PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao 0:00
In one month, I will celebrate my first wedding anniversary, and for a lot of my adulthood. That is not a phrase I imagine myself saying, not because I didn't see myself falling in love or wanting to commit to someone, but because I didn't know if I wanted to participate in the ritual of a wedding or even the institution of marriage. Marriage, is founded on some pretty problematic principles, particularly when it comes to gender equality, and the version of a wedding ceremony that I knew my dad wanted for me reinforced some of the inequities that turned me off marriage in the first place. So how did I get from that discomfort to planning, having and truly enjoying my wedding with a lot of introspection, some hard conversations and the help of a talented officiant. This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao, far fewer Americans are opting into marriage now than in decades past. The marriage rate has dropped nearly 60% in the past 50 years, but people are still getting married, and some of them, like me, are trying to do so in a way that reimagines what marriage means and what a wedding can be. When I came across the website of Raja Gopal Bhattar, I knew quickly that if anyone was up to this task, it was them. After initially meeting them and hearing about their philosophy, I introduced them to my dad, and here's how he felt.
Dr. Satish Rao 1:33
I had to do a lot of soul searching to think, are we really departing from the main goal of this wedding, or does this still retain the essence? Initially, I had significant disagreements, but when I thought through a little bit, it did became clear to me that although this is a departure, the core elements are all very much embedded in here. But how we got to the main elements, clearly, was challenging.
Anita Rao 2:02
I'll bring you back to the conversation with my dad at the end of the show. But first we're going to talk about what modern wedding ceremonies look like, how they incorporate multiple faiths, cultures and queerness, and why marriage ceremonies are changing as our relationship to marriage shifts. And we'll start all of that by introducing Raja Gopal Bhattar, an officiant who specializes in LGBTQ and progressive Hindu dharmic weddings. Raja, welcome to embodied.
Raja Gopal Bhattar 2:30
Thank you. Anita. I'm so excited to be here and be a part of this conversation today.
Anita Rao 2:34
So I spent hours and days searching the internet to figure out if it was even possible to find an officiant who was schooled in Hindu customs and traditions but committed to reimagining them in a modern context. And I remember the joy and utter relief I felt when I came across your your work and your website. And I would love to start by reflecting on that first conversation we had over zoom you, me and my partner John gathered, and we gave you this really big question that I know a lot of couples give you, which is, is it even possible to modernize a ceremony that is so steeped in tradition? How do you answer that question?
Raja Gopal Bhattar 3:12
Yeah, you know, when we're thinking about a 4500 year old set of rituals, right? It feels like it's so immutable, because tradition and history means like, you don't change things. And I think it took me a while to get there too, because I grew up in a temple for most of my life in a very traditional South Indian, conservative family that felt like I remember my grandfather actually yelling at people at their wedding because they weren't doing the rituals properly. You know, that's what I grew up with. And then to feel like, wait a minute, that's not what relationships are about. That's not what our traditions are about. And really, if you look at the heart of why we do things, each ritual of the ceremony is not just something you just do to say you're married, but actually each ritual teaches you a value about what and how you will live your relationship together, and we often miss that, because most people just see just do it and you're done. And so going back to the why we do, think has been really transformative for me to understand, oh, this is not just something that you do, but like, actually, these are dialogs that you get to engage with, because part of tradition means you get to actually have a relationship with it. And that's, I think, unique about our tradition. That's why I think this works in the way we think about it, particularly within a diasporic, interfaith, intercultural and global world.
Anita Rao 4:22
So one of the things you say in there is really at the heart of why I think you're so gifted in this work, is because you are really a bridge between folks of different generations. And I know that as an immigrant kid growing up, I see how important these traditions are to my dad, and I see how much he wants us to understand them and really grasp the meaning and be able to carry them on, and how much you know, sharing that with us as a part of sharing his history. And so I don't want to lose that. I don't want to not honor that. But as I was thinking about my ceremony, I was like, I just don't know how to do that and be true to myself, to my partnership, to the ways. At, you know, the values that we want. And so you are then invited in to the moment where I'm sitting in one one, zoom box my dad is sitting in another. Like, how do you prepare for and approach these first conversations that are bringing in this big generational difference in how we're thinking about tradition?
Raja Gopal Bhattar 5:17
Yeah, partly what I do is I first start with a couple, and I think you remember, with your call, I say, What is your vision for the ceremony? And then I go to like, here's what I often offer, here's what's possible, here's what's not possible, here's some typical iterations of what the different rituals and origins look like. And then I give you both homework, right? Then I say, go talk to each other. Go talk to your family, so that you have some shared language. And then we bring the parents in, right? I think then we have a conversation. I had a family a few weeks ago who really wanted a traditional ritual where it was a Hindu, Jewish couple. Then the couple prepared me that, like, you know, my mother's having a really hard time with this. And on the call, the mother was actually crying because she wanted to have the very traditional giving me of the bride, where the bride sits on the father's lap and, you know, is given away to her husband. The bride was like, I don't want that. Okay, let's talk about it. Let's, let's, and so making space for both the mom to cry and also to be able to reiterate, like the rituals can look different in different places, and that's actually okay, because partially what it means to be in the diaspora is we get to reimagine our practices and traditions, and that's what it means to be in the world that we are in today.
