Are you sure you didn't post a pic of Eugene Levy by mistake?
Posted on 08/27/2003 12:18:23 PM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
ITHACA--According to Maureen Kelly, the setting in which she recently got married was "slightly cheesy."
She and her partner, Lisa Maurer, tied the knot at the Niagara Fallsview Wedding Chapel atop the Minolta Tower on July 15. But this setting was decidedly better than the notoriously hoaky chapels on the American side of the Niagara River.
"We hopped the border and got a little more class," Kelly says.
By wedding in Canada, the same-sex couple also got a legally recognized marriage.
In the last few years, same-sex couples have made incremental progress in their efforts to get their partnerships legally recognized by governments - and obtain the rights already afforded heterosexual couples. In 2000, Kelly and Maurer went to Vermont after then-Gov. Howard Dean signed a bill allowing civil unions. But recent decisions by high courts in Ontario and British Columbia gave them an opportunity to finally make their relationship official.
"Basically, this sort of an opportunity has not been afforded to people who live in North America before," Maurer says. "These are marriages that are recognized by the entire country of Canada right now and that's an incredible thing. That is something I did not think I would live to see - and I am not that old."
Holland approved same-sex marriages in 2000; Belgium did the same earlier this year.
Normally, Americans who marry in foreign countries can return to the States and have their unions recognized by their home government. But open hostility to same-sex marriages in the United States has put couples such as Kelly and Maurer in legal limbo.
"That's the big fat question mark right now. What does that mean when we come in?" Kelly says. "We just kind of need to make the choice to act 'as if'." From now on, she says, she will check "married" in legal and other documentation. "That's how we slowly chip away at some of the inequity that treats us as separate and not quite equal," she says.
Social conservatives have been outraged and chagrined by the decisions in Canada, as well as a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that declared that anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional.
Recently, President Bush told the media - without much prompting - that he believes marriage is meant to be between a man and a woman, and that White House lawyers were looking at ways to codify this belief. But Kelly and Maurer - and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle - say legislation that blocks same-sex marriages already exists, pointing to the Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed by President Clinton in 1996.
Commentators said Bush was simply looking to shore up his religious conservative base of support. "Unfortunately this becomes not a game of justice and what is right but a game of reelection and appeasing a political party," Kelly says.
Some may ask why same-sex couples want government-sanctioned marriages.
According to Kelly and Maurer, there are 1,049 rights that married couples get at the federal level. Absent a federally recognized marriage, "I couldn't get my partner of 10 years' body," Kelly says. "I don't want special rights; I want the basic same privileges that my peers do based on the fact that they are heterosexual."
Kelly, 32, was asked why she wanted to talk publicly about her marriage. "Lisa and I are both activists at heart," she responds. Kelly feels that, by speaking about her marriage, she can help dismantle societal prejudices against same-sex unions. "The only way that change seems to happen is that people are introduced to people who are human," says Kelly, who works as the director of education and training for Planned Parenthood.
Maurer, 39, is the founding coordinator of the Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Education, Outreach and Services at Ithaca College. Maurer was recently awarded the Tompkins County Human Rights Commission's award for her efforts toward securing human rights for gay and lesbian people.
Maurer says she remembers feeling "devastated" when the Supreme Court upheld the sodomy laws in 1986. She believes that the court changed its mind because justices realized later that they knew gay people. "Some of those people have been through clerks, colleagues and family members coming out to them," she says. Maurer says the single biggest predictor of whether someone is accepting of gays is whether they know somebody who is homosexual.
Kelly says her family is Irish Catholic, so she wasn't sure how they would react to her sexual orientation. "When I came out it was really scary. God love them - they all showed up at my wedding and they cried their eyes out [because] it was a ceremony of love and affection," she says. "It was no longer just about the general fears about things that are out there, it was about Maureen and Lisa."
Ah, the stuff that fantasies are made of...
(Sorry, my mind's wandering.)
Are you sure you didn't post a pic of Eugene Levy by mistake?
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1. Loot (marriage carries legal and financial benefits, except for taxes).
2. Approval. More than #1 these queer folks want the rest of us to shout out loud that it's OK to be queer.
It ain't OK to be queer. It's unnatural. At best it's sort of pathetic.
If the ceremony (God forbid) took place in St. Peter's Basilica it would still be cheesy.
If I were one of those looking on such a travesty, I would want to go home and take a bath.
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