I doubt my state will be on the bandwagon (oh Texas, you big loveable lummox)….which makes me sad.

I always say, if you don’t want to get gay married, then don’t. Problem solved. After all, I don’t like cigarettes, so I don’t smoke them. If others choose to smoke, that’s their decision. I’m not going to campaign to get cigarettes made illegal. By the same token, I’m old enough to remember the end of the interracial marriage controversy in vague terms. Even as a small child I got the point that just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s mandatory. And to this day any church in the country can turn away any couple they don’t want to marry for whatever reason they may have. The law just says that if two consenting adults who are not legally ineligible choose to marry, someone has to do the job. Marriage may or may not have a spiritual element for the couple involved, but it’s invariably a legal contract.

Fabrisse, thanks for the update on the Wisconson situation. Baby steps are still steps. I won’t sneeze at them. I do know that New Jersey has a formal Civil Union option in place, because I actually saw it featured on an episode of Whose Wedding Is It, Anyway? with two men who are wild about musical theater and insisted on composing musical vows. That’s not something I’d actually recommend, what with the way many of us get a bit choked up on our wedding days.

And believe me, I’m definitely voting against Prop 8.

Massachusetts did it the same way. The lawsuit appealed to Yankee fairness about licensing laws.

There was a strategy in place which was intended to be played closer to the Massachusetts decision. Vermont having been the first with Civil Unions (Connecticut was first without a court order to do so) and New Hampshire having also approved the Civil Unions, there was going to then be a pressure to take it to New York, relying on regional pressure, under the “full faith and credit” proviso of the US Constitution. (On a side note New Jersey also has full Civil Union rights according Wikipedia — so it must be true. *G*)

The Mayor of San Francisco unilaterally declaring that his city could marry people without having gone through the legal hoops ended up really fouling the strategy. I hope Prop 8 is defeated in California. If it is, then that combined with “the New England Pressure” strategy could bring New York in next.

I’d also like to mention Wisconsin. The state does not permit gay Civil Unions or marriage, but they are the first state to declare that they will honor the “full faith and credit” section of the Constitution and acknowledge the unions and marriages of any gay couple moving to Wisconsin from another state.

It may not be cutting edge. It may only be a baby step. But when its compared with the hatred and vehemence encountered in many other states, I think it’s a quiet bravery. It may also be, as it was with miscegenation so many years ago, the first tiny step in getting gay marriage acknowledged nationally.

The opposition to this ruling drives me crazy. Marriage as sanctioned by the state is simply a certain kind of legal contract entered into by two consenting adults. No one is suggesting we force religious institutions to marry homosexual couples or that we force everyone accept the morality of marriages between homosexuals. Heck, religious institutions and private citizens are still free to discriminate against and dislike gay couples.

What went down in Conn. is a legal rights issue — not a moral one! — and there’s no logical reason why two consenting adults should not be able to enter into a state sanctioned legal contract with one another, regardless of what’s in their pants.