Anita Rao 6:24
I love to talk through some of the specific traditions that we reimagined in our ceremony and our version of the crying on the Zoom call was a corrected Word document that my dad said that took everything that you had done and put red ink all over it. And I was like, Sure, here, Raja, Help, please. So...
Raja Gopal Bhattar 6:42
And I love that right for me again, for me, that means that people, they care, right? If the parents didn't get their say, We'll do whatever you are. We'll just show up these abilities to kind of uphold tradition, whatever that means to us, and whatever that looks like is a way to feel like we're they're doing right by you, but also their ancestry, and to feel like we're there being the bridge, to make sure the tradition don't get lost in the oceans in between South Asia and the US.
Anita Rao 7:08
So the moment that you were talking about, or the part of the tradition you were talking about working on with that couple, the giving away of the bride in the region of India that my family is from, the way that I've always seen that done is the bride comes in, and there's a symbolic curtain put between the bride and the groom, and they don't see each other until this particular moment in the ceremony, and before that, the father is kind of giving away the daughter to the husband. And there were a lot of parts of that that made me uncomfortable. I didn't understand why we were doing like pretending people hadn't seen each other who knew each other, and I just didn't, I didn't like this, the symbolism of that. And so you offered us a reframe that involved both sides of the family and made them both part of a of the giving away and of the accepting. Can you walk me through this reframe?
Raja Gopal Bhattar 7:55
Yeah, I know for me again, I, like you said, the tradition version is that you would not have seen each other until the day of the ceremony and until after, particularly in the Telugu tradition, the jilakara bellam, which is the cumin and brown sugar mixture, that's actually you put on each other's head before even the curtain drops. So you've kind of already committed yourself before you even get to see who's on the other side of the curtain. It's like the old version of love is blind in some ways, right? Exactly, yeah. But I think for me, the reframe, like, because the one I thought about, and I've, like, I've studied over 200 different types of Hindu rituals around weddings around the world. And, like, I was like, why the curtain? What does this actually mean? And so for me, at least, when the curtain is there and the curtain drops, it says that it's like, if you were to have two different types of liquids in a bowl and you had a little partition, but once you remove the partition, it goes together. It becomes one on unchangeable mixture of things, right? It's less about the fact that, like, Oh, now you get to see each other, but it's more of now you actually there is no separation between you and me, and me and you. We are now one unit. We're now one love. And the spiritual meaning is that it allows us to say, from this moment, maybe we always find the joy in each other and know that we are one unit together, inseparable from this moment. And that's a much more powerful argument that both aligns with our what the value is of our tradition, but also where it comes from and what it aligns within a more modern interpretation.
Anita Rao 9:16
I love that explanation of it, and I think that separation of you know what the spiritual significance is and what the historical significance is, is so important in another place that you really brought that in was to the piece about wedding games. So my dad really wanted us to have wedding games in our ceremony. They were part of my sister's ceremony. And there are a couple of different kind of gamified elements. One is like, you put two rings in water, and the person who gets the ring is the dominant partner in the marriage. Another is this kind of like orchestrated moment where the groom runs away and then the brother of the bride has to go get him and convince him to come back and marry his sister. And I wasn't trying to be a fun killer at which my dad was like, these are just these are just fun. And I was like, I they feel. Icky to me. So can you talk about the significance of updating those pieces?
Raja Gopal Bhattar 10:05
Yeah, and again. I mean, they seem fun, but they're not just fun, right? They actually have deep meanings to all of them, and at some point may have made sense. I think about in the olden days, the families would have not known each other. They might even been from different villages, even different districts or places where you just don't even know who the other person is. And so the whole point of these icebreakers are to help the couple start to know each other, right? And so again, the intention beautiful, the impact that actually doesn't set up for a more equitable, more celebratory relationship. And so from that moment, if we shift to say, these games are meant to help us get to know each other, and so we can celebrate the intention of building community, right, and building playfulness. So I go to the part around life is also a game, because we talk about this whole thing that we call life is God's game. We're just kind of parts in it. Just take everything as you would a game. So don't take anything too seriously, and now you have a partner who can do that with for the rest of your lives together, and at the same time also removing some of the elements that feel like, as you said, icky and so being would actually ask some of those critical questions. I think so many folks do rituals because we're just supposed to do them, because that's what we've always done, without actually having to say, why do we do this? What does this actually mean, and is this actually still relevant to the world that I envision, the world that I want to live in, and the world that I cultivate for the future generations that come after me?
