They don’t have the luxury of waiting for a “better” bill, that would theoretically satisfy conservatives who believe this reform goes to far or progressives who think it doesn’t go far enough. None of us do, if we think about it.

Like some other progressives, the health care reform fight has left me demoralized, and suffering an acute lack of enthusiasm for cheering for what’s left after seeing so much needed and hoped-for change bargained away.

But a lack of enthusiasm doesn’t quite compare to a lack of access to health care, experienced by far to those Americans who can’t wait for a better bill, as Bill Boyarsky observed among the men and women who rose early (some at 3:00 a.m.) to get a place in line at St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in South Los Angeles. They are waiting in line when the center opens at 8:00 a.m., seeking the most basic care.

I walked through St. John’s and saw how medical treatment taken for granted by the affluent and insured cannot only save a poor family from disaster but start it on the road upward by providing good health and a better life.

In addition to receiving lifesaving drugs, diabetics are taught the value of diet and exercise. Women who suffer domestic abuse are steered to support groups. Dentists and physicians work on patients and a laboratory backs them up. Mothers and fathers, in parenting sessions, are urged to read to their kids each day. Teams visit homes, looking for lead, rats and cockroaches. “We pull two dozen cockroaches out of kids’ ears every week,” said Mangia.

Nobody in America should have to live like this, without medical care that other industrial nations take for granted. The health reform bill is a start to ending this evil. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Bill Clinton — even Richard Nixon — tried to do something about health care and were beaten by the powerful special interests profiting from the present system. The interests, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the insurance industry and others, are at it again in the final days before the House vote, targeting the members who fear a “yes” vote will cost them their jobs.

I hope they have the guts to resist. “We need courage, that’s what we need,” President Obama said in Ohio. This bill, as imperfect it is, will begin the process of reforming a health care system that is unfair to the middle class and the poor alike. Health care, as Roosevelt said, is a human right. Passage of the bill would be a great legacy for this Congress.

There are of course, numerous stories and scenes like the one Boyarsky witnessed in Los Angeles. In August, the New York Times covered a similar story of thousands of people with no other access to care lining up to get medical care in the arena of LA’s Forum Club.

The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington went to Quindaro, Kansas, and at Dr. Sharon Lee’s clinic, saw how the poorest in middle America struggle with health care.

Lee has just opened an outpost of her clinic in the outlying neighbourhood of Quindaro, an area of boarded-up houses and deserted factories where work is hard to find and crack plentiful and a per capita income is $11,025. A third of the population is below the federally defined poverty line.

And yet the local health department has decided the only health centre in the area will be closed by the end of this year and moved 30 blocks west to a much more prosperous part of the city where income levels are five times higher. Before long, one of the poorest areas of Kansas — of America — will be left without a single doctor, with only Lee’s voluntary services to fall back on.

Even that is academic. Many of the residents of Quindaro were unable to see a doctor in any case — because they were uninsured. In Kansas, anyone who is able-bodied but unemployed is not eligible for government-backed health insurance as is anyone earning more than 39% of federal poverty levels. That leaves a huge army of jobless and low-income working families who are left in limbo. “It’s the working poor who are most at disadvantage,” Lee says.

As a result, she sees the same pattern repeating itself over and over. People with no insurance avoid seeking medical help for fear of the bills that follow, until it is too late. “When people come in they are already very, very sick. They have avoided seeing the doctor thinking that something may clear up, hoping they may be getting better.”

Former health insurance executive Wendell Potter witnessed people in Wise County, Virginia, lining up to receive medical care in livestock stalls.

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He flew in corporate jets to industry meetings to plan how to block health reform, he says. He rode in limousines to confabs to concoct messaging to scare the public about reform. But in his heart, he began to have doubts as the business model for insurance evolved in recent years from spreading risk to dumping the risky.

Then in 2007 Mr. Potter attended a premiere of “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s excoriating film about the American health care system. Mr. Potter was taking notes so that he could prepare a propaganda counterblast — but he found himself agreeing with a great deal of the film.

