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eftychia at 12:16pm on 2004-02-13So yesterday while I was out running errands, history was made. Yeah, I'm being hopelessly US-centric regarding the importance of the first same-sex marriages performed in the US. Stealing MA's thunder, CA married some couples.
If these marriages stand, they're historic firsts, starting with the first of the day. The dawn of a new phase in the debate over this topic, an marker of when the "world" changed, and an example of how nothing suddenly falls apart just because somebody got married.
If they're struck down and declared invalid next week, they still signal that the ante has been upped. (Hmm. Does anyone happen to know whether a same-sex marriage snuck through the cracks in the past and was later caught and voided, back before this became a hot-button issue? Not because one or both members of the couple decided they wanted an annullment, but because the state stepped in?) They'd become either a footnote or part of the back-story for the first to be fully recognized, but they'd be important footnoes and back-story.
If the marriages stand in California but the Federal government refuses to recognize them, major state's-rights lines are drawn and we see a game of tug-of-war with the Constitution in the rope's role. (Not that the possibility of such hasn't been hanging over our heads for a few years now on this issue, but this would change it from potential to actual.)
There are several ways this could go, but in any of them, history has been made.
The issue isn't complicated.
There are reasons for opposing same-sex marriage, and there are excuses for opposing same-sex marriage. Most of the reasons boil down to religious issues, with the leftovers amounting to homophobia. The excuses make good sound bites but don't hold up to actual discussion.
The homophobic reasons aren't good enough as a basis for law, because the law must not discriminate on the basis of gender. And the religious reasons aren't good enough as a basis for law because of the first amendment. No outsider is going to tell a church whether that church has to marry same-sex couples, but the churches that would do so must not be barred from doing so by the churches that won't, and completely secular marriages by a justice of the peace must not be restricted on religious grounds.
(no subject)
Transsexual Marriage
But since it's been brought up:
To start with, if a couple marries and then one partner changes sex, the result is a legally-recognized -- at the Federal level, no less -- same-sex marriage. That kind of same-sex marriage we've had for a while now. I know two such couples and have heard of several more.
For folks with different timing than that though ... some states recognize SRS in different ways than other states. Some allow the birth certificate to be amended or replaced with a "corrected" one.
Some states look at the sex on one's driver's license to determine sex for the purpose of marriage, and others look at the birth certificate.
So we have cases where two men or two women can legally marry because the state doesn't recognize one's current sex. And we have cases were a man and a woman are forbidden to marry each other for the same reason. Which of these is "right" according to the opponents of same-sex marriage? It's all a-tangle. If you "fix" one, you "break" the other.
And then there's the couple who both had sex-changes, but one is from a state where they retroactively change the birth certificate and the other is from a state that doesn't, so legally they're the same sex even though they are currently opposite sexes and were born opposite sexes from each other. And they can't marry because their state does not recognize same-sex marriages. How the fuck does that situation "protect" anyone?
This makes things horrendously complicated now. But it doesn't make the issue of same-sex marriage complicated, because recognizing same-sex marriages means all the confusion becomes irrelevant. It would no longer matter (for the purpose of marriage) which way the state in which one was born or the state in which one wants to wed defines the legal sex of a transsexual, the confusing questions go out the window, and marriage for transsexuals becomes simple.
Re: Transsexual Marriage
That "plop" you heard was the sound of my brain exploding. :-)
I agree with you; government regulation of civil marriage complicates things way too much for no good end. Religions can do what they want, but the state owes equal protection to all.
(no subject)
Angie
Re:
When he died and his wife inherited the whole she-bang, the kids hired detectives to scour up dirt on her. That's how they found about her past gender.
She claimed that her late husband knew about her former gender and there wasn't a problem.
I heard some anti-same sex marriage guy proclaim or present fight this is not about benefits. Bullshit. It has *everything* to do with benefits.
-m
(no subject)