Anita Rao 11:33
My journey with Raja as an officiant really all started because I didn't want to completely throw out the rituals and traditions of a Hindu ceremony. But for some folks, starting from scratch is in fact, the best and most aligned option. In just a moment, we're going to meet an officiant who helps people do that, building on expertise as a comedian and a queer ex none. Stay with us.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao. Wedding ceremonies have been around for 1000s of years, and there are as many takes on the ritual as there are people who engage in it. In the past few decades, legal wins and demographic shifts have led to a surge in same sex, interracial and interfaith marriages. Today, we are lifting the veil on designing a wedding ceremony that matches a couple's values and identities. We took a deep dive into how my partner and I brought gender equity to age old Hindu traditions, and now we're going to get more into what reimagining a marriage ceremony can look like across a broader spectrum. And to do that, I'd like to introduce Kelli Dunham. Kelli is a comedian and a nurse, as well as a decidedly non traditional, non heterosexual wedding officiant. Hey, Kelli, welcome to Embodied.
Kelli Dunham 12:51
Thanks. Thanks so much for having me.
Anita Rao 12:53
So Kelli there are so many reasons why folks want to reimagine a marriage ceremony. I shared some of mine, but understanding this why for couples is an important part of your process as an officiant. So can you tell me a little bit about the range of responses you've gotten when you ask folks why they're doing this?
Kelli Dunham 13:14
Sure. Well, for one thing, if folks are asking me, they are, you know, it's not that they're trying. I've really enjoyed your conversation, your all's conversation, and it's so different than most time people are coming to me with the idea like, what from this dumpster fire? Anything can we pick up? Right? Or we're just going to build it from scratch, because it is, in fact, a dumpster fire, and that's possibly because mostly I'm doing Christian or christianist or Christian backgrounded. And you know, the church, Christian Church, has kind of been at war on queer people for, you know, about 2000 years. So that's part of it. And so people come, I would say that if people are asking me and I got into the wedding game from the funeral game, I'm pretty good with a funeral, I must say. So people started saying, like, aren't you, like, you're kind of like, queer secular clergy. And I was like, oh, okay, I guess I am. And then people started asking me, and I started saying, okay, but most of the time when people are coming to me, it's not like a lifelong like, Oh, I'm pictured myself in a white dress. It's often has a little bit of utilitarianism to it, like we don't even believe in marriage, but this is, this is what we fought for, great and there's a utilitarianist to it, health insurance, supportive, family, sometimes, to have a big party, to acknowledge their place in the community, you know. So there's all sorts of different reasons, and what I try to do is help people find a way that they can create something that means what they want it to mean.
Anita Rao 14:50
You mentioned incorporating the value of community, and I know one of the very first weddings that you officiated was for a friend of yours who really wanted to design some rich. Walls around that incorporation of the community. Can you tell us a little bit about how you all did that during the ceremony?
Kelli Dunham 15:07
It was actually really amazing. We had so the partners wrote vows to the community. You know, I will continue to fight the one person had been working a lot in trying to make New York City unhoused shelters more equitable, especially for trans people. So their vow was, I will continue this fight for all of us, not just people in this room, right? So that was example of one vow to the community, and then people had written vows to them as well. Like, I vow if you all have a fight, that you can come over to my house for dinner and I won't take sides.
Anita Rao 15:48
I love that that's amazing.
Kelli Dunham 15:50
Which really is what we need. I mean, if you're thinking about, like, why are we having a wedding? I don't know. Like, you could just get married in a room somewhere, but if we're gonna take all this time and money and, you know, whatever, to make it happen. Then why are we doing it in front of people? And it's to involve the community, right? So people had both pre written vows, the, you know, the folks who were getting married, and also the community, but then also people did spontaneous community vows, and that was the part where everyone just started crying. My nephew, who was maybe 17 at the time, just happened to be in the visiting me, and I look over and he's just got his hands in his face, and he's sobbing. And I was like, Hey, dude, what's like after what's going on? And he's like, I just hope that when I grow up, I have people who love me like this.
Anita Rao 16:41
That's so beautiful. And I think you're, you're making such a good point about the value of being seen by other people in your partnership. And I know that you you have a complicated faith story yourself. You were raised Evangelical, you converted to Catholicism, you spent time as a nun. Now you describe yourself as a queer secular clergy. So how do you describe your your philosophical and spiritual orientation to conducting a marriage ceremony?
Kelli Dunham 17:11
Well, I mean, I feel like it's providing a surface to a community I love, and I have done non queer weddings, but they've mostly been like polyamorous or they had another aspect, that people were kind of starting from scratch, and they wanted somebody who could help them start from scratch. And that's one of the things, is that I'm able to incorporate, like, often people don't have any idea what they so I'm like, Okay, well, you do have rituals in your life. Think about, what do you do every Friday? And, for example, one one couple said, Oh, well, we hosted dinner, like a potluck with our friends. I was like, Do you like that? Is that your ritual? And they're like, yeah, that is ritual. So we inserted that into the ceremony, right? So taking things that are already in their lives and making a tradition that means something to them, that's that's very, very meaningful to me, and it's fun. And also, you know, excellent comedy fodder. I have to say, I try not to, you know, I try to change all the details. But, you know, queer weddings are hilarious.
