For those who have been feeling frustrated and sad about Prop 8, Charles Kaiser at OpenSalon says:
Therefore, this week’s victories for the religious right in California, Arizona and Florida are really the last gasp of a fringe movement trying to forestall the inevitable, rather than proof of a new “cultural brick wall.”
& He provides some very compelling evidence, so go read it, & be heartened.
Here is the .pdf of the CT Supreme Court decision, which includes this remarkable language:
Although we acknowledge that many legislators and many of their constituents hold strong personal convictions with respect to preserving the traditional concept of marriage as a heterosexual institution, such beliefs, no matter how deeply held, do not constitute the exceedingly persuasive justification required to sustain a statute that discriminates on the basis of a quasi-suspect classification. “That civil marriage has traditionally excluded same-sex couples, i.e., that the ‘historic and cultural understanding of marriage’ has been between a man and a woman’ cannot in itself provide a [sufficient] basis for the challenged exclusion. To say that the discrimination is ‘traditional’ is to say only that the discrimination has existed for a long time. A classification, however, cannot be maintained merely ‘for its own sake’ [Romer v.Evans, supra, 517 U.S. 635].
Instead, the classification ([that is], the exclusion of gay [persons] from civil
marriage) must advance a state interest that is separate from the classification itself [see id., 633, 635]. Because the ‘tradition’ of excluding gay [persons] from civil marriage is no different from the classification itself, the exclusion cannot be justified on the basis of ‘history.’ Indeed, the justification of ‘tradition’ does not explain the classification; it merely repeats it. Simply put, a history or tradition of discrimination - no matter how entrenched - does not make the discrimination constitutional.”
The boldface is mine. Stunning. The ruling also clarified that civil union is not the same.
The state of Connecticut has now made same-sex marriage legal! It’s the third state to do so, after Massachusetts & California, although of course Vermont has civil unions and New York is now recognizing same sex marriages that were performed elsewhere.
It’s exciting. It’s human. It’s patriotic.
That said, the forces for Prop 8 in California - which would repeal same-sex marriage rights - have a lot more money & are spending it on ads & whatnot trying to undo last year’s ruling. To get more information, doante, or find out what you can do, try noonprop8.com.
A German court has decided that a pre-existing marriage does not have to be dissolved if one of the spouses in said marriage changes their legal sex.
In the UK, that’s exactly what has to happen, & if the couple wants to remain married, they can then have a civil union (just as Jan Morris & her wife have just done).
In the US, of course, it’s more a loophole because marriage is a contract, & contract law is such that as long as the contract is legal at the time it’s written, it continues to be unless otherwise contested.
But as far as I know, this is the first ruling to acknowledge that some transsexuals are already married when they transition, that they choose to remain married after transition, and that their marriage is legally a same-sex marriage after the fact.
It’s good news.
As reported by Alex Blaze on the Bilerico Project, William Bolthouse, founder and 43% owner of Bolthouse Farms, a farm in California that provides organic juices, lemonades, and smoothies to places like Whole Foods and other organic market places, has just recently given a donation of $100,000 to proponents of a campaign to strip California couples of the right to marry.
Please take a moment and let Bolthouse Farms and their distributors know that you will no longer be purchasing their organic products, because even though they are organic, they come with some nasty side effects. Sign the petition.
Two of the big hypocrites of politics (of the last year) have come together to make clear that they value marriage enough to protect it from teh gay. Jeez louise. Maybe they should just start a Whitewash Party, & run on sheer hypocrisy.
As ridiculous and honestly funny as this is, it has repurcussions. Hate always does.
A couple who’ve been together for 18 years went on vacation, on a cruise, with three of their four children. One of them had a massive stroke as their ship was about to leave port, which meant she received medical care at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, where her partner was told the couple made the mistake of being in “an anti-gay city and state” and refused to let her partner in to see her, but for five minutes, as she was dying.
She died about 18 hours later. Both women were only 39 years old.
This is what DOMA & all this other anti-gay bullshit leads to, but please queer folks, fill out your healthcare proxies. You can find NYS’s here, and here in .pdf format. If people have or find links for these forms in their state, please post them below, or send them to me via email & I can post them.
