David Kanter | A wedding to give thanks for

A wedding, much like Thanksgiving, gives us one of those rare opportunities for everyone, friends and family alike, to come together and enjoy each other's company. As no small bonus, a wedding allows us to celebrate the time-honored traditions of union and love.

Spending months at a time away from family and friends here at school has, unsurprisingly, made me better appreciate every moment that I get to spend with them. But aside from Thanksgiving, days spent with a large group of family and friends are few and far between.

It came as a pleasant surprise, then, when this past summer I was invited to be in a wedding.

For this wedding, I was asked to carry one of the poles of the chuppah. Now, for the five or six gentiles out there in the Penn community who are reading this, you may be lost at this point. Don't worry. Having little-to-no knowledge about Judaism myself, it turns out that a chuppah is a canopy held over the couple as they are married in a Jewish wedding. Nevertheless, I still pictured Owen Wilson in Meet the Parents motioning to the wedding altar he carved by hand out of a solid block of wood, telling a helpless Ben Stiller, "I believe your people call it a 'chuppah.'"

All that aside, the wedding went off without a hitch and it turned out to be all that was promised. For starters, the setting was beautiful - the couple married overlooking a small bay on Cape Cod. Everyone in attendance, from young to old, seemed to have a great time. It really was like a Thanksgiving in August - we cracked jokes, told stories, became reacquainted with old friends and made new ones.

Now I'm not the sappy, sentimental type, but there's something powerful about a wedding. The celebration centers around the union of two individuals pledging to spend a lifetime together. Perhaps more than Thanksgiving itself, a wedding is the ultimate moment of giving thanks: We give thanks for those with whom we are able to spend a day in joyous celebration, but more importantly we give thanks and celebrate that two people have chosen to make a lifetime commitment to each other. In that sense, this wedding was no different than any other.

But this wedding just so happened to join two people of the same sex in marriage. And guess what? It was just as beautiful and powerful as any other ceremony I've ever seen. Two people simply pledged their love and commitment to each other, and friends and family were there to celebrate when all was said and done.

In Massachusetts, with legalized same-sex marriage, straight marriage remains as sacred as ever - same-sex marriage hasn't somehow corrupted the traditional union between a man and a woman.

Likewise, children aren't being perverted and corrupted, whatever that actually means. And families are still intact, still dealing with the ebb and flow of everyday life like they always have. If the experience of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts teaches us anything, it teaches us that there are no real detriments to allowing same-sex marriages, only benefits.

In light of the passage of Proposition 8 in California which bans same-sex marriage, I'm left a little confused. A state has denied part of its citizenry a fundamental right, but what has been gained? Nothing.

As we sit around our tables this Thanksgiving, most of us are lucky enough to have much to be thankful for. As my family gathers in Cape Cod, I'll be thankful that all residents have the right to marriage. It's a shame the same can no longer be said for California.

David Kanter is a College sophomore from East Falmouth, Mass. His e-mail is kanter@dailypennsylvanian.com. David vs. Goliath appears on Wednesdays.

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