A month later, Mr. Potter was back home in Tennessee, visiting his parents, and dropped in on a three-day charity program at a county fairgrounds to provide medical care for patients who could not afford doctors. Long lines of people were waiting in the rain, and patients were being examined and treated in public in stalls intended for livestock.

“It was a life-changing event to witness that,” he remembered. Increasingly, he found himself despising himself for helping block health reforms. “It sounds hokey, but I would look in the mirror and think, how did I get into this?”

Mr. Potter loved his office, his executive salary, his bonus, his stock options. “How can I walk away from a job that pays me so well?” he wondered. But at the age of 56, he announced his retirement and left Cigna last year.

This year, he went public with his concerns, testifying before a Senate committee investigating the insurance industry.

Potter’s testimony lays out what the people waiting outside the Forum in LA fairgrounds in Virginia are up against.

The people waiting outside St. John’s, outside the Forum Club, were majority black and Hispanic. The people waiting outside the Virginia fairgrounds were majority white, as are Dr. Lee’s patients in Kansas, and as are the majority of the uninsured. They waited at events more than 2,000 miles and two months apart from each other. Yet, as Boyarsky writes, they have much in common when it comes to health care and health care reform.

They are caught between rising unemployment and weak medical systems. But the even the limited health care reform legislation we’ve got right now will help them where the status quo is currently failing.

The bill would immediately benefit St. John’s Well Child and Family Center and more than 7,500 similar facilities around the country, which provide medical, dental, mental health, parenting instruction and other services to more than 17 million urban and rural poor. The centers are financed by a combination of government and nonprofit foundation funds, plus private donations.

The bill would provide the centers $700 million in the coming year, with annual appropriations eventually increasing to $2.9 billion, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers. The centers would also receive $1.5 billion over five years for construction and renovation.

Jim Mangia told me that the number of clinics around the country would double. St. John’s would get $11 million from the reform bill, permitting more treatment sites and a reduction or an end to lines. “We have to put clinics in the neighborhoods where people live,” Mangia told me. “It’s very difficult to put the kids on a bus and schlep across town.”

The reform bill would also extend Medicaid, the federal-state assistance program. A family of four earning about $30,000 a year would be eligible for Medicaid. This means they could go a doctor near their home, rather than to a distant clinic.

And, no, it’s not enough. Not nearly. That’s not just a progressive opinion, but a one shared by most Americans, who think the current reform legislation doesn’t go far enough.

No pollster, including me, could look at the recent data and responsibly say anything other than that the American public is closely divided when it comes to supporting or opposing various health-care plans. The most recent Washington Post poll (from Feb. 10) shows a narrow gap between support and opposition: 46 percent favor; 49 percent oppose. This data is consistent with eight of the 12 most recent independent public polls reported on Pollster.com.

In light of this data, it is irresponsible, and wrong, for Schoen and Caddell to assert that a “solid majority of Americans oppose” health-care reform.

In fact, two recent polls, including one with the most negative ratings on health care, reveal through follow-up questions that a significant number of people who oppose current plans do so because they don’t go far enough rather than because they go too far. Not only is it absurd to suggest that these people would rise up against Democrats for passing the president’s plan, it is far more likely that they would join others who support the plan and punish those who tried to block reform or voted against it.

There are a number of political reasons to support health care reform. There’s the slim chance that this congress would go back to the drawing board and come up with something better. There’s the likelihood that if this congress fails, the next congress may have fewer Democrats, and thus an even slimmer chance of taking up health care reform, and slim to no chance of passing legislation on any other progressive issues. Finally there’s the likelihood that if health care reform fails now, it fails for another 20 year.

The people waiting outside of St. John’s, outside the Forum, at the fairgrounds in Virginia, or at Dr. Lee’s clinic in Kansas don’t have another 20 years to wait. They will join the other 45,000 Americans who die annually because they lack health insurance.