More instructions and state-specific forms below the break. More…
Feministe has compiled a bunch of evidence that gay couples are being something like hand-picked to get married in CA. Why? So that they look right. So that there’s no men in dresses. So that images from the gay weddings can’t be used by opponents of same-sex marriage to prove we’re all freaks.
Well you know what? The real gender “problems” like me & Betty are already married, people, so quit worrying. Let the boys wear gowns - I mean, how long have some of these couples waited to tie the legal knot?
A very happy wedding day to all the Californians who are finally able to get married to the ones they love.
It’s unfortunate how much a basic civil right has to be fought for, & unfortunate in so many ways (and not even the ones Mattilda goes into).
And I know many people are bothered by it because it’s not an economic issue, and that more than anything, LGBT people need employment non-discrimination protection. And we do, we do. But I’ll make this argument, as a legally married queer: marriage is also an economic pact. It’s not romantic, but it is something. It’s about being able to be a dependent on your spouse’s health insurance (which saves you money). It’s about being able to live together (which saves you money). It’s about getting Social Security benefits. Amongst other things.
So congratulations, bride & bride, and groom & groom: you may now fight with your spouse about money, & forever have your credit record linked to theirs.
Jan Morris has gotten a civil union with the wife she married when she was male. They had five kids together, and only got divorced due to Morris’ transition.
I kinda love that. It’s good to know, too, the world has changed some since they got divorced, though of course UK laws still require the dissolution of a heterosexual marriage when/if someone changes their gender marker while married.
More on Governor Paterson’s decision:
When David A. Paterson was growing up and his parents would go out of town, he and his little brother would stay in Harlem with family friends they called Uncle Stanley and Uncle Ronald.
Uncle Stanley and Uncle Ronald were a gay couple, though in the 1960s few people described them that way. They helped young David with his spelling, and read to him and played cards with him.
“Apparently, my parents never thought we were in any danger,” the governor recalled on Thursday in an interview. “I was raised in a culture that understood the different ways that people conduct their lives. And I feel very proud of it.”
It’s a nice article on the how the governor became an LGBT ally.
Finally I don’t have to be embarassed to be a NYer: Governor Paterson has decided that NY will recognize other states’ same-sex marriages!
In a directive issued on May 14, the governor’s legal counsel, David Nocenti, instructed the agencies that gay couples married elsewhere “should be afforded the same recognition as any other legally performed union.”
The revisions are most likely to involve as many as 1,300 statutes and regulations in New York governing everything from joint filing of income tax returns to transferring fishing licenses between spouses.
It is SO about time.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth watching: Ellen puts John McCain in the hotseat over gay marriage.
Two bits of good news: Khadijah Farmer won the suit against Caliente Cab Company, & not just that:
Among the workplace practices that Caliente Cab agreed to adopt in the settlement was to add gender identity and expression to its corporate nondiscrimination policy; to adopt a gender-neutral dress code for its employees; and to amend its employee handbook to state “persons patronizing or employed at Caliente have the right to use the bathroom facilities consistent with their gender identity and expression.”
The second piece of good news - well we’re hoping it will end up being good news - is that California’s Supreme Court just lifted the Same Sex Marriage Ban. There are a few potential downsides - like gay marriage becoming a presidential election issue again - but for now I’ll leave you with Shannon Minter:
Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights said same-sex marriage advocates could not have hoped for a more favorable ruling by the Republican-dominated court. “It’s a total victory,” Minter said.
I just love that a trans person was the one who argued the case, and won.
It’s amazing the small ways that the culture’ s inequalities show themselves. In this case, a man decided to take his wife’s last name, because he was a lot closer to her father than his own. But there is no bureaucratic pathway for such thing - as there is for women to change their names when they get married - so he had to go through a formal name change (much as trans people do).
It’s always a similar feeling, for me, when we fill out our taxes, and I have to remember I’m the spouse, and not Betty.
(thanks to Lena, as usual, for the interesting link)
The NYT did an article about the legal issues when you’re a heterosexual couple and one of you legally changes gender. I’ve been talking about the ramifications of this stuff for so long that I failed to notice for others it might be quite a surprise, and revelatory, but it is.
