a list,” says Emily, “a registry of queers to execute. It feels like we could be potentially putting ourselves in danger.”
To Rebekah and Emily, marriage feels unexpected and hard-won in the midst of their personal mourning and a political climate in the United States that both describe as hostile and dangerous. “Sometimes I worry that being married puts us on a list,” says Emily, “a registry of queers to execute. It feels like we could be potentially putting ourselves in danger.”
If Rebekah and Emily could say one thing to audiences 30 years in the future, it would be “You’re welcome, you little shits!” Rebekah then adds, “Hopefully we could say that! Hopefully, you will never have had to deal with what we had to deal with.”
