Viva la Republica!

From 365gay:

Legislation will be presented in Argentina's Parliament this fall that would give same-sex couples all of the rights of marriage.

Currently the law limits marriage to opposite-sex couples. However the country does afford gay and lesbian couples some rights including inheritance, adoption and survivor pensions.

Two regions of the country permit civil unions - the province of Río Negro and the federal district of Buenos Aires.

In 2003 Rio Negro became the first area in South America to permit civil unions.

A poll released this week shows that three-quarters of those surveyed in the capital believe gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry. Only 25 percent disagreed.

I'm of Argentine descent (first generation), so this is awesome news to me.

Note to Canada's government - Our Canadian brothers and sisters aren't ATMs

Really.

A ruling is expected in the largest gay and lesbian class action suit in the history of... man this is huge. The Canadian government gave widowed partners in same-sex couples the pensions of their partners when it opted for full and equal marriage - for all those whose partners died after January 1998. Now those surviving partners of people who died before that date are suing for the pensions and accrued interest going all the way back to 1985. The total is over $100 million Canadian, which is about $78 American (man that joke never gets old).

I'd say there's a good chance that Team Q will win. From the Globe and Mail:

In two lower court rulings, Ottawa lost its argument that survivor benefits should only be extended to gays widowed after 1997. The judges agreed with the roughly 400 gays and lesbians in the class-action suit that the cutoff date should coincide with the Charter coming into effect.

In the latest decision in November, a panel of justices at the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the view of the Ontario Superior Court that the government's 1998 cutoff wasn't "rational."

That's three courts so far....

Canada is, of course, way ahead on the gays-are-real-human-beings game than the US is. Can you imagine a suit like this happening here? I mean, we have an international reputation for being letigious, but we not so recently had to win the right to exist. So this amount of money, while it's huge, could have been paid out evenly throughout the last 22 years so that it wouldn't be so much all at once. Instead, the Canadian government treated its own citizens like ATMs all these years, took their tax money and pension contributions, and kept the real and material benefits of paying those taxes away from a segment of their population. They made their bed, and now they have to sleep in it.

Also, one thing I love about Canadian newspapers is that they refer to their supreme court as "the Supreme Court of Canada", as if there's a need to clarify.

Illinois's moving on up

Or at least proposing legislation to do so. From 365gay:

Illinois state Rep. Greg Harris filed legislation Thursday that would permit same-sex couples in the state to marry.

Harris (D-Chicago), who is gay and represents a district with a large LGBT community admits he faces an uphill battle. Still he believes it is a matter of basic civil rights and that the people of Illinois are behind him.

"From my community, we believe we should have the full, equal rights as our heterosexual siblings to marry who we choose, and we should call it marriage. We should not call it civil union," Harris said.

The legislation would do three things. First, it would repeal the state law limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. Second it would give same-sex couples the right to marry. And thirdly it would allow clergy opposed to gay marriage the right to refuse to conduct a same-sex wedding.

That third part's a nice touch, really. That silly argument that recognizing gay marriages will force churches to perform same-sex weddings is beyond moronic - many churches currently refuse to perform certain marriages, like LDS churches don't marry non-Mormons - but this legislation at least addresses it in a way to make that talking point work a little more easily. The facts are already on our side; it's all a discursive battle. Control the narrative, gain equality....

(Crossposted from bilerico)

Colombia's moving on up

Like the Jeffersons, to the metaphorical East Side of equal rights for same-sex couples.... No, no, no, silly analogy, good TV show.

Anyway, the Colombian Supreme Court ruled yesterday that same-sex couples should have the same property rights as heterosexual couples. This should not be confused with civil unions or marriage, but it's a step in the right direction. Here's a bit more:

The Constitutional Court ruled late Wednesday that if a gay couple of two years separates, the assets accumulated during the relationship will be divided between the two, and in the case of death, the survivor will receive all the assets.

The article goes on to describe the next steps that LGBT groups are taking there to advance the rights of same-sex couples, a step-by-step approach to eventually achieve full equality.