Interesting comments have come in from Cara at Feministe and a young trans woman who calls herself Critical Thinking Girl. As CTG points out, it is pretty tawdry - the usual before & after photos, etc. - and when she notes:
The tone of this article is clear - Fran is a put-upon woman, with an eccentric husband. The picture they chose is also curious as it has the trans woman in the relationship holding back her wife.
As many of my regular readers already know, one of the things that drives me batshit about the media in general is the way they choose rubes to write about, instead of speaking to activists or advocates who are prepared to deal with media, or who have become allied with LGBTQ people on the issue. For those of you who are interested, here’s a talk I gave at the Law School of Penn State Dickinson last year.
Because honestly, same sex marriage recognition would make life easier for all trans people in relationships - including CTG.
Oh - and to The Times - and everyone else: it’s “transition” not “sex change.”
A NY Times article about Jackie Warner - and the myriad housewives who have crushes on her - leaves out one explanation for what’s going on: women are starting to see good “husband material” in other women. Warner is the perfect case in point: she is physically strong, financially independent, able to hold her own in the business world and manage her own company… which all adds up to her being what my aunts would have called “a good catch.” The only caveat is that she’s a woman.
To me it’s a weird intersection of eras and values: a generation of women who still believe in “the good catch” but who are open-minded enough to begin to view a woman in the way that women traditionally only ever saw men.
Honestly, I think women are now only beginning to glimpse what equality might actually be like. If we continue to de-gender things like physical power, financial power, caretaking, family leadership, ambition and confidence, the whole heterosexual paradigm might find itself on its head, which is a very heady idea indeed.
A church in the UK stopped performing weddings when the congregation realized how different the laws are governing civil unions vs. marriages there.
Unitarians, of course.
(Thanks to Valery for the tip!)
Sonia in CO directed me to this interesting selection of YouTube videos by the always-astute Wayne Besen about sham marriages, but what caught her eye, and mine, was the comment by Zeke:
Why are discussions about gay spouses and the spouses that they betray, take advantage of, lie to, devastate, degrade, etc. ALWAYS, 100% of the time, about gay men and their victim wives. Why do we NEVER, EVER hear people talking about married lesbians and the husbands that they betray, take advantage of, lie to, devastate, degrade etc.? Lesbians marry men just as much as gay men marry women but yet they are NEVER discussed in the same visceral judgmental terms that are used speak of gay men.
He goes on to talk more about the way men are always villains and women always victims when we talk about divorce, in general. But I think the one thing that Zeke didn’t mention is how people are freaked out by sex between men, because they think it’s all about anal sex. I think that’s one of the reasons people are more offended/freaked out by gay men than by lesbians. I mean, women are also so valued for “being” sexy but we don’t talk much about women’s sexuality either, so I think - other than the uber-femme “fake” girl on girl porn, we tend to think of women who have sex with each other as doing something more like naked cuddling than - pardon my french - fucking.
There’s a story in Judith Halberstam’s Female Masculinity where she talks about this one case, in the UK, a century + ago, where the judges ruled out the possibility of these two female headmasters having sex with each other because - according to him - that wasn’t *possible.*
We also tend to assume women are more loyal, & more emotional; that women who leave a husband for a woman are doing so for love, while men - you know - men are always just out to get their rocks off.
That is, I think what Zeke missed is all the latent sexuality issues going on when we talk about divorce & relationships, & with all the gender stereotypes that come into it.
This, plus the recent Vatican issue, makes me wonder when we’re going to work out that half the problem is that men who come out as gay are villified because of all our own sexual hangups & mythologies.
There are not a lot of stories of successful transsexual / non-trans partner marriages. One recurring theme that I see is the need for pacing. Unfortunately too many trans-partners once they have their epiphany rush like a runaway freight train towards transition. Like most runaway freight trains these relationships typically end in destruction.
I’m not going to say that there is any one right way to transition. We all know that those paths are as unique as the individuals who tread them. However, if a couple is going to have any possibility of remaining intact each partner must be willing to recognize that compromises will be an integral part of the process.
