In the best news I’ve read yet about this, a clerk in the Sandoval County, NM courthouse has started issuing same-sex marriage licenses, too.
Imagine the joy and wonder if this starts wildcatting! The courts said it had to happen in Massachusetts, giving San Francisco the courage to start issuing the licenses; the San Francisco decision gave courage to the Sandoval County clerk. By Monday will we have two dozen places across the country where you can get a same-sex marriage license?
Hope springs eternal; this could get out of the federal government’s hands very quickly.
Daniel
There is a principle called “comity” which means that as a courtesy countries will recognize the laws and institutions of other countries. It is comity which leads the US to recognize marriages performed outside its borders. Comity is not international law nor is it binding or required. The US is free to ignore marriages performed elsewhere in the world.
Now Chicago, too!
Mayor Daley is encouraging the City Clerk to start issuing licenses in Chicago.
As an anti-war protestor back in the late 60’s, I never imagined that I would be looking at a Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago and thinking of him as a progressive, liberal Democrat! How the world changes!
But the cynic in me says these other cities are just seeing the $80,000/day that SF is raking in from the license fees on this, and they want in on that.
Ah – thanks for the explanation, Otto. I appreciate it.
And thanks, T_Bonham, for the news report about Chicago. This is more exciting than snow!
Daniel
Speaking as someone who agrees entirely with the person you’re replying to: no, I cannot “still get married” if the government fucks around with my marriage license. Marriage is a social contract to me, and I have gone through the hoops to get that social contract already. It has no religious meaning for me; my religion does not have a marriage ceremony or ritual.
I am married. I am just as married as someone who got up in the white dress and invoked Jeebus. I get the same respect as someone who is married as someone who smashed a glass. I have the same ring, the same responsibilities, and the same contract filed at City Hall.
Normal, everyday people have owned marriage for a lot longer than any religion has claimed it. I’m not going to agree to having my marriage stolen by the god-botherers, and I’m not happy with the notion that other people want to give it away to them.
Look, ever since I first became involved in the gay marriage debate, I have always heard this as an apology for discriminating against same-sex marriage: “Marriage is about reproduction.” or “The benefits associated with marriage are to encourage procreation.”
The argument is always put forward by people who are opposed to same-sex marriage on purely religious or purely personal grounds, as a sort of rationalization of their view.
But if anyone really subscribed to this view, they would apply it to infertile heterosexual couples as well. Nobody does. It’s a bogus argument, because no one is opposed to infertile heterosexuals getting married. No one that I know of is on record saying that any heterosexual couple should be refused a marriage license on grounds of infertility. Yet, that’s the logical outcome of saying that marriage is about reproduction.
Historically, was it associated with reproduction? Yep. Certainly. But how far back? To my knowledge, mariage a la mode – marrying for love rather purely for reproduction and property – became fashionable in the eighteenth century in the West. I suspect that the first thing most people in the West associate with marriage is love, not children. That’s the concept I grew up with, and my parents grew up with, and their parents grew up with; and the notion of denying a loving couple a marriage license solely because they are infertile is absurd.
When one suggests that the benefits associated with marriage are to encourage the creation of children, one has made a tacit argument that the creation of a large number of children is desirable. My counter-argument is we need to discourage our exponential population growth. If marriage is to be the tool to regulate population (and I don’t think it should be), then we need to reverse tactics.
But there are rights associated with marriage that are cannot be granted by legal contract, and at least one benefit (portability) that cannot be granted by civil union. If some of the world’s religions object to the association of civil marriage with religious marriage, fine – they can start calling it something else. That would be a hell of a lot easier then getting the world’s nations to agree on a new term for the sort of legal union that is portable from country to country.
That wasn’t exactly my point. Of course I don’t expect Iran or Zimbabwe to recognize a gay marriage from Canada anytime soon.
My point is that there is a growing number of countries are quite seriously discussing this. Not just in the industrialized West either – Hong Kong’s mulling it over, and Cambodia’s constitutional monarch just threw his support behind it.
Portability might not seem like a major issue when only three countries endorse gay marriage, but what about when dozens have started issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples? Then it becomes an issue. Countries will generally recognize legal marriages from other countries as long as they’re legal there. I imagine a future where a same-sex marriage is legal in France and England, Hong Kong and Japan, South Africa, etc. And considering how common it’s becoming to work abroad, this a major concern.
