I know what I HOPE the increasing number of cities performing gay marriages will accomplish, but I’m not sure what I THINK will happen. Part of me says that the sheer numbers of people getting married will send an undeniable message to the political leaders and the inevitable legalization nationwide will happen sooner. Then sometimes I think it will bog the process down. How 'bout you?
I imagine they’ll make the brides and grooms, or whatever they’re referring to themselves as, rather happy.
Why should it accomplish anything else? The marriages are a beautiful thing and a symbol of something we haven’t seen in this country since long before my birth. That’s enough for me.
There is only one certainty among the possible outcomes – more money for lawyers.
Sometime soon these marriages will face legal challenges Will the IRS accept joint tax filings? Will various state governments accept the marriage for inheritance purposes? Family members inherit tax-free: non-family members do not. Will one partner have to pay alimony or child support in the event of a “divorce”? How does such a couple divorce if the state doesn’t recognize the marriage in the first place? What if they move to another state?
IANALawyer, but it may be that couples married in Massachusetts are on much stronger legal footing. I believe there are some constitutioinal provision guaranteeing that states recognize and accept accept the terms of other states. Gay couples in San Francisco, OTOH, may find their marriages invalidated or non-existent in the eyes of the law.
What will it accomplish? For one thing, relationships of sometimes 50+ years were validated for the first time legally. I’d have to say that’s a wonderful effect. I find it amusing that certain people think marriage is in trouble from those who want in rather than those who want out.
…it will give the newlyweds a feeling of being on equal footing with married heteros in terms of legitimacy, and I also hope it will convey all the legal rights that hetero spouses have.
My hope is that it takes the shock and awe away from the whole thing.
Already, it is becoming yesterday’s news…which I hope means it will lose the hot-button status by the time November comes around.
Perhaps calmer heads will prevail and see that it is indeed not one of the signs of the Apocalypse.
Plus, the more this happens in smaller states and smaller towns, the more people will realize this is not just a stunt by a few wackos in San Francisco - but that there are Gay and Lesbian people, even in your local neighborhoods, who deserve equal rights. It proably won’t sway the die-hard biblethumpers, but it might make at least some people take another critical look and see it for what it is…basic human rights.
By they way, is that a half full glass of water over there?
I see all these marriages as forcing the opposition to fully explain their positions. Before they allowed to simply state that it was wrong and that was that. Now that’s it’s coming fast they’re having to explain precisely what it is that bothers them about it. And I see it splitting their ranks from a generally solid wall against into 2 parts. One part is the fanaticals like Bush who are pushing a constitutional amendment. The other part are the moderates like Scwar…, the governor of California and they seem to be getting demoralized in their position by the vitriol of the far right and seem to be rethinking their position.
I don’t think this will happen but I’ve seen a few polls showing that more then 50% of people under 30 support gay marriage. It’s a long shot that having this older generation pushing changes to the constitution might push them to the polls in larger then normal numbers. We’ll see though.
It exposes the slippery slope we embarked on when we legalized inter-racial marriage. Personally I think the country started going to hell when we dumped tea in Boston Harbor, been down hill ever since.
I agree. When those gang fights erupted around Lexington and Concord, we should have called in the UN.
What sort of a question is that in the title? What should gay marriages accomplish? What should any marriage accomplish?
Happiness.
Short and simple answer: The same things that straight marriages accomplish.
No, it’s a legitimate question. Which boils down to:
Will the current spate of gay marriages, and the local elected officials leading them, lead to an greater acceptance of gays (I hate that term) and lesbians in the mainstream and a widening of their civil rights or will they be invalidated and go back to the status quo ante?
Or, more poetically, are we seeing a vox populi movement where the elected officials will have their hands forced or is it merely sound and fury…signifying nothing?
Wait…I feel a song coming on…
"Arms entwined…the chosen few…
Newspapers say…
Emotionally and spiritually, each individual marriage will have a wonderful uplifting effect on the couple. But that ain’t your question, is it?
To the extent it remains localized in San Francisco and New Paltz, it will have little effect, since mainstream America *expects * that kind of behavior from towns like that. If it moves out into other locales in sufficient mass (sorry, I can’t define what I mean by “sufficient”; I think I’ll know it when it happens), it will force the extremists out of the woodwork - we’ll know them by their placards. As the volume grows, the great silent majority, who I think have been pondering the whole thing without declaring themselves, will be forced to solidify their thinking on it. This will happen just in time for . . .
The eventuality that somebody will propose a Constitutional Amendment protecting the Marriage Rights of all consenting legal-aged couples regardless of gender. This will be gut-check time for all the well-meaning Christians who are apalled by the hate-filled rhetoric of the extreme right, but who feel it’s unseemly to publicly speak their faith.
Not to engage in hyperbole here, but the married couples of today are the Rosa Parks’s of this issue.
