It's been three years since Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage, and in that time no other state has legalized it. On the contrary, Massachusetts has inspired a national backlash that has caused many states to pass legislation specifically forbidding their courts from making gay marriage legal.
Not being the marrying kind, it was never a big issue with me. If straight people want the name "marriage" reserved for themselves, then I couldn't see the harm in humoring them as long as there were so-called civil unions guaranteeing equal rights to same sex couples. Frankly I didn't think that gay marriage would catch on very much outside of a small number of romantic lesbians, since I always considered that one of the few advantages to being gay was being free of the responsibilities and complications of married life.
Then some things happened to change my mind. For example my cousin and his lover of 15 years got married, and I was shocked to discover the number of my relatives, good Catholics all of them, who refused to attend the marriage of this person they had known since he was born! Then I started noticing the sort of people who were most vigorously opposing gay marriage. It was obvious that they were not pro-marriage or even pro-heterosexual. They were out and out haters of homosexuality.
No way am I going to have anything to do with those sort of people, whom I think will ultimately be shown to be on the wrong side of history. Like it or not, the age of gay marriage - and a whole lot of other non-traditional family arrangements - is upon us. Now we have to make a choice between either doing what has to be done to make those arrangements work, or instead we can fight each other over and over and make each other miserable while accomplishing nothing.
Meanwhile, this is an advertisement for the student run cable station at UMass. Set at the murky campus pond, it is freaking hilarious.
3 comments:
Brilliant!
Tom,
Pick the most likely answers from the following questions:
When a [heterosexual] husband and wife with children get a divorce, who ends up paying child support? Who's paycheck gets sliced practically in half by the court? If the divorce is a nasty one, which parent has to fight for custody rights?
Now answer the same questions with the couple being gay or lesbian. The answers aren't quite so obvious.
Let's see how the first few gay/lesbian divorces pan out in court - especially when children (adopted or otherwise) are involved. There should have been court reform and adjustment of divorce statutes before gay marriage was enacted. It was a "feel good" decision that was made without other (legal) matters being first addressed.
The court system now is grossly anti-male and anti-father. Will gay marriages be exempted from similar legal biases?
We shall see.
Good points, obviously all the details haven't been ironed out. I have sympathy for guys who go through divorce in Massachusetts. I've heard too many horror stories to think they are all sour grapes.
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