What’s more, those of us who think we have the luxury of waiting for a better bill, are fooling ourselves. Even in the grips of the current crisis, if we still have jobs and we still have health care, we are easily lulled into buying the illusion of middle class security and independence.

In a consumer culture, where access to credit made it easy to own a house and car, while refinancing a mortgage could meet unexpected expenses, anyone with steady but limited income could join the middle class. The psychology of being in the middle class and the financial reality – or at least the appearance of it – were in tandem, as long as the US economy held up. Then the economy came crashing down. Being middle class is now a mental state only.

Those facing financial ruin can remain in a middle class frame of mind only by holding on to American values of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps”. This means not accepting hand-outs, and it in turn means seeing those that need and accept such help as usurpers. Besides, the moment one accepts help not as a temporary fix but as a permanent institution through government, the illusion of being middle-class collapses. Universal health care, or what remains of it in the public option, is an anathema to those middle class values.

Sure enough, today, less than half of us consider ourselves middle class anymore. That’s on illusion shattered. The economic crisis has brought home the economic reality that middle class status has been virtually hollowed out.

The average income for poll respondents who consider themselves middle class is about $55,000 a year. Self-described working class folks earn roughly $35,000, and those who think they’re well-off earn $95,000. “But income is far from the sole determinant of self-defined middle class status, likely because family size, expenses, local costs of living and other circumstances also come into it,” the poll notes. “Even among people with incomes under $25,000 a year, 41 percent describe themselves as middle class. So do 38 percent of those with household incomes over $100,000.”

…The Commerce Department produced a report in January for the Vice President’s Middle Class Task Force that objectively measured obstacles to attaining the middle class lifestyle. That report found that it’s more difficult to do than it used to be:

“While incomes for married-couple and single-parent families with two children have increased significantly, much of this rise occurred in the 1990s. In part, these increases occurred because parents are working more hours in order to maintain higher income levels,” the report said.

“Unfortunately, while incomes have risen, the prices for three large components of middle class expenses have increased faster than income: the cost of college, the cost of health care and the cost of a house. Thus, we conclude that it is harder to attain a middle class lifestyle now than it was in the recent past.”

The next illusion to be shattered for those of us who are “comfortably” middle class and employed is that we have health insurance. Really, we don’t have health insurance.

If, like most people, your health coverage is through your employer or your spouse’s employer, that is not what you have. At some point in the future, you will get sick and need expensive health care. What are some of the things that could happen between now and then?

• Your company could drop its health plan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (see Table HIA-1), the percentage of the population covered by employer-based health insurance has fallen every year since 2000, from 64.2% to 59.3%.*
• You could lose your job. I don’t think I need to tell anyone what the unemployment rate is these days.**
• You could voluntarily leave your job, for example because you have to move to take care of an elderly relative.
• You could get divorced from the spouse you depend on for health coverage.

For all of these reasons, you can’t count on your health insurer being there when you need it. That’s not insurance; that’s employer-subsidized health care for the duration of your employment.

Once you lose your employer-based coverage, for whatever reason, you’re in the individual market, where, you may be surprised to find, you have no right to affordable health insurance. An insurer can refuse to insure you or can charge you a premium you can’t afford because of your medical history. That’s the way a free market works: an insurer would be crazy to charge you less than the expected cost of your medical care (unless they can make it up on their healthy customers, which they can’t in the individual market).

Most of us are one layoff away from joining the line at St. John’s, the Forum, or the fairgrounds. The reality is that more of us will join the ranks of the underinsured if reform fails. For us, merely maintaining the status quo will mean a huge step backwards.

BUT I HAVE INSURANCE: While most Americans have insurance, many pay exorbitant rates because they have no bargaining power with insurers.

That includes many of the tens of millions who buy their own insurance — the unemployed, the self-employed, and those whose employers do not offer insurance. The recently announced plan by Anthem Blue Cross in California to raise annual premiums by 35 to 39 percent for nearly a quarter of its individual subscribers is a chilling harbinger of what is to come if reform fails.