It will increase tourism in scenic New Jersey:
Well, as I go to a “more or less fundementalist” church, the gay marriage thing does not appear to be winning any more acceptance from fundementalists - and I doubt it is likely to. Maybe gay rights activists could be more convincing that it is sound social policy, but I think it winning legitimacy from especially anti-gay groups is rather unlikely. Many conservative churches are still opposed to premarital sex and dislike divorce.
Don’t worry, I’m not out to demonize those who are in favor of it, and there are quite a few things I regard as legitimate arguements in favor of gay marriage. Althoug I am personally not in favor of homosexual marriage (some other way for gay couples to obtain the same legal benefits is fine with me, though), my belief on what the government should do about it is that, since I know a lot of America holds differing beliefs, it ought to be decided on a federal level by Congress in a way that all the states must adhere to. I think the most important thing is to establish a uniform rule that reflects the will of the people - whether it’s gay marriage legal everywhere or banned in every state. Total chaos - gay marriage legal in one city and banned in the next one - is the worst possible compromise. I’d much rather have a common standard that does not reflect my own religious beliefs than the confusing legal patchwork this is threatening to become.
Maybe this post should have belonged in Great Debates.
Gay marriage will allow same-gender couples to finally and gloriously make an official, legal train wreck out of marriage the way other couples have. We’ll get to see:
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Men fighting men in bitter, tabloid-sensationalized Hollywood divorces and child custody battles.
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Lesbians hiring detectives to follow their cheating spouses to seedy downtown motels.
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Garish, shoddy, two-groom middle-class weddings in rented ballrooms where a DJ in a sequined bowtie spins “YMCA” and “Love Shack” as fat uncles do the twist and sweat profusely.
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Elton John in a wedding dress. Again.
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Poorly lit wedding-cake-in-face fiascos on “America’s Funniest Gay Wedding Videos.”
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Two-for-one tuxedo or bridal gown deals in wedding superstores.
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A new, exploitative marketing campaign by DeBeers, with the tagline “Tell him you’d marry him all over again…with the 25th Anniversary Mano-a-Mano Diamond Solitaire.”
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Loveless, uncommunicative relationships between spouses that have little in common other than a long-gone period of mutual attraction and insecurity, but gay.
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Episodes of COPS where a a domestic dispute in rural Illinois is broken up by cynical officers who have to explain to a butch woman in a “wife beater” tank top that they can arrest her whether her wife presses charges or not.
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Seven new seasons of “The Bachelor.”
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Young men pressured by overbearing mothers to “Just settle down and get married already, to that nice Jewish boy.”
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(your wedding nightmare here, but gay.)
In other words, the chance to be just like us regular folk, who have upheld the sanctity of marriage for millennia and lovingly maintained it as the foundation of civil society. But hey, maybe the floral arrangements will be better.
Seriously, I would hope homosexual marriage would bring us all closer to re-examining what we really mean when we decide to commit for life.
I think it’s pretty evident that most of these marriages, at the moment, probably don’t count. The people who are marrying have been in love for a long time and are well aware that their status is probably not changing because of these early acts of civil disobedience.
The question is pretty simple: What do you hope the marriages will accomplish in the big picture? Do you think it will just bring the issue to the forefront instead of leaving it “in the closet” where it’s been for decades? Do you think actual laws will be changed? Do you think their efforts are futile? Do you think the constitution will be changed because of the fear factor?
This all reminds me… I’ve been waiting for U2 to do a song about this, since pretty much every other controversial topic gets a U2 song.
Pride (In the Name of Love) 2004, maybe?
“Two men come in the name of love,
Two men from San Francisco…”
Heh.
It takes the Ban on Gay Marriages thing out of the realm of Protection from Theoretical Evil and converts it to being an attack on people. An attack on lovers, no less, people who just wanna get married. And now the Bad Meanies, representing the State, are going to try to shut them down?
Not since the 1960s has there been such a powerfuljuxtaposition!
(Not a president whose legacy is one Bush should seek to emulate, and now he’s got the LBJ thing going on two fronts, as it were)
I’m aware of the answers that the question probably expects but, I have my own agenda with this.
As a recently divorced man with two children, I have a chip on my shoulder with the whole divorce of marriage process that the government holds to a man’s head.
I’m sure that you’d search far a wide for a man that says “Oh, yea, my divorce settlement was perfectly fare. The government didn’t stand in the way of what I wanted one bit”.
It happens but, I’m sure most men with children who’ve been divorced have a bad taste in their mouth from this.
I’m hoping that same sex marriages will level the playing field when it comes to divorce.
When a same sex marriage wants to divorce and they happen to have children (by surrogate?) I want to see what the courts do!
Who’s the “Primarily Care Giver”? The “Mother”? Ok. Then the “other” mate is going to get fucked. I want to see a “women” play THAT part.
It should be fun to watch.