Anita Rao 18:11
We're going to get more into your comedy in a little bit, but I want to bring Raja Gopal Bhattar back into the conversation to talk about this kind of when you are starting from the ground up with people. You do Hindu weddings, like we talked about, but you also do interfaith weddings. You do weddings that are more secular. And you had a secular ceremony that you did for a college friend of yours who didn't really want a lot of religion in the ceremony, but wanted the cultural ties there. What were some of the things that you did to bring that piece in.
Raja Gopal Bhattar 18:42
Yeah, so one, my one friend, grew up in a Catholic family, Irish Catholic family, or, sorry, telling Catholic family, but didn't really identify as religious, but felt that the spirit was important. And then his now wife grew up in a Jewish family, but again, culturally identified as Jewish, but didn't really feel like the rituals made sense. And so we were talking about Wednesday one night when I was visiting them, they're like, Wow, I think we want you to officiate our marriage. Like, oh, okay, sure. And so it's fun to be able to be like a Hindu Buddhist practitioner officiating a secular, non religious wedding with someone that grew up in a Catholic family and a Jewish family, and we talked about, we talked about divinity. We didn't even say God, I think, you know, we said, because I was like, again, for them, they're like, you know, we we believe there's something there, and we believe that love and what we do is important, and not just like what we believe that there's some god or some person out there telling us to do something. I was like, that's beautiful. So love for me, you know, is truth which is divine. And so therefore love equals God or divine. And so we talked about love being the form of the Divine, the Divinity present in our world. And it was just such a beautiful it was probably the shortest service ever. It was 17 minutes long because it was just such a very different tradition than like Muslim, Hindu or interfaith ceremonies that I do so. But again, we started talking about, I started talking about, like, what is love? And so I gave, I gave a quote about love. Then I talked about, like, why we're all gathered here today, and what, what the couple is hoping to celebrate. We had a couple of readings by different folks that they had chosen around. We had a poem by Rumi. We had a poem by a couple other folks that, again, had talked about love as this grand thing that's beyond our time and space, and yet also something that can be really felt between a person and another person, because they choose to do so. And that that ability to kind of find the divinity in this daily, practical sense of, I choose to love you, and in that that is, that is an act of love, that is an act of divinity, which just felt really beautiful.
Anita Rao 20:42
I love that. And that reminds me, Kelly, of something that I have read about in your work, which is that there are some couples that you work with who are saying that, you know, love is about us, but it's also not just about two people. If we are in a polyamorous relationship, we want to redefine and reimagine how we're committing to each other that includes acknowledgement of other people. So can you talk to me about a ritual that you've seen included in a wedding that acknowledges a poly relationship and in a different way of talking about love and partnership?
Kelli Dunham 21:16
Sure. Well, usually what I see is people getting away from that language of to become one, and that is often because people feel like, I'm not becoming one. Sorry, I'm just not. There's a an aversion to that, just kind of on the face of it. But then I, you know, in a joking way, kind of say we're all polyamorous, you know, like, like, for example, my sister at her second wedding had her kids stand up for her, right? And that doesn't make her polyamorous, obviously, but what it reminds us is that when people get married, it impacts a lot more people than just them, right? So I've done polyamorous ceremonies where similarly the each person had another partner, and they stood up for them. And that takes a lot of negotiation. That takes a lot of maybe dealing with jealousy, because it's not, you know, polyamory doesn't make you not jealous. It makes you have to talk about jealousy forever, you know. So these require a lot of really, like a delicate touch with everyone, really listening to each other. And one of the things that ends up being most beautiful about that is the promises that the two marriage D people make to each other are very specific. You know, this is what I'm vowing to you. This is what I'm promising to you. And I think that's really beautiful. And I think that's, you know, going into even the whole till death do us part thing like, oh, man, come on, that's so much pressure for people. And you know, my sister, my sister's become the subject of my conversation today. But when her marriage of 12 years died, you know, she sometimes would say, like, Oh, my failed marriage. And I was like, Beth, you have two lovely kids. You ended more or less Amy Copeley, if you had been born in 1904 you would have both been dead from tuberculosis. Don't make improvements in public health make you feel bad about your relationships, you know. So I've even had folks say we are taking this vow for eight years or nine years or 10 years, or until it becomes, you know, we have a discussion and we decide, oh, this is actually bad for us. And we all know couples who should have vowed to stop being married when it got really bad, right? So I think that there's something really beautiful. And also, every time I'm at a wedding where people are saying, till death, do us part, I can see the divorced people, which is, you know, so what? 60% of us just kind of squirming in their seats because it's just, it's, it's a completely different situation now than when that, you know, ideal was created. Yeah, and I'm not saying I'm against long term partnerships, or that the people I marry aren't interested in long term partnerships, but what they are interested in is being the best partner they can be. And you don't always want the same thing when you're 49 as you do when you're 29.