There are another 48 million people who work in relatively small firms that often cannot get the better rates of large-group coverage. All of these groups should be able to get a better deal if they can buy their insurance through new, competitive exchanges.

If current trends continue, the number of underinsured Americans — those who have coverage too skimpy to pay substantial medical bills or protect them from high out-of-pocket spending — will also rise from an estimated 25 million in 2007 to 35 million in 2011, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a respected research organization.

That will increase the risk that this group will forgo needed care and will expose many more of them to potential bankruptcy if they cannot pay huge medical bills. Some 72 million adults currently have medical debt or problems paying their bills even though most of them have insurance. Reform would help them by setting minimum standards of coverage and providing subsidies to tens of millions of low- and middle-income people to help pay their premiums.

Or we’ll join the ranks of the uninsured.

BUT I LIKE MY INSURANCE: Most Americans get their insurance through large companies, with large group bargaining power. While they complain about premiums and paperwork, most seem satisfied with their coverage.

For them the real fear is what happens if they lose their jobs or decide to change jobs. Will they be shut out of coverage because of a pre-existing condition or forced to pay high rates to buy their own insurance?

For this group, the real advantage of reform is security. If they get laid off, decide to be self-employed or switch to a smaller employer that offers no insurance, they will still be guaranteed coverage — even if they are a cancer survivor or have heart trouble or any other pre-existing condition. And they will be able to buy insurance on the exchanges.

That reality is encapsulated by the story of of Dr. Lee’s patients, Dr. Joseph Manley. In the span of 11 years, he went from having his own practice, a home in the an affluent Kansas City neighborhood, and a Porsche every year, to an extremely different state, due to health problems that started with involuntary muscle movements and difficulty swallowing. In other words, just because he got sick.

Eventually his lack of motor control interfered with his work to the degree that he was forced to give up his practice. He fell instantly into a catch 22 that he had earlier seen entrap many of his own patients: no work, no health insurance, no treatment.

He remained uninsured and largely untreated for his progressively severe condition for the following 11 years. Blood tests that could have diagnosed him correctly were not done because he couldn’t afford the $200. Having lost his practice, he lost his mansion on the hill and now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in the suburbs. His Porsches have made way for bangers. Many times this erstwhile pillar of the medical establishment had to go without food in order to pay for basic medicines. In 2000 Manley finally found the help he needed, at a clinic in Kansas City that acts as a rare safety net for uninsured people. He was swiftly diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, a degenerative genetic illness, and now receives regular medical attention through the clinic.

It happened to Dr. Manley just as it has happened and will happen to many more of us who don’t have nearly as far to fall. Meanwhile, the safety net is fraying and full of holes. In some places it’s just completely gone. It won’t mend itself, and insurance companies won’t mend it, because they don’t profit by doing so.

The choice is simple. The reform legislation we have doesn’t far enough, but it’s a step in the right direction, as opposed to standing still or moving backwards. But a step in the right direction, however small, builds momentum for the next step forward. By some estimates, progressives made this reform a great deal better than it would have been had we not engaged. When this reform bill is signed into law, progressive should — and I have every reason to believe we will — start the fight to expand it even before the ink dries on President Obama’s signature.

We can either take a step in the right direction, or we can take a huge step back. Standing still is not an option.

Neither is waiting. Unless you in good conscience can go down to St. John’s or the next Remote Area Medical expedition and tell those people that they and their families are going to have to wait quite a bit longer — and unless you can stand to hear the same thing should you find yourself standing among them — you need to get behind health care reform.

For their sake, and all of ours.

So much for quiet dignity.

(With apologies to Abe Lincoln.)

The circus sideshow that was CPAC folded its tent and left Washington weeks ago. However, its apparent ringmaster and chief snake oil salesman still sweats, struts, and sobs across the “stage” of conservative media — that medicine show never stops rolling and never stops hawking its “solutions” to Americans who are in desperate need of something to ease their economic aches and pains, and heal their political maladies.