A civil union has no such portability. As I said before, a Quebec civil union carries no legal weight outside of Quebec. It’s like getting a divorce the minute you cross the provincial border!
Law is nine-tenths semantics. It may seem like we’re splitting hairs by insisting on the word “marriage,” but trust me: if we settle for civil unions, we are going to be sorely disappointed when the promised “total equality” associated with it turns out to be a lie.
Well, no. But we have to take into account that there will be some rights attached to marriage, in countries that recognize same-sex marriage, and none attached to civil unions.
If there is even a risk, however slight, that civil unions could not be guaranteed all the rights of marriage, then we must reject that compromise outright. Opponents of same-sex marriage have made not one rational argument against it. Why should we put our equality at risk, because some people feel the need to impose their religious beliefs on our private lives?
Not one of these three paragraphs makes any sense to me.
- You can’t still get married if the government “fucks around” with the marriage license? Did you miss the part where I suggested grandfathering in all current marriage licenses?
- My proposal for the future would be that you’d conduct the same ceremony that you did at City Hall, only you’d do it elsewhere. If the government doesn’t recognize ANY marriages, why does it matter that you’d be doing yours in an Elks Lodge, or in a field, or in a Chucky Cheese parlor?
- Normal, everyday people have been religious for as long as history records; the statment that they’ve owned marriage longer than any religion has claimed it is incomprehensible. Religion has been historically, intimately, and inextricably tied into marriage. It’s a little late to be worrying about the “god-botherers” stealing it.
Hamish, I simply don’t get your point. It’s far, far too speculative to suggest that conservative countries that don’t currently recognize same-sex marriage would be MORE likely to recognize a SSM performed in a foreign country (which violates their own cultural mores about marriage) than to recognize a civil union performed in a foreign country (which doesn’t violate their mores about civil unions, inasmuch as they don’t have any).
YOu say that if there’s any risk of that being the case, we must reject the compromise. That’s silly, because there’s a GREATER risk that the opposite will be true: by rejecting the “compromise” (a label I reject, incidentally – see below), you risk not having any legal rights in foreign countries when you could have had full legal rights there. You can’t get away from the risk, and unless you can quantify the risk, it’s silly to pin your argument on a risk from any specific course of action.
It’s not a compromise, incidentally: it’s getting the government out of a place it shouldn’t be in the first place. Marriage is intimately tied up with religion, and every religion has its own ceremonies and procedures for conducting marriages; why, then, does the government try to take the label itself, and why does the government tell both the religious and the nonreligious what additional steps they must take in order to be married in the eyes of the state?
The state’s only compelling interest in this matter is to recognize that some people like to be regarded as family units by the state, and that there are very common methods for two people to grant one another rights as concerns their property, their health, etc. The state needs to have a method for accommodating such people, but they shouldn’t care whether the two people have a romantic relationship, a heterosexual relationship, or even an emotional relationship. Civil unions would be a value-neutral solution the state could offer to folks, and then everyone could get married or not as their religion or ethical beliefs compel.
That’s not a compromise. That’s just disestablishmentarianism.
Daniel
While I agree in virtually every particular with what you had to say, including the “portability” argument, (as should be no surprise to anybody who follows these debates), I just had to post to thank you, deeply and sincerely, my brother, for your words quoted above. For once, I know what it’s like to be on the other side of the situation, and I’m more grateful than words can say for that post.
Unfortunately, after several dozen couples were issued licenses and were wed, purl=http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/02/21/MNGEP55KP61.DTL]the county clerk bowed to the screeding of the state attorney general and stopped issuing licenses, even though there was no court order or even a “researched opinion” from the state AG that any law was being violated.
There were many couples there who were literally minutes away from being married who were turned away, denied their opportunity. They were, quite literally, told by the government which they fund, by officials that they elected, that they were second-class citizens in a second-class relationship. The anger and hurt that those couples are feeling today is going to turn into a lot of power – Bill Richardson and Patricia Madrid, especially, in the case of New Mexico – that a lot of people are going to be awfully sorry they’ve unleashed.
And in other news, the die is cast in California as the Governator has finally made his true position known. That’s really sad to me; Schwarznegger is kowtowing to the Repub lackeys on gay marriage but not countless other issues, like immigration and abortion? Ech, the odor of election year sucking up is strong in the California air, more choking than any smog has ever been.
