A shining symbol

[smiley_kiley]

Last night, I decided to walk home to try to clear my head from the events of the past week.

As I walked past U.N. Plaza, I stopped in my tracks. It wasn’t the pervasive stench of Homeless Person that stopped me; it was the sight of City Hall.

I detoured down the plaza and took a seat at the James Lick monument. I sat and stared at City Hall, awash

Comments

[luckykid13]

I am going to preface this with the fact that I support everyone's right to marry. I am pissed about prop 8 and am not taking it lying down.

With that said, why do you care so much about getting "officially" married?

I understand that you guys do not want to father children. You can legally take care of power of attorney, and your families love and accept the both of you from what I can tell, so there doesn't seem to be any problem with either side disrupting the wills or other legal terms of any contract you decide upon.

So, besides the public validation and the financial benefits, why the big deal? Isn't it just buying into the whole idea that the only way to have a valid relationship and valid love is by getting married and living by the status quo?

Does your mother feel that if you don't get married you will forever be "alone"- I would think that isn't the case- your commitment to each other is quite visible, but maybe I am wrong.

Is your behavior in, or your rules around, your relationship going to change?

Before May, {ed: I may have the wrong month here} I never heard you talking about having a ceremony to celebrate your commitment to each other. So were you waiting for public and government validation to do so? It is only then valid? Is that the only time your family and friends would come out to support and celebrate your commitment?

I am curious, is all. I don't agree with the ban- in any state, but I also don't completely comprehend the hordes of gay folks rushing to get married and slip into the status quo when their lives are anything but.

[likethecandybar]

I can't speak for Ed but being one of the 18,000 couples that did get married since June I can tell you from my prespective. When the state passed the domestic partnership law, jeffla and I very quickly moved to be domestic parnters. If you're not familiar with what that involves - it involved us walking into a Mail Boxes Etc and having some random person at the counter notarize our signatures on a form we printed from the internet and then mailing that form into the state. Then a few months later we got a certificate in the mail from the state saying that we were legally recognized domestic partners. To have your relationship status validated in some clerk's office and treated as no more special then any other piece of paperwork that went across that person's desk is not only the epitome of unromantic...it's demoralizing. When Jeff and I got married we did so on the first full day it was legal - which happened to be our 8th anniversay. We didn't invite friends of family - we just wanted to do it on that day because of the fact that the historic moment was already a day of celebration for us. So we got up and went to the courthouse oursleves that morning. Neither of us expected it to have the impact on us that it would. But to stand up that day in front of a government official and be given the same opportunity to exchange vows and have it recognized by the government as valid meant that we weren't just a piece of paper in the mail to be processed like a traffic ticket. It meant that we were accepting the rights and responsibilities conferred on us by state in the contract of marriage. It meant that we could no longer just send in a $10 check and another form and dissolve our relationship as if it never existed. It meant that for better or worse, for richer or for poorer and in sickness or in health our relationship was finally just as valid in eyes of the law as every straight couple's always has been. It strengthened my commitment to Jeff immediately in ways that I'm still feeling the impact. It made me want to fight harder now because Ed and Tom and every other gay couple deserves to have that moment.

[smiley_kiley]

I'm SO glad you asked.

Until the Supreme Court ruling last spring, I never once considered getting married. Ask Tom - in the very early days of our relationship, I told him right upfront that I didn't want a wedding or commitment ceremony or anything like that. It "wasn't my style." (maybe I didn't want to admit to wanting something I couldnt have? Or that to do a commitment ceremony felt like "playing house" - it's not a real wedding, just a pretend wedding? Who knows.)

However, once the court ruling came down, the magnitude of it really sank in. Here was a court saying that I was equal, WE were equal, to any hetero person or couple. Why should I have to go through alternative legal routes to secure rights that I should be entitled to? Why can't i get that legal certificate from the state that automatically entitles me to all those special privileges that straight couples have?

From then on, it became about equality for me.

As for why we didn't rush to City Hall before Election Day... that's REALLY not my style! If we are going to celebrate our union and the equality of that union to theirs, well by gawd, I want all of the special people in our lives to celebrate with us! More importantly, I want to marry Tom knowing that the right is securely ours, which I know may be a long time to come. But, everyone is different and so are their reasons for wanting the right to marry.