Anita Rao 24:20
I want to put this question of language to you, Raja with a slight twist, Kelli is talking about some of the phrases that are often used in ceremonies, like till death do us part. Or, you know, the two become one. And you work with a lot of LGBTQ couples who have felt like they aren't a part of what a Hindu marriage can look like, or even interfaith LGBTQ couple. So what are some examples of language that you have helped shift for yourself and for them to feel like they are in this ceremony, the ceremony can be for them.
Raja Gopal Bhattar 24:56
Yeah, no, and I love what Kelli said, because I think it is about two. Communities, not just two people, and we talk about that a lot in every hindu wedding, which why so many people are involved in the rituals. Because it really is about, what did the commitments that you make to each other, and how will the folks that are around you contribute to being part of that relationship success as you move forward and so often for the couple, I will say, you know, in Hindu tradition, we talk about weddings as being like you're creating a cultivating a garden. So today you plant a seed in the garden that is going to be your life together, and the people that are around you that you've chosen to be here today are part of the foundation and the the energy that will support and foster that tree to become successful and deeply rooted so it can grow and be feel nourished by all the love that you have. And then I think often, when we think about interfaith rituals, there's often, you know, depends on what the interfaith coupling is, if you will. So I think with often Hindu Jewish way, it's actually much easier, because there's so many rituals that look the same. Because in Hindu tradition, we do this often pretty North Indian folks through the seven circles around the fire, or in South Indian tradition, the seven steps or the seven vows. And in Jewish tradition, the couple, when they come through, they do the seven circles around each other. So some of those pieces that like seem to somehow help them understand, like there's a shared understanding of what the values are for them and how these traditions are mimicked in different tradition, whereas for like Hindu Christian folks, we talk about, again, God and spirit and the guidances that are available. Some of the other language I try to use is often thinking about when we when we do the rituals. At the very beginning, there's a sankalpam where we invoke the various gods and goddesses into the presence of space to say these are while. And I do usually make some type of simple joke about while you all are important to this couple in this lifetime, because Hindu weddings are for about seven lifetime. We want spirits that are beyond time and space to be witness to them. And so I did a Hindu Catholic wedding about a year ago where the Catholics out of the family was like a Mexican Catholic, the Guadalupe was really important to them at a family saint, and so we had images of the saint and the the Mother Mary on the altar. Like, wow. How is that possible? I was like, Well, we are the the folks that said a comes at vibrant which was like, there's one truth, but the the wise see it in many forms. So we honor anything that is divine, that's going to help us in life. We welcome into this space, and I usually will say something like we do when we invoke the sarva devata, and we say any and every god and spirit that's here to guide us, you are welcome. Whether it's known or unknown, or any known or unknown ancestors, you're welcome as well. So really, kind of shifting some of the language to say, here's the God that we need to do XYZ, to say, no, actually, here's a spirit that we want to welcome. And what are the things that are important to you, and how much time do you energy do you want to invoke to that? And why is that important to you? If I can also bring up, and I had a couple, a couple of months ago, say, we want the Hindu wedding, but we don't want any of the god stuff. And I was like, Okay, tell me more. Like we want to walk around the fire. We want to do. I was like, Okay, well, what does the fire mean to you? It's just a fire. And it's like, well, it's not just a fire. It's actually has a meaning to it. So, you know, I think, you know, it's been interesting as I do more and more weddings. It's given me clarity on my own kind of negotiables and non negotiables, which I'm pretty flexible, right? If you remember, in my conversations, of like, I'm pretty open to asking and questioning all the rituals that we do and why, but if you're doing it, just to say you did it, that feels inauthentic to me. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm and I'm not going to be I won't feel comfortable feeling like just to say you walk around the fire when you're not willing to understand why the fire is an important symbol for what you know, again, in Hindu tradition, it's the we give it the name of a god named Agni, which is the first word of the Rig Veda, the oldest of four VEDA. So again, we invoke our ancestors by saying Agni, rather than just saying it's a fire. But also, more importantly, the fire is because a fire is about light and wisdom. And to say these vows that we make to each other in the presence of the fire light the way for our lives together, right? May we always have wisdom and light because of our not in spite of our relationship. That's and to say, well, we'll just walk around the fire and we're done. That feels like, actually, it's kind of the other end of the Orthodox argument where we just do stuff for the sake of doing because we're supposed to to. We just do it because it looks good on on video or photos, but we don't really care what it means. And that's an interesting challenge to hold.