Meanwhile, it seems that our state statutes here in New York currently do not have any requirement that applicants for a marriage license must be of opposite genders. This is the first notice I’ve seen of this in the general press, and I foresee a flurry of legal challenges coming soon in this state now that it’s becoming known to the public.
The government uses the word “marriage” for the sake of expedience. “We’re getting married, what do we need? We need the ceremony of our choosing and we need the marriage license from the state.” makes a hell of a lot more sense than “We’re getting married, what do we need? We need the ceremony of our choosing and we need the contract of civil union from the state.” The license is attached to what people are doing, people do not think of themselves as getting civilly unioned (even when they are) so why wouldn’t the language of the governmental recognition of something which has existed long before there were governments go along with the convention?
But this idea that marriage is inextricably a religious thing is confusing the matter unnecessarily. This battle is about the legal marriage which occurs when the license is duly filed by the state. That’s all it’s ever been. Perhaps religious people look at that aspect of the whole drama surrounding the marriage process as something of an afterthought, and I’m sure that filing their license isn’t what they view as what makes them married. And in the very personal, in-your-heart, in-your-religion sorts of ways, it isn’t. I mean, I’m not even sure who sent our license in to be filed, I know someone did but I remain murky, 20-odd years later, if it was me, my husband, one of our mothers, my sister; if you paid me I couldn’t tell you.
But I know that it was filed, because I have our certified copy of it, and I’m aware that should there ever be a question, it will be that piece of paper which matters. The well-worn ring on my finger and the attestations of those who were present and all my assertions of marriage are completely meaningless if I can’t offer up that license. In the eyes of the government, of the IRS, of our insurance company and on and on, we’re not married because we took vows in a church. They couldn’t care less about that.
This is true, but the concept of doing away with marriage and moving everyone to a civil union is using a bazooka to kill a housefly. It’s overkill. It’s unnecessary. And it’s only ever suggested because people think we need to acquiesce to the position of those who wish to continue the practice of marriage inequality/ Those people do not need nor deserve nor merit nor warrant that acquiesence. They do not have any rational standing to demand that the law capitulate to their demand that marriage only include those people that they like. Moving to an “all civil unions, all the time” situation serves no legitimate or needed purpose. Equality for everyone does serve a legitimate and needed purpose. All of these counterproposals and let’s call this that and that a fish and a fish a bicycle proposals only muddy the water and divert the focus from what’s true and what’s right.
You missed the part where I thought “I got mine” was more important than the right thing to do. I don’t think that marriage rights should be taken away from atheists, people in mixed marriages, the non-religious, people who hold that marriage is a secular social contract, or anyone else who might prefer a simple marriage certificate.
The only way I can get married is through the influence of a Justice of the Peace working with the state, man. My religion doesn’t do it. And I see no useful purpose served into factionalising society such that there is no neutral way of recognising a marriage in any case; there’s already enough issue with some people arguing that marriages performed by priests of minority religions and certified with the state aren’t ‘real’ without doing away with the means by which people can demonstrate that they’re lying.
This is just false.
If you go back to the beginnings of civilization, marriage was a social contract. The ancient Egyptians, considered the most religious people in the ancient world, had no gods involved in their marriage contracts or, for that matter, their divorce proceedings. They, like common folk many other places, got married by throwing a party and shacking up together, with the awareness and support of their community. (Divorce, on the other hand, occasionally involved lawyers.)
If you want to talk about Europe exclusively, the majority of people who got married outside the upper classes jumped a broom or just shacked up together. The church, indeed the government, generally only cared if there was property involved. Which in most cases, there wasn’t.
Northern Piper did the research on the subject of English Common Law about six months ago. The post at http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3935253&highlight=Marriage+England#post3935253 pretty much traces the history of how the English church wound up developing the influence that the godbotherers are claiming today as a law of nature (as well as the legacy of why the government is now involved in the States).
Marriage has always been about forming families with the support of the surrounding community. These days, the only common factor in community is having the same government (though some people would dispute that too); in the absence of a room big enough to invite the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts plus friends in to have a party and witness me shacking up, I want to be able to register my marriage – not some domestic partnership or civil union, my marriage – in that common room held by all the people in my local community.
My bolding. You mean Repub lackeys like her?
