I haven’t written about Prop 8 yet.
Nothing can dim my utter euphoria at the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, which will have much greater consequences for our country and the world than the passage of Prop 8. But Prop 8’s passage is very disappointing nonetheless.
Still, all is not lost. California’s gay couples will still have the option of domestic partnerships that approximate marriage in all but name. This is not ideal, but ain’t beanbag. Same-sex couples can get married in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and probably next year in New Jersey. New York recognizes same-sex marriage, as long as the marriage is performed elsewhere.
Also, it’s ridiculously easy to change the California constitution. As attitudes on marriage equality continue to progress, same-sex marriage in California is more likely to become permanently legal. We’ll just have to continue to fight, that’s all.
Gay rights groups have filed lawsuits against Prop 8. I don’t think this is a good idea. Not only is it awful public relations, but it will probably lose.
The reason civil unions and domestic partnerships are not good enough, and will never be good enough, is because of the intangible advantage marriage brings: social respect. There are tangible advantages to marriage as well, such as: while everyone knows what marriage is, civil unions and domestic partnerships are harder to explain to the hospital administrator when you need to visit your partner there. But in a large part, this is about the respect that equality brings.
The defeat of Prop 8 shows that we don’t have enough respect yet. (And the irony that black Californians voted 70-30 in favor of Prop 8 is painful.) Which comes first: respect, or the right to marriage? Or does one reinforce the other?
Time is on our side. It will take longer to achieve success than we thought.
But time is on our side.
Finally, Dale Carpenter has written the best thing I’ve seen so far about all this.
I feel heartsick about this. The worst thing is the lies that were told about how Proposition 8 supposedly presented a “threat” to families and children. A few years ago, I could have been detached. But they’re talking about my friends. As if their love could ever harm anyone, especially a child. As a Jew, I know from history what it’s like to have lies told about you, how dangerous that can be, how difficult it can be to bring truth to the forefront. I know what you’re saying about time being on our side. But it still hurts. I still have to ask: How can they do this to my friends, who are so good and decent and caring and gentle? It really hurts, much more than I ever imagined that it would.
Now that the Democrats have taken over both houses of the State Legislature, we may see gay marriage in New York in the not-too-distant future. The Republican Senate was the only real obstacle.
I was in Beijing Airport with no internet access when I learned about Obama’s victory, but of course Prop 8 didn’t make it on the radar there. I couldn’t find anything in the Times about a result and it wasn’t till I got home that heard the icky news.
I would disagree mildly that domestic partnership “approximates marriage in all but name,” even if we put the federal issue aside on the many rights that marriage provides that domestic partnership, as a purely state-based institution, cannot.
The requirements for who can enter into domestic partnership differs from those for marriage, and the procedures for entering into a domestic partnership differs in kind and tone from those for marriage. I’d wager even a marriage by a justice of the peace conveys a solemnity far different from signing the domestic partnership form and mailing it back in.
On the legal front, I’ve read and heard many stories about employers, medical staff and organizations and others, not treating domestic partnership correctly simply because they don’t understand it, even in California where it’s existed a while. Everyone knows what marriage means, but if your partner is dying in that hospital room, trying to explain your right to be there and to make decisions on the basis of your domestic partnership could mean the different between night and day, literally between life and death, in the amount of time it takes to educate the administrators.
In terms of financial impact, they’re different. Jeff and I are taxed on any domestic partner-related benefits we receive from our employers, while married couples are not (granted, that gets back largely to the federal issue).
And psychologically they’re very different, obviously. Recently Andrew Sullivan had included a poignant note from a California reader noting that while he had been accepted and treated kindly by his partner’s family the many years they’d been together and in a domestic partnership, it was only after they were married last week that his partner’s sister and family finally said “welcome to the family.”
I’m not saying that we won’t go ahead and apply for domestic partnership now that the right to marriage has been taken away from us. Faced with a choice between some rights and recognition and none at all, I might well choose the former, and I wouldn’t suggest that anyone should not do so. But personally I don’t consider it anything at all like marriage, and a part of me isn’t sure that I should settle accept anything except full equality. It’s a decision Jeff and I are now faced with, so it’s not academic.