And like the medicine shows of old, Glenn Beck — and others like him — peddle magical “miracle cures” that either poison directly by filling the body politic with toxic bile, or indirectly by distracting us from actual solutions, and aren’t intended to “cure what ails us” so much as to make us think that we feel better even as the illness progresses. Case in point is Beck’s latest attack on the very idea of social justice.

Last week, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck called on Christians to leave their churches if they hear preaching about social or economic justice, saying they were code words for Communism and Nazism.

In attacking churches that espouse social justice, Mr. Beck is taking on most mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, black and Hispanic congregations in the country – not to mention plenty of evangelical churches and even his own, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Mr. Beck said on his radio show on March 2, “I beg you, look for the words ’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.”

“Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If I am going to Jeremiah Wright’s church,” he said, referring to President Obama’s former pastor in Chicago. “If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop.”

Perhaps it was inspired by churches and religious leaders having the temerity to stand up to him and confront his rhetoric this past December — having been offended by his use of Christian imagery and Christianity itself to promote a message they believed “outside Biblical narrative.” Still, Beck cleverly attacked what might be considered a political “buzzword” without defining it, except by employing other broadly-used and ill-defined buzzwords. So, it might help to start with what Beck neglected to provide.

“A More Humane World”

What exactly does social justice mean, anyway?

Social justice is the application of the concept of justice on a social scale.

The term “social justice” was coined by the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in the 1840s. The idea was elaborated by the moral theologian John A. Ryan, who initiated the concept of a living wage. Father Coughlin used the term in his publications in the 1930s and 40s, and the concept was further expanded upon by John Rawls’ writing in the 1990s. It is a part of Catholic social teaching and is one of the Four Pillars of the Green Party upheld by the worldwide green parties. Some tenets of social justice have been adopted by those on the left of the political spectrum.

Social justice is also a concept that some use to describe the movement towards a socially just world. In this context, social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality and involves a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution, policies aimed toward achieving that which developmental economists refer to as more equality of opportunity and equality of outcome than may currently exist in some societies or are available to some classes in a given society.

It other area’s of its site, NETWORK goes on to define ‘

That’s a definition from Wikipedia. But one that hits closer to home, and closer to Beck’s target, comes from NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby:

NETWORK envisions and works for a more humane world, one of justice and care for the common good. We act in solidarity with justice activists throughout the global community.

Our work is firmly rooted in our Catholic social justice tradition, which encompasses Scripture, Catholic Social Teaching and the lives of Jesus and people of faith who have followed the Gospel call to act for justice. We believe that faith has a public dimension. As the Church teaches us, “Every citizen… has the responsibility to work to secure justice and human rights through an organized social response.” Economic Justice for All , #120

In a democracy, the first step down the road of forming a just society is voting with a well-formed conscience. But that’s not the only step; this journey does not end at the ballot box.

The next — just as critical — part of the journey is to stay involved in the process, to work with our elected officials in order to hold them accountable. Policies and laws that support the common good should be maintained and strengthened. Policies and laws that tear at the fabric of our common good should be remediated or eliminated altogether. These actions are going to be hard for elected officials to accomplish in the face of pressure from special interest groups. That’s why elected officials need the continued support and involvement of Catholic voters throughout their terms in order to give them the political strength required to get the job done.

Network then goes on to us direct quotes from scripture and documents from the U.S. Catholic Bishops (I particularly like the use of Exodus 23:9 to support comprehensive immigration reform) to support its mission, which includes a laundry list of issues likely to set Beck off (again).

• Just and fair treatment for immigrants
• Affordable housing
• Healthcare for all
• Retirement security
• Food security
• Wage equity
• Peace in Iraq through economic development
• Fair and just global trade and responsible investment
• Fair and just taxation
• Investment in human needs domestically and globally

What’s more surprising — and likely infuriating — to Beck, a former Catholic, is that in its “Platform For the Common Good” (PDF) NETWORK puts social justice work into two categories: “Government Action Needed” and “Individual/Community Action Needed.” In other words, it recognizes that social injustices need to be addressed both by community/individual action and the government action.

