Finneran Begin Again

I live in Massachusetts. As you may know, our Commonwealth is grappling with the issue of same-sex marriage in a vital way right now. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it and want to share a few here:

1. Last year, seven couples sued the state for the right to marry. It went to the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). For those who don't know this, it is the highest possible court. No court can overturn its rulings. It's the end of the line.

After a prolonged deliberation process, the SJC ruled that to deny marriage rights on the basis of sex is unconstitutional. Further, they gave the cities and towns six months to get their forms and processes together. Starting in May, queer folk can be legally married. It's breath-taking.


2. Equally breath-taking is witnessing the public discourse. See, our legislature is deciding whether or not to convene a constitutional convention to submit amendments that will make the SJC's ruling moot. (So much for checks and balances.) The inspirational bit starts there. In order to amend the state constitution there is a large and formal process that must be followed before the ultimate votes are cast. Included are a number of hearings and votes regarding everything from whether or not to float and amendment to how many versions to content. It's ponderous. And that's a good thing.

This process forces people to slow down. It acts, in part, as a filter to help the participants move through (and past) their emotions so that they can get to the business of thoughtful consideration. The most recent round showed people on both sides of the issue working incredibly hard and with great sincerity. Ears listened, minds opened, positions shifted. To watch these men and women striving so genuinely was to see the tremendous art and beauty of Humanity. It went beyond partisan politics. Heck, my Republican Senator voted against bigotry and my Democratic Representative voted for it.

The "good guys" won by narrow margins, but they won. Just like they won last year when the Super D.O.M.A. bill was defeated. Anyone old enough to remember Stonewall can attest to the tremendous acts of courage and conscience required to get us to this point. It is increasingly difficult to hide in denial and ambiguity regarding discrimination based upon sex, gender, sexuality. People may still feel the feelings, but they sense that the days of acceptable imposition of them are waning. At the very least folks now have to consider their audience before speaking. Progress is measured in millimeters in real time.


3. I used to feel like "Domestic Partnership" was enough. Now I don't. My discontent with that title arrived suddenly, while sitting in my car and listening to a review of the arguments being used in the court case last year. Once I got that the logical argument comes down to chromosomes, it was done. There is no defensible argument in favor of discrimination based upon sexual orientation. Ah, but the emotional arguments... In that twilight arena reason rarely stands a chance. So, I think that the only solution is to focus on the mundane, the specific. Nothing derails a rant about the threat to heterosexual marriages like asking what that means, precisely. Ask for examples. Diagrams are a plus. I've asked a number of times and have yet to receive an answer to the question. I either experience the cricket effect or the rant continues as though I'd not asked the question.

That being the case, the absurdity of granting parallel rights, responsibilities, and privileges but under a different name becomes apparent. It's an effort to appease the irrational emotions, a sacrifice to the erupting volcano god. It's pointless. Separate But Equal is doomed to fail. It embeds prejudice. It subverts the fairness of its founding lip service.

If it's marriage, call it marriage. Marriage is a secular office, not a religious prerogative. Churches and synagogues don't grant marriage licenses, nor do they own the institution; they have no power to modify the content of the legal state of marriage. We confuse ourselves when we think their official opinions relevant to civil decision-making.

I don't want to domestic partner my girlfriend; I want to marry her.


4. Banning same-sex marriage is an expensive proposition, too. If domestic partnership is approved, it will require separate documents and processes to be prepared and people to maintain them; additional ink, toner, and other printing materials; every piece of paper associated with every one of the 1000+ legal protections and rights of marriage will have to be modified and/or duplicated. Computer databases will need fields added to their data entry forms and/or modifications to their value lists.

If no legal office is implemented, then there's the gnarly question of taxes. See, I'm pretty sure that it could convincingly argued that people who are not being afforded the rights of full citizenship should not be paying full citizenship taxes. That being the case, 10% of the population will be due a handsome refund. I hope that the IRS's check-writing machines have plenty of ink.


5. Wil Wheaton has a worthy at blog. Today, he wrote about this subject and did a great job. Not even "a great job for a straight guy". Just, straight up, a great job. Margaret Cho would be proud. It's worth the read and even does the remarkable job of making me nod my head and agree with Andrew Sullivan about something. Some would say that the latter would be impossible unless a full solar eclipse occurred at Elvis' "come-back" concert performed on the back of a live blue whale on the Mongolian steppes. (Of course, those are folks with imaginations nearly as eclectic as my own so I have a soft spot for their hyperbole.)


In conclusion...

I seem to recall school lessons about a scuffle on American soil over the rights of self-determination. I want to say that there were a couple of Georges involved and that one of them, despite a bad history with cherry trees, went on to a role of some importance. Later, there was another local dustup that was based, in part, on the idea that competent adults are entitled to equal status in the eyes of the government. Of course, it took some time to really roll that out and full citizenship, voting rights, etc., took a while to get ironed out.

In my own lifetime, issues of insitutionalized bigotry have been on the table. My parents were involved in block-busting activism in the 1960s. For those who don't recall those days, this was a way of undermining racism-by-real estate. A non-white couple who were told that a house they wanted to buy was no longer available would contact the organization with which my parents were affiliated and then a white person would go to view the same house. If, as was often the case, the house was "available" for them, there was a quick and efficient court action to put things to rights. It was a small thing, but it had an impact in our community and went a long way toward shaping my ideas about what being a member of a community means.

If the state legislature or our President manage to define me as a less-than-full citizen, there will be no way to categorize that other than bigoted and hostile. One-in-ten is still the working statistic for gay/lesbian/bi-sexual/transgender/transsexual orientation. It's hard to believe that any politician would be willing to declare 10% of the population as subhuman, but then again, it's hard to believe that President Bush was able to convince anyone that there was a direct connection between the September 11th attacks and Saddam Hussein. So, while I believe that the right of same-sex couples to marry is an inevitability, I'm bright enough to know that things can go quite horribly wrong in the meantime.

Maybe I should practice broadening my "a"s and "o"s in anticipation of emigrating to Canada. Do you suppose I'll have to wear a pink triangle on my way to the border?


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