Anita Rao 29:17
Kelli, I'm curious if that has come up for you, like a time when, when someone has asked you to officiate, where you felt like that might not be being true to yourself and your values, to conduct a ceremony in that way
Kelli Dunham 29:31
I haven't had, I mean, that is so beautiful and such. I'm really feel privileged to be a part of this conversation, you know, things that don't always impact my life. But yeah, that's thank you for sharing that. Hersha, it made me actually think of a wedding I did on the beach where it was there was a bunch of Lesbian Avengers, and they did the eating fire ritual. And while the fire will not consume us, we take it, make it our own. It's a little different, very different, slightly different. Take. And fire also involved fire and also was very meaningful to them. I'm not, you know, ancient tradition, very, you know, important versus worse, eating fire. It's a like in that it both involves fire. I will just say that. But I've never really had anyone like, Oh, would you do communion or something like that? Like, I've never had anyone ask me something that I felt like would be disrespectful to either some faith that I'm no longer a part of, or, I don't know, what is more common is that I have, you know, a nice, round, mid Midwestern face, and like, you know, Kate Clinton calls herself the Eddie Haskell of lesbians. I'm pretty good. I'm kind of an Eddie Haskell, you know, I'm very good with parents. And so often parents will come to me and be like, do you think you could convince them to do this? And that feels extremely uncomfortable. And also, I know that if a parent gets a little bit of something they want, sometimes they'll be able to participate more fully, and the really be able to celebrate the both the relationship, and see that their person, their kid, their adult kid, is embraced by community. And that is really something that means something to parents, even if they don't understand.
Anita Rao 31:25
Officiants like Kelli and Raja can really identify the potential in every wedding ceremony, but I keep coming back to this statistic about how fewer people are getting married now, and I wonder what it means for the future of marriage as an institution. Should we keep fighting for everyone to have legal rights to it or fight for something else? We're gonna get to that just after this break.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao, a wedding is about so much more than the physical rituals that play out over the minutes or hours of the ceremony. It's about the community that is present, the contemplation of love and family and the building of a solid foundation. We've heard so many examples in this conversation of how people are reimagining traditions to align their wedding ceremony with their values. Because even as marriage rates are declining, many of us are still turning to marriage and wedding ceremonies as a source of meaning. But why this question is particularly poignant for the wedding officiants who guide the physical and emotional journey of these ceremonies, two of whom I'm talking with today, Kelly Dunham and Raja Gopal butter. So Kelly, I'm gonna quote your mom, who observed that you talk like you don't even believe in marriage. So why is officiating important to you? Even as you really question the idea of marriage?
Kelli Dunham 32:53
Officiating is important because I do know that a community needs a certain number of long term relationships. It strengthens the entire community. And also, I mean, I remember when we were fighting for gay marriage a I never thought we would get it, and then we got it, and changed everyone's perception of us. There are ways that people changed their attitudes towards us once they saw us getting married. That's unfortunate, but it is, in fact, true, even though that maybe wouldn't have been what I fought for, I can really see how it has helped LGBT people not be so discriminated against, like by the church and that kind of thing. And also for my personal you know, I lost, lost two partners in a row to cancer, both at age 38 don't stand next to me in a lightning storm, but my partner, Cheryl, died before gay marriage even became legal in New York, and because of that, now I did have a health proxy form. They did make care that. So I got to make the most important decision, which was when, when she was ready to be done with life support, and I was able to sign a DNR, but we were not married. Her mom came in. I didn't get a single tablespoon of her ashes. You know, her ashes are sitting on her mom's counter in suburban New Jersey, which is exactly where Cheryl would not have wanted her ashes. And also, her mom got her apartment. I had to move out of the apartment. So there is some real I mean, there is something to be said for marriage, protecting relationships, not perfectly. And also like, how is it protecting polyamorous relationships? You know, and families can still come against it, but you know, that was something pretty simple that would have made a huge difference for me. And I wouldn't have had just I wouldn't have had as many logistical problems after Cheryl died, to add to the emotional devastation.
Anita Rao 34:43
You're pointing to so much in that answer, which is that, you know, the legalization of marriage for LGBTQ folks has been huge, but marriage as an institution still does leave so many people out. We talked really recently on our show. About how, for some disabled couples, a legal marriage can mean losing necessary health benefits that you get when you become partnered. So I'm curious to put this question to you, Raja of, what should we be fighting for when it comes to marriage? Like, should we keep fighting for everyone to have the rights and benefits constituted by marriage? Or should we be focusing our energies elsewhere, given the complications of what this institution is and has been.
Raja Gopal Bhattar 35:27
Yeah. I mean, I so agree with what Kelly said earlier about and again, people often ask me, Are you married or do you want to get me? I'm like, I'm not really sure, but I love marriage and I get I love being able to celebrate love, because I think there's something about being able to make our commitments vocal that is not about fear. I think so often, if you do something in secret, it's often because you're ashamed of it or you're afraid of what's going to happen. So the ability to express your love for someone that you choose to be with and not be forced to be with, right? I mean, something that's very different than a couple 100 years ago, and to be able to also create also create rituals and traditions that seem new, but I tell people I'm like, when I was on a panel a couple of years ago, they were like, what does it feel like to create all these rituals? And I'm not creating anything. I'm simply reclaiming what has been my tradition from the very beginning, because there have been queer people in my tradition from the very beginning, right, particularly when we talk about Agni, the fire god. One of the stories I love to say is that Agni, in the same chapter that he's introduced, is also called dhui Matha, the child of two mothers. And what else can we think of besides queer parenting in that and so queerness has always been there. And I think your question around, what can we do with these systems of power? I think so much of the ways that heteronormative weddings, even within queer spaces, are required is because, as Kelly said, we have so many legal protections that are based on that. And often, for many people are beneficial, but for me, people can also be really detrimental, and so challenging capitalism and challenging the system that tell us that relationships, the way we honor relationships looks like XYZ that still comes from a very puritanical, colonial Christian framework. And so the fact that we live in 2024 that doesn't look the same, and yet we still use those same frameworks. So if the baseline itself is screwed up, and I'm always being compared to the baseline, I'm never going to meet whatever is needed to be, quote, unquote normal to be able to get the basic access to resources and services that I deserve simply because I'm human, not because I meet a pretty good cultural, social, political standard.