Well, ignoring the sarcasm in favor of the larger point, since Schwarznegger made it pretty clear that he was opposed to gay marriage, period (like all good disciples of Mr. Rove) and not simply Newsom’s tactics in SF, I’d have to say no, unless you’ve got some quote from Feinstein to suggest that she’s similarly antimarriage and not just troubled by what Newsom has done.
That Feinstein has come down on the wrong side of this doesn’t mean that Arnold isn’t kowtowing. Very sloppy on your part, John.
I don’t believe that Feinstein is on record either way. She has stated in the past when asked the question directly that she “doesn’t answer hypotheticals”. So I’d say that means she’s either against it or too much of a political coward to announce her support. Take your pick.
But who needs Feinstein when the vast majority of Dems (at the federal level) are on record as being against gay marriage.
So your insistence that someone being against gay marriage is evidence of their being a “disciple of Rove” is laughable on the face of it. Unless you consider Kerry, Dean, Edwards, Gephardt, and Lieberman to be among those disciples. Or perhaps the 30-odd Democratic Senators who voted for the DOMA, not to mention the 100+ Democratic Congressmen, and President Bill Clinton (he was a Democrat, in case you forgot) who signed it into law.
It’s sloppy on the part of the person who made the accusation w/o a shred of evidence. Arnold has always been on record as being against gay marriage. Kowtowing means that he really isn’t against it, but is just towing the line to placate the far right. If you have evidence that he’s actually in favor of gay marriage, but is playing his political cards in the anti camp, let’s see it.
If anything, one would think that it’s the Democrats who don’t support gay marriage who are “kowtowing” to the right.
I’m not entirely sure you’re reading my posts very closely. I was vague the first time, but I think I was pretty clear the second. I don’t believe conservative countries are more likely to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in a foreign country. I do believe that any country that recognizes same-sex marriage – a growing number – will likely recognize a same-sex marriage the way it tends to recognize a heterosexual marriage.
There is no guarantee that a civil union will be recognized from country to country, even when both countries have same-sex civil unions. And it’s likely that, say, a civil union performed in Quebec will not translate into a marriage or anything else if the partners relocate to the Netherlands or Belgium. Those countries will recognize a gay marriage performed in Ontario, though.
I think it’s silly to accept a compromise that abridges our rights, when our opponants have neither a legal nor ethical leg to stand on. The truth is not always in the middle. If one side argues for discrimination, and the other side oppposes it, then the the truth is not “some discrimination.”
It’s a little late to be thinking about that now. There’s a whole body of international law now that deals with marriage, including commity agreements. If we reject the term “marriage” at this point, and go over to “civil union,” then begins the long and messy process of getting every country that has same-sex unions to recognize the same-sex civil unions from other countries, working out whether a civil union in one country is a marriage in another, etc.
The word “marriage” is a legal term, and has legal weight going back to beginnings of codified laws. It’s been a legal term longer than it’s been a religious one. Check out the link above to Northern Piper’s research. Your asking us to start a legal nightmare because a group of loud conservative Christians suddenly fancy themselves linguists.
We already have that. It’s called “marriage,” and that term as a legal history. If religious groups don’t like to associate their marriages with ours, fine. They can use a different term for it. After all, they have the problem, not us.
And you havwe my thanks for always being in these threads and for your cogent arguments.
I have an great aunt who had to have a hysterectomy when she was in her twenties. After that, she met and married a man she’s been together with now for more than 50 years.
If marriage is really about reproduction, as the anti-gay-marriage crowd claims, then her marriage isn’t real either. Yet, everyone points to my aunt an uncle as the example of the happy, long-lasting marriage.
*U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein scolded SF Mayor Gavin Newsom. “If you don’t like a law, the way our system works, you try to change it. If you believe the law is unconstitutional, you bring the case to court, and it is up to a court of law to interpret the law.” … U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, running for re-election, said, “My opinion is that state law is fair and appropriate because it gives equal rights and responsibilities to all citizens.” *
So Feinstein is at least with Arnold on the mechanics of what is happening in San Fran. And Boxer’s against gay marriage altogether. Of course, Boxer faces reelection this year…
Exactly. Politicians reflect, in their positions, the will of their constituents. These politicians have put their finger to the wind of public opinion, and determined if they vote for or actively support laws that provide for gay marriage, they will quite likely lose their next election.