The City of San Francisco has decided to issue same sex marriage licenses in a power grab. When a justice of the peace in SF says, 'by the power vested in me by the State of California, I now pronouce you man and wife' to a gay couple, he is lying. A more truthful rendition would be, 'by the power arrogated by me under color of the authority of the State of California..'
But most gay friendly people think gay marriage is inevitable. It should be although it shouldn't be called marriage. We've been over that already. The primary reason for this positive regard for gay union is one of civil rights. Marrieds get things non-marrieds do not, and it's not fair.
As much as I hate analogies, I will use one here. What the justices of the peace (who are actually disturbing it) in SF are trying to do is to paint blacks white. They claim that their ulterior motive is to guarantee equal rights for gay couples, but if that were the case why not sue those entities which are discriminating against gay couples?
I want to leave that question hanging, but I'm coming to believe that there are a bunch of nutjobs who love living in analogy-land. And in that topsy-turvy universe they can start talking about MLK and unfair discrimination and try to make parallels between this aspect of gay liberation and the Civil Rights Movement. Fair warning, such crap will not be tolerated at Cobb.
The common sense stupid question is whether or not gay individuals as 'marrieds' seek to pass as het individuals. That is to say, if I were a gay man and I were to be 'married' would I wear a gold band on the third finger of my left hand? Would I joke about 'the old battleaxe' and tell my co-workers that I have to be home for dinner or the ball and chain will make me sleep on the sofa? Please tell me the answer to this is 'Hell no' (or 'Hells no!' if you're more like Essex Hemphill).
The Hell Yeah answer is whether or not gays should be free in their privacy. That was decided properly, thank God, in the Lawrence case. The Hell Yeah answer is whether gay couples should have the same legal benefits as married couples. But does this require Marriage? No it does not. It's exactly like saying you should be required to be white to own property.
As RT Ford writes in Slate:
Of course for many of the committed gay couples whom for the first time, if only for a few heady days, can claim to be "legally" married, none of this hand-wringing over doctrine and politics matters. To them, the only politics that matter are the politics of recognition�the city's actions send out the message that there is at least one place where the body politic takes gay couples and their relationships seriously. That message is worth something. But whether it's worth the litigation, political backlash, and stirring up of homophobia sure to follow is a matter of opinion, not of law.
There's a lot of crap hitting the fans over this, but it's definitely not worth it. And I think it is something of an insult to people who try to be tolerant (whining for myself) in the most serious multicultural pluralist way, for us to accept this granstanding as if it were a matter of life and death. Gays are not het, nor are bis or transexuals for that matter. There is no way that society is served by overloading what is well understood with the implications of gay love and life. They are not the same, and that's alright.
Fight the discrimination where it arises. Stop mucking with definitions.
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