Anita Rao 37:29
Yeah, there's so much creativity that has to happen in the face of a lack of access. And there's so much creativity that has always happened in the queer community when they've been excluded from marriage rights in the past, now that there is access, but maybe not, to all configurations of relationships. So Kelly, I'm curious to hear you reflect on this creativity and some of the ways that you find kind of hope in how you're seeing folks in your community reimagine this institution.
Kelli Dunham 38:01
Yeah, I mean, you know, as a non binary person who's regularly mistaken for a man, then a woman, then a man, then a woman, I have experiences of sexism that, you know, 12 in a day that inform feminist conversations, right? Because I have that experience. So I feel like as a non binary person, I have a lot to give to this conversation, right? We have a lot to give to the greater culture. And I feel the same way about queer people like this could be, you know, the way we do. You know, queers are very good at doing caregiving in groups. You know, that that can also be our gift. You know, don't just don't see us as the problem. We're actually part of the solution. And also I would say another really important thing, and maybe this is just as a single person myself, it's important to remember, like, when people say, like, Oh, are you alone? I was like, how am I alone? I am surrounded by people who love me. I mean, there's not somebody sleeping, you know, beside me every night, but I am in no way alone. I wonder about just finding ways to include single people in, you know, in vacation sometime. You know, that's just like a silly little example. But that being single is, in fact, a relationship configuration. It doesn't just, it's not just about lack I feel like, not just systematically excluding those folks from all these kind of rituals, but finding ways to really incorporate them. I feel like, as queers, that's something we could definitely do better. And I feel like, even as we do it, even as we find ways to like, you know, be caregivers for people who maybe don't have a partner or that is something we have to give to the greater culture.
Anita Rao 39:45
I want to highlight something that you said that I think, Raja, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on, which is just the value of showing up and being visible as a gender queer person in these. Spaces. I know for you, you're in a lot of traditional Hindu spaces, and you know, bring your your full self. Can you talk about how that feels at this point in your life?
Raja Gopal Bhattar 40:11
Yeah, the first couple of years was really frustrating when I get misgendered all the time, particularly by parents or uncles and aunties, and again, not ill will, but just ill aware. And I think I had to get to a point where I was like, Okay, why? Why am I here? Do I just stop doing these weddings, particularly with straight couples, when what I'm doing is really meaningful and powerful, and yet I'm often feeling not acknowledged for who I am. And yet, getting to a point I was like, you know, for me right now, it's really important that, as a queer person, I take up space. It's important for me to make sure, like as I'm showing up in these spaces, I'm wearing really fancy earrings, I'm wearing some nail polish and things that feel like I'm expressing myself still in a respectful way, because also, at the end of the day, I'm here to make sure the couple has a meaningful ceremony that affirms their love for each other. And so I've had to develop somewhat of a thicker skin, and often I'll continue to remind people my pronouns, are they them? And I'll usually say that my introduction. And at the same time, I think as people ask about, oh, are you married? Do you have children? Do you have a wife? I'll say, No, I should have a partner, and he is. And so being aware of speaking about my partner or partners and talking about gender identity, I think that actually has been really powerful, because it often makes people a little uncomfortable, but it's a good uncomfortable, because also challenged, even in that space of particularly when I'm doing interfaith heteronormative rituals, there's already so much incongruency for a lot of these more traditional folks that adding a little bit more is actually really helpful, because they're leaving thinking about something maybe different than they expected, and often it's fascinating to see how they react to me before the ceremony, there's a little bit of skepticism about who is this person. Is this really authentic or legitimate? At the end of the ceremony, where they'll come say, Oh, that was a beautiful ceremony. I learned so much that I didn't even know what we did the mother I told you about earlier in the episode, literally, a week later, I got a text message from her out of the blue to say, I just wanted to let you know we're still thinking about how beautiful the ceremony was, and that felt really beautiful for me to both feel like I was able to show up as my queer self and someone who was crying on a call a couple of months ago now, out of the blue, was able to actually take time to share a compliment that she didn't need to, right? Because, like the contract was done, like she doesn't have to see me ever again in my in her life, she wanted to. But I think the ability of showing up authentically, even when it I think for me, I've had to also understand, both in my professional work and in my my wedding officiation, that authenticity doesn't mean I show up as my is one self all the time, but that I get to choose how I show up, I get to choose what feels comfortable for me, because my safety and my authenticity are interconnected.