365gay has more:

Under the law same-sex couples who wanted to share their property had had to create a business, put the property in the company name, and list the domestic partners as joint shareholders in the company. But, even that did not always guarantee that in the case of death of one of the partners the shared possessions would go to the surviving one.

What a novel idea. It's interesting to me that the bond that people develop gets recognized as a contract here in the US, an agreement between two people that does not exist on its own. Rather that bond is a way for people to negotiate their actions as individuals. Gays in Colombia have taken this in another direction, moved well beyond setting their bond as a valid contract between two individuals and made it an entity of its own by incorporating it, with its own identity and rights.

While I'm sure that the primary reason for coming up with that idea was the same reason behind the fight for same-sex marriage in the US (protecting one's family), I can't help but wonder how something like this could play out with the highly-libertarian ethos of the US. If you look at people as individuals, and marriages as contracts, where does that leave love and desire? Up in the air, not legally recognized or recognizable, that's where. It would be an absolute denial of reality to say that such bonds don't exist or aren't important, but isn't that the logical end of the "Marriage is a contract for people to start making babies" argument?

This ruling is based on such an understanding of relationships. The ruling did not give the rights of heterosexuals to queer people. It gave some of the rights of opposite-sex couples to same-sex couples. Indeed, that is the ultimate goal of the US movement for same-sex marriage, but the reliance on the Fourteenth Amendment and it's equal protection of individual people under the law might preclude the possibility of such a goal. Gay and lesbian people are hurt by their relationships not being recognized even though we are recognized as existing, so maybe adopting an ontology that can accept relationships and bonds as entities separate of the individuals who form them can help to articulate the hurt caused by the dismissal of such rights.

Gay marriage odds-n-ends

Lots of developments this week, probably because this is the beginning of the year and all the legislative bodies are decided what will be debated this year. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these measures in our favor just fizzled out. The ones against us, though, have to be done before 2008, of course.

• A Michigan appeals court decided that the anti-marriage amendment passed this past year in that state denies any benefit to same-sex couples who work for the state or state universities.
• Two Democrats in Connecticut announced their intention to propose a bill to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.
• Two bills (an anti-marriage amendment and a DOMA) were defeated in committee in New Mexico. Shocker, it fell along that party line.
• An anti-marriage amendment passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in Indiana, once again along that party line.
• In New Hampshire, a Republican will introduce a bill for "Contractual Cohabitation" for both same and opposite sex partners.
• The Wyoming Senate passed a bill to prevent recognition of same-sex marriages performed out-of-state, because their own ban on same-sex marriage, the federal DOMA, and Massachusetts' own law preventing out-of-staters from marrying there aren't enough.
• Hawaiian Democrats introduced bills in the state House and Senate for civil unions.
• Christine Quinn, the New York City Council Speaker, introduced a bill to patch up the city's domestic partnership registry.

Gathering stuff...

I'm getting everything together to start posting today, and I'll do a bit more than usual to make up for the lack of posting yesterday. I'm a second-shift blogger, and I fully intended to post yesterday, but a bottle of Skol vodka got the better of me. :)

The first post I was putting together was a summary of state marriage/civil union/domestic partnership developments from the week. I generally don't like to post about things like that because the constant relegation of agency to the government, which queer people on some level have to do regarding forming relationships, is demeaning. When framed in terms of being allowed to get married in such-and-such a state, we're relinquishing our ability to determine our own sexual destinies. The only other beings in our society that are told with whom they can have sex are dogs, horses, and livestock. This is why I prefer framing the issue as the state or federal governments respecting our relationships - they're going to exist either way.

With that in mind, I still see a lot of winning and losing rhetoric surrounding marriage equality. While it's true that we can win or lose some specific benefits from the state that have a material impact on our lives, it's not true that we could actually lose the overall war unless we let it happen. The stated goal of the anti-gay movement is theoretically impossible. They say they want to eliminate same-sex relationships (they already exist in abundance), prevent queer people from becoming parents (we already are in many ways outside of same-sex marriage), and, ultimately, prevent people from being gay (fat chance of that happening).