And while Beck is now attempting to walk back from his previous remarks — telling his viewers that social justice “in which you empower yourself to go out and help the poor” is alright — he’s likely to trip over the tenets of both his former and current faiths. Mark Silk, a religious blogger, points out that even the Mormon church preaches the very kind of social justice that Beck (a Mormon convert) is telling people to “run away” from.

Not to belabor the point, but the Judeo-Christian tradition from which Beck’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints springs expects the poor to be provided for as a matter of public law. And indeed, in the days when the LDS Church ran its corner of North America as a theocracy, that’s just what it did.

In other words, churches and religious institutions already engage in and encourage congregants to work for social justice in their individual activities. My own mother, a devout Baptist, has been active in her church’s food bank for years — even running it for a period of time, as well as her church’s mentoring program for young women and young mothers, etc.

A great many churches have such ministries as a part of their work. But what organizations like NETWORK recognize, and Beck’s own church recognizes, is that there are matters of social justice that individual action or even community action cannot address effectively due to their limited scope and the scheer size of the problem. NETWORK’s “Platform for the Common Good” include some examples:

• Better regulate corporations and financial institutions; institute financial reform and transparency
• Enhance workers’ rights to join unions without fear of harassment and to negotiate first contracts within a reasonable time period
• Work to lessen income disparities and to reform tax policies that favor the wealthy and corporate interests
• Fund after-school programs, jobs for youth, and continuing education (GED, ESL) for adults
• Ensure that convenient, safe public transportation is available in all communities
• Address employment needs of groups with high unemployment
• End discrimination in all institutional forms

Either Beck and his ilk don’t believe that the above need to be addressed, or that there is no injustice in the conditions they are intended to address. Perhaps there is simply no injustice in Glenn Beck’s world, because nothing is an injustice. But at least some of Beck’s co-religionists believe there is.

The difference between Beck’s world, and the one that religious organizations that preach and practice social justice is as basic as the difference between right and left.

Neither Left Nor Right

The idea of social justice is the exclusive property of the left or the right, but another definition of social justice highlights a distinction between the two approaches to social justice — and ultimately underscores how Beck abandons both.

A general definition of social justice is hard to arrive at and even harder to implement. In essence, social justice is concerned with equal justice, not just in the courts, but in all aspects of society. This concept demands that people have equal rights and opportunities; everyone, from the poorest person on the margins of society to the wealthiest deserves an even playing field.

…The far left would argue that there are certain basic needs that must be offered to all. These include things like truly equal education and safety in all schools and programs that would help all children have the financial opportunity to attend college. Far left groups, often termed socialist even if they differ from true definitions of socialism, further argue that a just society cannot be had unless everyone has access to food, safe shelter and medical care. The way to achieve this is through taxation and government implementation of programs that will guarantee these things for all people.

The right political stance equally endorses a just society, but may criticize those who make poor choices and feel that while equal opportunity should exist, a government should not legislate for this. In fact it is argued that social justice is diminished when governments create programs to deal with it, especially when these programs call for greater taxation. Instead, those who have more money should be encouraged to be philanthropic, not by paying higher taxes, which is arguably unjust.

The distinction here is that on the right there is no way to ensure that action will be taken. For example, one may cut taxes and “hope for the best” — that charitable donations will increase and thus the need for social justice will be addressed without government action — but there is little that can be done if the increased income is, say, invested in derivatives or socked away in tax shelters instead. In other words, it only works if the everyone believes that we have some degree of responsibility to and for each other. It does not, however, jibe with the exalted pursuit of self-interest above all else.

On the left, government may act without having to wait for a individuals to take action in sufficient numbers to remedy the problems that need addressing — if indeed sufficient numbers of individuals ever do, that is. Government may also be more impartial and less discriminating in terms of who receives help, evaluating people on basis of need, whereas the right has recently displayed a nearly paralyzing concern that the “wrong people” might be helped, resulting in fewer people receiving needed help over all. (The debate over “moral hazards” and the mortgage relief debacle are one example.) In fact, on the right, it is a greater injustice for the government to take action, since it must do so with tax revenue.

