You know, Connecticut rarely gets to be the center of attention. But we are today! Three weeks before the most important election in recent American history, the Connecticut State Supreme Court has ruled that we in the Radical household have the constitutional right to marry. It takes effect a day or so before the election, barring the End of Days or some legal delay by lemon-sucking, family values conservatives. Take that Sarah Palin!Fancy us, why don't you. Little Connecticut. The phone has been ringing off the hook with folks asking us when the big day is.
Well not immediately, I'll tell you that. We are happy for others, and we believe passionately in civil rights, but we don't really believe in marriage (not to mention the extra $$ we would have to pay our tax attorney to file for us as a couple in Connecticut, and then separately at the federal level. My guess is that, if elected, McCain/Palin would not be interested in alleviating the tax burden of gay married folk.) The only thing that could cause the Radicals to unite in wedlock at this juncture would be if Zenith University decided to junk its domestic partner benefits policy now that everyone can get married, something that has happened at Harvard. Nevertheless, I celebrated this momentous day by devoting myself to a lengthy list of household chores that have been awaiting my attention. I don't know whether I will ever get married to my Radical partner -- but I suppose, like most people, I would least like to be asked. So I want to look industrious.
Read about gay marriage in Connecticut here, and the majority Court decision here.
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13 comments:
Well, in lieu of congratulations to you & the Partner, I offer congratulations to your whole state. My home state has a measure on the ballot in November that would *prevent* any such marriages from being acknowledged... you know, just in case the Supremes ever decide to make it the law of the land, the lemon-suckers in our state won't have to acknowledge it. Barstards.
Well how lovely for you, it seems pretty clear that the domestic partner benefits should be dumped just as at Harvard. Unless straight couples can get benefits for their boyfriends/girlfriends. If the straights have to be married for benefits then so should the gays.
Well, strictly speaking, not every "boyfriend/girlfriend" couple (aka domestic partners, as we're not all going steady and headed to the prom together, but are acutally adults involved in a serious, equitable relationship) has to be married for benefits. Check out the state of California.
And, if I may offer a suggestion: why don't we expand benefits to "boyfriends/girlfriends," where necessary, in order to avoid the government's invalidation of their relationship as a justification for denying all partners, regardless of gender and sexual identification, to the same fate?
I don't understand your post at all. My point is just that some institutions allow "domestic partner" benefits for any couple, gay or straight, as long as they are sufficiently financially entangled. If TR's school does that then ok. If they only allow gay domestic partners and married straight partners then they should now require gays to be married to get the benefits.
We toasted your fine state at dinner last night. Congrats! You're number 3! (I figure we'll be down somewhere in the lower thirties, so I'm quite jealous!)
The benefits thing wouldn't be so important if health insurance were handled better, but since it's not, go benefits! (My state doesn't recognize domestic partners for benefits, even.)
Well, why should being involved in a sexual relationship of any kind entitle an employee to more remuneration than someone who is not? Siblings living together?
Friends sharing a flat? Communes of celebates? Seriously, it doesn't make any sense at all.
What about the mother I help support?Can I get coverage for her
so that I don't have to pay her health insurance anymore?
RWP: Zenith does give such benefits to unmarried straights, because it would be discriminatory not to. You are such a sourpuss.
Waiting and Anonymous: National health insurance would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people. But if you have been following the gay marriage debate, most people who are the public spokespeople for it talk about the recognition factor, not the economic factor. They also worry about not being able to visit relatives in the hospital (not a problem one has to be concerned with in relation to biological rellies.) And those of us who don't really think it confers equality are well aware that the poor have nothing to share -- no rights, no insurance, no money -- and have opposed the resources going into this effort.
On the other hand, in the end, *isn't* it discriminatory not to let GLBT people marry It's only a contract, after all.
TR
I was so pleased to see that news! It seems to me that it's right that you get to choose whether to marry or not, just as straight folk do. And now I get to vote AGAINST prop 8 here in California.
Congratulations .
But I am not sure that marriage is "only a contract"or that marriage being limited in some ways infers inequality, nor does the expansion of such a contract confer equality.
I,m no scholar but it seems that marriage as a social instrument evolved specifically to mediate issues of property and children in
a male -female relationship that would be entered into in order to create children with all the resulting consequences for the families involved. Marriage as a vehicle for personal support and satisfaction seems much more recent for persons of various sexual persuasions, standard heterosexual included.
Dude. If you do get married (and the universe doesn't instantly implode), do not neglect to invite a mouse. I would hate to miss the bangin'-est radical wedding in Connecticut history.
And hooray for our little state.
[There were Mennonites jumping up and down in Rittenhouse the other day for gay marriage -- I don't pretend to understand, but maybe PA's farther ahead of things than i thought.]
I could not be more excited about the Kerrigan decision, but am also pretty uncomfortable with the timing (which I'm sure we can fully blame on Justices Borden, Vertefeuille, and Zarella). Just enough time for the right wing Connecticutians to flip their shit and campaign for a constitutional convention so they can define marriage. Knowing them, they'll probably throw in a few restrictions on reproductive freedom, as long as they've got their red pens out...
Marriage is not only a contract. If it were then we wouldn't have unanimous agreement between McCain, Palin, Obama and Biden that gay's should not be allowed to marry and a referendum against gay marriage likely to pass in California of all places.
Right Wing prof, maybe it is just a contract, but narrow minded people feel strongly that hetero couples should have exclusive rights to that ocntract.
That said, many people who work for gay marriage seem to agree that marriage is more than just a contract, or at least a special one.
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