Confessions: I Changed My Birthday on Facebook

It's not that I mind getting older. In fact, for the most part, every year has been better than the last.

It's that my birthday is a reminder that another year has passed, and my home state still does not recognize my civil rights. I changed my registration today at the Secretary of State, and when I asked whether the fees to change my registration and license to my married name when SCOTUS rules that my rights have been violated for the last year and a half, I was told that I would have to pay the fees over again, just a few weeks after paying them. (Fees add up to about $100, which I could obviously use for many other, more worthwhile things.)

I thought about risking it and not doing my registration until the very end of the month. But I'm a law abiding citizen and that doesn't sit well with me. So I guess I can wait until SCOTUS finally gets around to doing its job and forces Michigan to recognize a marriage that Michigan has passed over for month after month.

So my birthday is a reminder that my marriage means less than the marriages of heterosexual couples. My life, my being, my rights mean less. Which means that, at least for a couple more weeks, my birth means less.

To what date did I change my birthday? To June 30, which is what I perceive to be the last possible day SCOTUS could finally do its job. If they rule against me, I suppose I can delete the date altogether, until the equivalent of Brown v. Board overturns what would be the modern equivalent of Plessy v. Ferguson.

If SCOTUS rules favorably, I think I will probably just change my voter ID so that my name is changed with the state, and then continue using my passport card for everything, including at my polling location. I'm not the one most inconvenienced by this - those who have to locate my birthday on a passport card and listen to the story of how my civil rights have been consistently violated are actually more inconvenienced. And at that point, the deluge of congratulations that I managed to get born and live another 28 years will feel less empty, I hope.