FGB: Marriage: What It Means

Some comments on what this all means. First, from Andrew Sullivan:

When people talk about gay marriage, they miss the point. This isn't about gay marriage. It's about marriage. It's about family. It's about love. It isn't about religion. It's about civil marriage licenses. Churches can and should have the right to say no to marriage for gays in their congregations, just as Catholics say no to divorce, but divorce is still a civil option. These family values are not options for a happy and stable life. They are necessities. Putting gay relationships in some other category--civil unions, domestic partnerships, whatever--may alleviate real human needs, but by their very euphemism, by their very separateness, they actually build a wall between gay people and their families. They put back the barrier many of us have spent a lifetime trying to erase.

It's too late for me to undo my past. But I want above everything else to remember a young kid out there who may even be reading this now. I want to let him know that he doesn't have to choose between himself and his family anymore. I want him to know that his love has dignity, that he does indeed have a future as a full and equal part of the human race. Only marriage will do that. Only marriage can bring him home.

And from Terrance at Republic of T:

I knew as soon as the California Supreme Court marriage ruling was posted, that I would read the whole thing. I started reading it at my desk, after it was posted, but stopped once got to the “bottom line” of the ruling — and, truly, because as I realized what I was reading, and what the California Supreme Court had said, the emotion was too much.

I wasn’t born when the Brown v. Board of Education ruling was handed down, so I don’t know what it was like for those Black Americans who heard it or read it and realized what the court had done. But I think I have an idea, based on what I felt yesterday after reading the decision.

I know it was a state supreme court decision, and one that doesn’t apply to me all the way over here on the other side of the country. But yesterday, reading the decision, I felt a little bit more like an American. And maybe even just a little proud of my country.

A little bit about what it means to me:

I'm old enough that, growing up, marriage was simply not on my horizon. Anywhere. I never even thought to look. That's changed. I think in large part because of activists who have been pushing for years to make this an issue, and who have been successful enough that it's become a real motivating force for most of us. I find myself wondering what it would really be like to have a husband and children. I might even have grown up enough at this point that I'd make a good father, but even in my own "thought experiments" I can see the advantages of being part of a couple raising a family -- less wear and tear on all concerned.

I'm looking back through my own files from previous incarnations of this blog and realizing that the overwhelming majority of course cases that have been argued on same-sex marriage, going all the way back to Hawai'i in, I think, 1993 or '94, have found in favor of same-sex couples. It's only a well-organized and well-funded campaign by right-wing radicals that has forestalled same-sex marriage becoming the law in Hawai'i, Alaska, and a few other places.

There's a kind of momentum here. You'll see that people such as Tony Perkins, in the clip below, are still spouting the same lies and misrepresentations, but the signs of panic are unmistakable: this has been their bread-winning issue, and they are starting to lose. First, Vermont with civil unions. Then Massachusetts and now California with marriage. New Jersey will probably have marriage within a year, and I expect New York to follow suit fairly quickly. Vermont is now considering changing civil unions to marriage. Illinois may very well have civil unions within a year, and I expect that that will become marriage shortly after. Add in the other states that have some form of recognition -- Rhode Island, I believe, Connecticut, Washington, Oregon, and now there's a bill in the Minnesota house -- and there's an obvious trend.

And what does it mean fo rme personally? Depends on whether I fall in love again. I can't think of much that's more demanding, or more exciting, than raising a child. Unless it's having a husband.

It's nice to know I have the option.

More Reactions, via Joe.My.God. Joe also has this video of comments by Tony Perkins and Dan Savage.



Watch it -- it's worth it just to see Savage call Perkins out on the "children do best with mother and father" bullshit. I can't tell you how happy I am to see that on national TV. Perkins' face froze in that smarmy smile of his -- he didn't know what to do.

Footnote: This keeps popping up in odd little places, but in the context of idiots like Perkins ranting about "San Francisco liberals" and "activist judges," note that six of the seven justices on the California Supreme Court were appointed by Republican governors. And if I remember correctly, that includes all four who concurred in the majority opinion. (I take it back -- the sole Democrat on the panel was one of the majority justices.)