GLBT activists and their straight allies who have followed the legislative history on marriage, civil union, domestic partnership, etc. aren't fooled. The confusion of many Democratic and Republican voters, who have not paid close attention to it, only benefits politicians who try to get away with offering second-class marriage for second-class citizens while pretending that they are in favor of equality between straights and queers in civil matters and that they just want to preserve the term "marriage" for the sake of faith and tradition.
Moreover, the confusion benefits the most reactionary who try to prohibit not only marriage but also civil union, domestic-partnership benefits, etc. in a sweeping fashion while pretending that they are excluding GLBT individuals only from marriage. That's what the reactionaries in Ohio did, in fact. Ohio's Defense of Marriage Act includes the following language:
(3) The recognition or extension by the state of the specific statutory benefits of a legal marriage to nonmarital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes is against the strong public policy of this state. Any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of this state, as defined in section 9.82 of the Revised Code, that extends the specific statutory benefits of legal marriage to nonmarital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes is void ab initio. . . .
(4) Any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other state, country, or other jurisdiction outside this state that extends the specific benefits of legal marriage to nonmarital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes shall be considered and treated in all respects as having no legal force or effect in this state and shall not be recognized by this state.
<http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=125_HB_272>
It's time to clear up the confusion, so all can make informed decisions.
>Neither has any legal recognition outside their respective states,
>and neither has any of those 1049 Federal rights you keep harping
>on, because DOMA works equally against them both.
Well, that's why activists have been working on making the equal right to marriage possible, through direct actions, rallies, petitions, lobbying, etc. If gay marriage were already legally recognized at all levels of government, we wouldn't be having this discussion here at all.
>The only way to get those 1049 federal rights is to change the
>federal DOMA. You have two choices. You can try to amend it --
>which necessarily means going for civic union -- or you try can to
>repeal it (which is your only choice if you insist on the term
>marriage.)
Initiatives on both marriage and civil unions, pro- or anti-queer, will likely continue to proceed through all available avenues (through courts, legislatures, and all possible forms of political activism), but the main focus of most GLBT activists and straight allies who work on the challenge of winning legal recognition of same-sex partnership has been and will be to struggle for the equal right to marriage, whether you like it or not.
Because of the recent wave of highly visible gay marriages as direct actions in San Francisco, New Paltz, etc., the tide of the public opinion has begun to turn. Now, only a minority oppose all legal recognition of same-sex partnership; and among the majority who support legal recognition, the majority support gay marriage, according to the Newsweek poll that Mike Larkin posted here a while ago (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040510/010757.html> -- "Majority (51%) Now Supports Gay Marriage (28%) Or Civil Unions (23%); 43 Percent Oppose All Legal Recognition," <http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/05-15-2004/0002174969&EDATE=>).
>On the other hand, if you try to repeal the DOMA, you not only have
>zero chance of prevailing, you will accelerate the conservatizing
>drift of the last 25 years.
There have been setbacks, and the DOMA at the federal and state levels is one of them, but, on the whole, the cultural drift on the queer question has been liberalizing rather than conservatizing -- even under the Bush administration, I might add. The most significant example is Lawrence v. Texas (2003): <http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZS.html>.
Anytime when the oppressed -- be they slaves, women, Blacks under Jim Crow, workers, etc. -- fought against their oppression, there was backlash in the short term, but that didn't make Frederick Douglass fight for the elevation of slaves to the status of indentured servants rather than the abolition of slavery, to take just one example. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>