Since their stated goals are impossible, it leaves us to decipher their real goals. First, they want to materially harm us just because they plain don't like us. You can see it in their "gays are going to Hell" mentality because the Bible doesn't say anything about gays going to Hell. Sure, there are passages about male prostitutes or male-on-male rapists going to Hell, or not inheriting the Kingdom of God, but gay and lesbian people as we know them? I think the reason that they say we're going to Hell is more an outgrowth of them just putting anyone they don't like in Hell, which people have been doing ever since Dante's Divine Comedy. The result of that guttural antipathy is to be as mean and demeaning as they can be to us in this world.

Second, they want us to disappear, also because they just plain don't like us. They say that we're taking over television, when we don't even get represented in a fair 5% of TV relationships. They say we're throwing our sexuality in their faces, but considering the lengths most queer people go to to hide their sexual orientation from others, if they think we're throwing it around, it can only be because they get stuck on whatever small representation of queerness that they might have the occasion to see.

So while their first real goal is definitely possible, and is definitely worth fighting against, we shouldn't tie our self-worth to such legislation. I know that you're thinking, Well, duh, Alex, thanks for the heads-up. But every time I read or hear queer people getting into heated discussions about the state of marriage equality law, I have to wonder how much of our self-esteem is whittled away by our opponents' attempts to disrespect our relationships.

Anyway, this is (partly) why I don't post every little detail of marriage equality news here as it happens.

Welcome to Bizarro Canada, Population: 300,000,000

Read this from the Sacramento Bee:

Freddie Oakley, Yolo County's clerk-recorder, will distribute "certificates of inequality" to same-sex couples on Valentine's Day to protest the state's ban on gay marriage.

She said she designed the certificates herself as a way to "ease her soul" over having to deny marriage licenses to gays and lesbians.

Oakley's "Certificate of Inequality" claims that California wrongly deprives gays and lesbians of the right to marry.

"I issue this Certificate of Inequality to you because your choice of marriage partner displeases some people whose displeasure is, apparently, more important than principles of equality."

Contrast that with this from the Canadian Press via 365gay.com:

The rights of a same-sex couple to marry faced off Wednesday against the rights of a Saskatchewan marriage commissioner who said he couldn't perform the service because of religious beliefs. But Nichols, a 70-year-old devout Baptist, testified that performing same-sex marriages goes directly against all he knows. "My religious upbringing, my religious beliefs don't allow me to do same-sex marriage," he said.

It's like looking at opposite land. The US has a heterosexual woman who wants to marry gay and lesbian couples but can't, Canada has a heterosexual man who doesn't want to marry gay and lesbian couples but can't not.

The difference is that the American woman still does her job but finds a creative way to protest. The Canadian man just doesn't do his job. This is a hurdle that we will have to overcome: our straight allies are honest people who generally play by the rules, the other side doesn't.

Nichols could just quit, which he should if he doesn't want to do his job. While I would be weirded out to get one of Oakley's Certificates of Inequality, it'd be good to know that at least one person there is on our side.

Oh, John, how did something so right turn so wrong?

From the Huffington Post:

It's very easy for me to say, 'Civil unions? Yes. Partnership benefits? Yes. Obviously all the other anti-discrimination stuff? Yes.' It's a jump for me to get to gay marriage, and I haven't yet gotten across that bridge. But it is something I struggle with, and that's just the truth.

If Edwards becomes president in '08, then America will have truly elected the opposite of GWB, an Indecider-in-Chief. Yes, because a relatively simple social issue that has been in the spotlight for over ten years is so very hard to come to any sort of conclusion about.

Seriously, if the Democratic nominee in 2008 doesn't support equality in marriage, we're voting Republican to send a message.

That message will of course be "Fuck you, cruel world!"

To procrastinate: Buying an annulment dress

Man, they dodged that bullet. The Massacusetts State Assembly has decided to put off voting on a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage, so it can't be voted on until 2010 at the soonest. And really, the kids are happy. Not that any of them are married in the Bay State (hell, they make a one-night stand seem like a long-term commitment); they just don't want Artur Finkelstein back on the market. Can you imagine running into the most Machiavellian GOP consultant at a leather bar? *awkward*