Saturday, May 31, 2008

I'm Getting Married

and it's not quite sinking in yet at all.

I haven't even told my friends yet so consider this an inside scoop. The California Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriages should be allowed, and though we've hesitated before (we're both property owners and we feared it would complicate life too much being in that legal limbo of Registered Domestic Partners) it seems important now to stand up and be counted.

We haven't told people about it as come November it might be anulled by a constitutional amendment that is going to be on the ballot. Because for some reason we are still the ongoing political flavor of the month. However it appears to be getting less so. In this article in the SF Chronicle they talk about how younger generations who have grown up with friends who've identified as LGBT their whole lives don't see what the big deal is at all and overwhelmingly support same-gender marriage. The graph here really shows the dramatic change.

At first I was thinking that getting a constitution amendment might be difficult as I mistakenly thought it took 2/3 of the vote to pass. But it turns out that in Calif there is the idea of revising the constitution (which takes 2/3 vote) and amending it which if proposed as an initiative only takes a simple majority (ref.) (I need to write a separate blog entry on how I hate the initiative process - I'm not a professional lawmaker why am I being asked to be one?)

So we may get the fun of being married for a few months. Anyone wishing to take over as political football is welcome to do so. The cool thing is to see the writing on the wall. It's inevitable that same-sex marriage will be legalized in Calif over time as the voter attitude shifts, likely other blue states will eventually follow suit. After a considerably longer time the Federal laws should shift once people see that nothing horrible has happened. Wonder if I'll live to see it, given how dramatically things have changed I might well indeed.

In the meantime, I get to wear a really cool ring. :)

4 comments:

Elf said...

OMG, this is what I get for falling behind on my blog reading. Wow! Congratulations! So were you first in line? How exciting!

-ellen

Ellen said...

I must admit to sticking it in here to see if anyone noticed as we haven't told a lot of people but it's more an open secret than anything.

Phylis Lyons and Del Martin (together 50+ years) are the first in line.

We're thinking Sept or so.

Ellen

Elf said...

Yup, I've been hearing & reading about those two. What a hard world, to live together that long and not be able to get married even when you wanted to.

While all of those discussions go on, I am often reminded of earlier battles that I've read about (too young to really be aware of them earlier) that made big impressions on me: Interracial marriages (how stupid was banning that? and who defined "races" anyway?) and the male & female students at Harvard or somewhere back in the '60s (I'm pretty sure) who moved into an apartment together without being married and were expelled and made national headlines for their action.

We're getting there--slowly--

Anyway, September should be lovely for a wedding. And time to plan something special, too.

-ellen

Elf said...

OK, here's references (I *know* you wanted them ;-) ):

Interracial note: These laws, like all other anti-miscegenation laws, were overturned following a state judicial decision in California (Perez v. Sharp 1948) and a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Loving v. Virginia). Even though the results of these cases made interracial marriages legal, the negative societal perspective on such unions has been slow to change.

Cohabitation reference.