On one hand, where there are issues of social justice that are beyond the scope of individual and community action, the government may act. On the other, where there are issues of social justice that are beyond the scope of individual and community action, they government may not act. And in Glenn Beck’s works, where there are issues of social justice that are beyond the scope of individual action, neither the government nor the community may act.

The difference is that between a world with the possibility of community and a world without community.

That’s the snake oil Glenn Beck and others like him are selling to an America suffering all the symptoms of financial crisis — blight, foreclosure, homelessness, hunger, joblessness.

That’s the poison that Beck and others are selling: that none of us is responsible to or for anyone else, and that we’ll get out of this crisis without having to be.   

It’s funny, and often fascinating, how so much can change in such a short time — and yet change so little. When our family arrived back home on Tuesday evening, we were the same family we were when we left home that afternoon.

Yet, as a family we experienced an important change when my husband and I — after being married in all but the legal sense for 10 years — were legally married to each other Tuesday afternoon.

The ceremony was brief and only attended by the media, a few friends, neighbors and supportive community members. It was a change from our family routine. The boys (briefly) exchanged their play clothes for the suits they wore for the ceremony. My husband and I talked to more reporters than we would on any other day. And instead of our usual family dinner at home, we celebrated with a dinner at a favorite restaurant.

Still, we were the same family upon returning home as we were when the day began, except for one important difference. When we left home, we had few of the same benefits and protections as the other families on our street — despite having happily assumed the same responsibilities. Thanks to D.C.’s City Council and Maryland’s state attorney general, when we returned home, we at least had equal rights and protections in Maryland — and in the community where we live.

Perhaps there is one more change to consider. We are as committed to one another now as we were before Tuesday, yet we’ve become a part of something too. Marriage is, to some degree, a community affair. Vows are usually made in front of others, whether a few witnesses or a room full of people. Sometimes the officiant asks those gathered if they will support the couple committing to each other and the commitment itself — even pledging in some cases to help them keep that commitment.

Committing to one another and our family connects us more deeply to our community. We chose to be responsible to and for each other, but we realize how vulnerable the people we love are, and how little we can do to protect them at times. So our commitment must extend beyond our front door, to the street where we live and where our children play, to the community — and world — we share with all other families. Being responsible to and for each other is, in a sense, the essence of community.

Making a public commitment to each other, and having that commitment recognized and supported in the same myriad ways our society supports other families, may not change our relationship to each other very much. But it changes our relationship to the community, because we’re included in a way we weren’t before. We are today, at least in D.C. and Maryland and a few more places.

So, Tuesday evening, we pulled into the same driveway, in front of the same house, in the same neighborhood. We did homework and bedtimes as usual. After the kids were asleep we loaded the dishwasher, folded the laundry and chatted about our day, just like any other day. I kissed my husband goodnight and finally retired myself a couple of hours later.

It was just like any other day, and unlike any other day. It was a day when very little changed, and everything changed.

It never ceases to amaze me how children just “get it,” unless they’re taught otherwise. On the day we got married, Parker had a half-day at school. Before he left, he said, he told his classmates that his parents were getting married. His classmates have met both the hubby and me, so they know what that means, and it doesn’t seem to be a big deal to them.

From the mouths of babes…

The hubby and I are participating in a Washington Post online chat about marriage in D.C., a1 t 1 p.m. today.  Come join in!

With the issuing of the first marriage licenses to same-sex couples Tuesday, the District follows five states — from Iowa to Massachusetts — in allowing gay couples to marry. Same-sex couples were first able to apply for licenses in the District last Wednesday but, like all couples, had to follow the city’s three-day waiting period before getting hitched.

Rick Imirowicz and Terrance Heath, who were married Tuesday, will be online Wednesday, March 10, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss the new law in the District and what it means to them and others in the GLBT community and the nation.