Anita Rao 42:46
I love that. I really love that. And I know Kelly, I mean, I'm curious about this showing up as your full self for you. I mean, you have worn so many hats throughout your life. You still do. You're a nurse, you're a comedian, and you are naturally really funny, really witty. And I would love to know how you bring that kind of way that you see the world through humor into your role as an officiant. How do you find that balance to be true to true to that part of you that sees the world in that really, beautifully humorous way.
Kelli Dunham 43:22
That's an interesting question. I'm actually thinking of a funeral that I was kind of emceeing, and all the people who were kind of scheduled to speak had spoken, and then the people who were just coming up to the mic had spoken, you know, and I had just introduced people and kind of gone through and tried to say soothing things, or tried to make little bridges, and at the end, I said, well, for the first time in queer history, we are running ahead and the whole not that funny a joke, but the whole place just like broke out laughing. For me, that can be such a gift. It comes up some in weddings, but it comes up more in the conversations before, kind of calling the room for parents, you know, where I can see a parent just looks like, why can't we just pray the rosary? And they're like, because this is a polyamorous leather wedding that we're, you know, also, our pets are standing up for us, you know, like they're not gonna, but kind of doing that bridge with humor about like, Oh, are we all comfortable now? Oh, no, everybody's uncomfortable. Okay, great. That's been really, really helpful, and it has kind of felt like a gift. You know, I feel like the exact right person at the exact right time, even in these tiny little ways, and that feels, I can't think of anything that would be more important to me.
Anita Rao 44:42
Kelli, and Raja, this has truly been such a pleasure. Thank you both so much for your stories and your work as officiants. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Kelli Dunham 44:53
Thank you. Yeah, this was amazing. Very privileged to be a part of this conversation.
Anita Rao 45:00
There is so much in what Kelli and Raja share that brings me back to where we started this whole conversation, with my wedding story and how we built a celebration that was true to my millennial feminist partnership and honored the desires of my tradition loving dad. So I'm gonna take us back to the conversation you heard a snippet from earlier on between me and my dad about how we got through to each other with a little humor and a lot of great dad sincerity. Can you imagine something we could have suggested where you would have felt like, No, I can't get behind this. Like, where in your mind Did you have like, a line that you were like, I feel like, I need to hold this line.
Dr. Satish Rao 45:44
You know, I think the initial discussions that we had, I was not very comfortable with some of those discussions. And I said, Oh, this is a rebellious child trying, trying to break all barriers and go on. And I was trying to understand, well, where is this ceremony going, and what are the potential consequences for both of you, much more than us in our lives, there are only few things that we honor and remember and think are most important, right? It's birth, marriage, and ultimately, when we pass away in debt, those are the three big events in anybody's life. So marriage is such a crucial event, and it is the event that not only brings both of you together, but your stars become aligned together. And so many things change as individuals. And we have known a particular manner, a kind of a recipe, if you like, which has been successful and has been tried and tested. But then if you're going to depart from that, then there is always a level of anxiety and concern as to, you know, what is this new chapter going to look like? You know? How will they understand this? Mom was a little bit more reassured, but I was very apprehensive. But then, after Raja came on board, this is a person who has the Vedic knowledge, who understands the essential principles and is willing to help you and John come to the ceremony in a manner that's conducive for you and for us. So that bridge, I thought Raja's role was brilliant and outstanding. I thought that was beautifully done.
Anita Rao 47:34
Well, thank you so much, dad. Thanks for coming along for the ride, and I'm still happy to own the rebellious child title. Proudly.
Dr. Satish Rao 47:44
Well, I think, you know, just to add, I mean, it was not only us. Remember, we had some of our cousins and other people who were there. And, you know, we all brought up in a same home, and so we all share very similar traditions. I mean, normally they would, if not directly to my face, they would send signals to other people, saying that, hey, you know, this was not a great event, or there were some real missions, but they universally embraced the whole ceremony, and they felt that they were all part and parts of The event, and that was a great reinforcement that the journey that you all embarked on and what we achieved at the end of the day was very effective. Well. Thank
Anita Rao 48:28
Well, thank you so much, dad for the conversation. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Satish Rao 48:32
Thank you.
Anita Rao 48:39
Embodied is a production of North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, a listener-supported station. If you want to lend your support to this podcast, consider a contribution at wunc.org now. This episode is produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Nina Scott is our intern and Jenni Lawson is our technical director. Quilla wrote our theme music. If you liked hearing from my dad, there is more or that came from! Check out our special podcast episode about mixed race adulthood, where I talk to both of my parents, or our episode about poop and the gut. You can find all of that in the Embodied podcast feed. If you have any thoughts after listening to this conversation, we would love to hear them. Send us an email: embodied@wunc.org or leave us a voice note in our virtual mailbox. SpeakPipe. You can find that link in the show notes of this episode.
Until next time, I'm Anita Rao taking on the taboo with you.