Clinton and Cheney on gay marriage

In the last few days former President Clinton has publicly announced that he has something in common with former Vice-President Dick Cheney. Both of them support same-sex marriage.

I'm going to start by saying that you will see me talk exclusively using the term "same-sex marraige" when I talk about partnership equality for gay couples in the US, but that's only for convenience. I really don't care what it's called. I really don't care if it is given the same name as the government sanctioned relationship of a straight couple. In fact, in my coarser moods, I've been known to say that it could be called a professional cock-suckers license and I would be ok with that. I do care, however, whether it has all the same rights as the government sanctioned relationship between straight couples.

I care about that detail a whole lot. In fact I lose sleep caring about that detail.

That brings me back to Mr. Clinton and Mr. Cheney. Both of them are absolutely wrong in their opinions about same-sex marriage. Yes, both have come out publicly to announce their support for same-sex marriage. Both have also said that it shouldn't be a federal issue.

With all due respect to both of them, that's bullshit.

It is legal for Alex and me to get married in 5 states in the United States. Because of DOMA, however, we are barred from receiving 1138 federal rights associated with marriage. Yes, we could get the benefits of Massachusetts or Connecticut, or Iowa. We'd have to live there to fully take advantage of those rights, but let's not quibble over that detail. Let's focus on what we'd still be denied. We would still be denied the opportunity for me to sponsor Alex for permanent residency status as my spouse. We would still be denied the ability to file jointly in taxes. We would still be denied the ability to take social security survivor benefits. We would still be denied the tax status of spouse for the purpose of estate planning. That's just the tip of the ice burg. There are 1134 more reasons that this is a federal issue.

Until these people taking this stance can figure out a way that we will have full equality from the federal recognition of our lawful marriages within the United States, the can not claim that this is not a federal issue. It affects ever single gay married couple in the US today, and it affects bi-national couples especially hard.

The government sanction doesn't mean all that much to millions of couples, both gay and straight. Many of them marry and divorce before ever realizing just how important some of those benefits can be. I really wish that was my situation. I wish that Alex and I weren't sitting here in limbo every day, wondering if Congress would decide to pass a law that would give us equal status as straight couples for the purposes of immigration. Wishing won't make it so, though, so we'll continue to prepare our exile.

I'm still working on the short list of exile locations, and as much as I would like to start writing about that, I simply haven't had the time in the last few days to make that happen. I'll get to it though.

-Andy