The Princess’s Dilemma

“You have a choice!”
the king declared.
“You can marry anyone you want,
as long as he’s a prince!”

“But I don’t love a prince,”
the princess replied.
“I love someone else!
Can’t I marry them?”

“No, you only think you love someone else,”
said the king.
“But you’re a princess,
so we know that you were created
to love a prince.”

“Those crowns look weird,”
said the princess.
“I don’t want to be with someone
who wears a crown like me.”

“Nonsense!”
the king responded.
“Obviously you just haven’t met a prince
wearing the right kind of crown.”

“I met someone who doesn’t wear a crown at all,”
the princess cried.
“We laugh together. We cry together.
Why can’t we just BE together?”

“That’s not how it’s been done,”
the king opined.
“Why have these ancient rules
if we’re just going to ignore them?”

“Why not change the rules?”
the princess asked.
“Can’t we just let people make decisions
for themselves?”

“That doesn’t seem safe,”
said the king.
“What if children think
that what you suggest is normal?”

“Why couldn’t it be normal?”
insisted the princess.
“Why does love
have to have so many rules?”

But the king refused to budge.
The rules were absolute
and they mattered more
than what made the princess happy.

So the princess went off with her non-prince.
They rode on a magic carpet.
They sang a duet.
They got married and lived
happily
ever
after.

And the crowd cheered for the princess.

Then they went home and voted to pass Amendment One.

(Huge thanks to my husband, who asked the question yesterday, “Why do we root for the princess to get to marry who she wants, but don’t apply it to gay people?” Or something close to that. And I said I was going to steal that. And he said okay, as long as I attributed it to him. So that’s what this is. Attribution to my husband, who I got to fall in love with and marry without someone else voting on whether that was okay.)