OK, first off, I wanted to get the boyz (and gurlz) attention, hence my blog name. Now that you are here, I hope you don't hate me too much.
I'm really pissed off at how poorly we deviants are framing the Marriage Equality debate. If I hear one more fag say that "it's about love", I will have to kill them. I think I puked just a little even writing that.
There's not much we can do to influence the religious right's brain-dead and irrelevant rhetoric "it's an attack on traditional marriage, procreation isn't possible so why are they fighting biology, etc". Buy why are we so fucking terrible at our own messaging? I'm no PR whiz, but Jezzus Christ on a stick!
Marriage is a *LEGAL* institution. It's not really about getting the big, expensive, party in a church with all of your family and friends cooing about your taste in flower arrangements. That might be a part of it, but the central issue is that it's a paper agreement that bestows responsibilities, rights, and privileges to folks who want to enter into such agreements.
Marriage covers a lot of important ground. Over the years many issues and best practices have been worked out. Important things. Things like property and inheritance rights, child rearing rights, medical and life insurance coverage, hospital visitation rights, end-of-life decision making, power of attorney, state and federal taxes, etc, etc. And divorce is also pretty well laid out, though fighting over property rights, child custody is pretty common.
To get lawyers to write up arrangements to cover all these things is first off impossible, and secondly to even try is very expensive. Many, many tens of thousands of dollars. And the legal precedents there would have to be established from scratch. Married people sum up all these arrangements in one convenient, inexpensive arrangement.
Domestic partnerships doesn't approach parity to marriage. Though a domestic partnership bestows some of the same things as marriage, I agree with those who say it is an vastly inferior arrangement, mostly due to language. One big issue is the inertia in the verbiage contained in documents of private organizations. Would all of these have to be revised to say "marriage or domestic partnership"? I'm pretty sure that ain't gonna happen. Domestic partnership smacks of "shacking up" or "common law marriage". Folks too indifferent to actually express their intent so the state has to step in an make some rules to protect the lazy.
So, instead of talking about love, appeal to folks' sense of justice. Many breeders still can't wrap there heads around too guys on a cake kissing, so give it up already. Who fucking cares about that? However, I think many straight people *DO* support protecting gays rights to employment, hospital visitation and other such things. I've heard horror stories like the child that is pulled from his home after a death of one same sex parent and given to the grandmother who then denies the surviving parent any visitation, and it is legally supported because that parent is biologically unrelated. If it cost me $30,000 to get even some of the same protections as a married couple, how is that fair? The lesbian police officer who's spouse is killed in the line of duty and then the spouse is denied benefits. Almost everyone can see the apartheid that is apparent in these kinds of stories.
Start talk about shit like that you fucking dumb asses! --Oh, does that sound harsh?
