The Walls Start Tumbling Down

[filkertom]

Fantastic:

[New York] Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada.

In a directive issued on May 14, the governor’s legal counsel, David Nocenti, instructed the agencies that gay couples married elsewhere “should be afforded the same recognition as any other legally performed union.”

The revisions are most likely to involve as many as 1,300 statutes and regulations in New York governing everything from joint filing of income tax returns to transferring fishing licenses between spouses.

ETA: Under normal circumstances, I'd never ask you to watch even just 4½ minutes of Bill O'Reilly, but... wow.

Comments

[vulpine137.livejournal.com]

Yay for New York :)

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Considering the US constitution requires states to recognize any and ll legal contracts of all other states, any effort to the contrary will get tossed by the SCOTUS. Frankly, all the freaking out over gays having the same right to be trapped and miserable as the rest of us is puzzling - nothing anybody else does is going to affect my marraige at all. If gays getting it on is interfering with ones marriage, you may want to move the beds further apart.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

The problem there is that the Defense of Marriage Act (signed by Bill Clinton) specifically exempts marriage from that reciprocal acknowledgment. So it's incumbent on the states to step up, as Patterson is doing -- and is encouraging our legislature (and particularly the Republican-controlled state Senate) to get with the program.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Change is afoot...

I like seeing is happen this way, not with a fuss, but with simple change.. it has a better chance of sticking.

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

I still see states like Utah fighting this tooth and nail.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

[humor]
Really? But according to all the right-wing nutjobs, gay marriage inevitably leads to polygamy! How can Utah possibly be against that?
[/humor]

ah, humor

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

it is a difficult concept.

[hamadryad.livejournal.com]

*can't stop dancing*

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

ZOMG is that Earl in your icon? I remember when the (original?) game first came out. Gah, don't want to think about how long ago that was.

[hamadryad.livejournal.com]

Aw heck yeah - Toejam and Earl!! BONUS HIGH TOPS! ROCKET SKATES! Oh noooo.... RANDOMIZER!

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

I think this is good news, but I would ask us all to remember something;

Tolerance is ALLOWANCE, not ACCEPTANCE.

I think we should allow homosexuals and lesbians to be married and be subject to all the legalities thereof. Furthermore, I personally encourage this endeavor.

However, I don't think it's right to force any religious institution to have to recognize such marriages if it is in opposition to their established views.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's right to force any religious institution to have to recognize such marriages if it is in opposition to their established views.

The State of New York is, thankfully, not a religious institution. (Nor is the city, though I can understand if there's doubt. *grin*)

This is about matters such as next-of-kin, power of attorney, the right to make decisions for an infirm partner, benefits, Social Security, and health insurance. Matters of law and government, not of personal or religious significance.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

No religious institution is forced to recognize anything. The Catholic Church chooses not to recognize a lot of marriages that the Law says exist. That isn't a problem.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I agree completely, and in fact I made this point a few threads ago. "Tolerance" implies that whatever you're tolerating is wrong on some level.

If someone wants to be married in a particular church, and that church doesn't want it, whatever. I don't care what any given religion decides regarding marriage. However, there are a wide range of benefits (and attendant responsibilities) for civil unions having nothing to do with being married in a given church, and those should belong to any two (or more) responsible adults who enter into such unions. And a religion saying that the civil law should follow their doctrine merely because Our Way Is The Correct One, Our God Is The Correct One is simply wrong, not to mention unconstitutional.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Bottom line, the wall between church and state works both ways.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

Which, y'know, I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone in support of gay marriage ever espouse that it /doesn't/. And yet, from the fearful hordes of people who throw this false fear up whenever the idea arises, you'd think that there were hordes of wide-eyed gays and lesbians pounding on church doors, shouting, "We know you hate us, but we TOTALLY want to force you to officiate at a ceremony with our closest friends and family to commemorate our love for each other! And you can't say no, so /nyah nyah/!"

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

They're not so much "hordes" as they are "minyans".

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

...a quorum of 10 or more adult Jewish people assembled for the purpose of fufilling a religion obligation that requires a quorum?

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Let's face it, faygalas can kvetch like nobody's business!

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I have long thought that this fight over marriage is a fight over religious definitions of same. One solution would be to have the government get out of the "marriage" business. Let the government create and regulate "civil unions" for everyone, regardless of religion or gender. Then people can use whatever word for their union that their own religion approves--handfasting, marriage, etc.

This would solve the constitutional church & state separation issues; I don't know that the conservatives would be happy with this solution, though.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

If by "conservatives" you mean "those blindly devoted to the right wing", then yes.

Unfortunately, the same holds true for those who are blindly devoted to the left-wing, commonly called "liberals".

In both cases, you have people who view policy in an "all or nothing" capacity who ruin it for the rest of us who are willing to meet each other half way. Your suggestion for example.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I've been to gay gatherings where speakers pointed out that heterosexual marriage is far from a perfect institution, and challenged the audience as to whether they really wanted to emulate it...

But the bottom line keeps coming down to insurance, and family rights like hospital visitation and deciding medical issues, and even who does a suddenly disabled person live with now, and children's rights, and so on (I think that last year I saw a list with over 1000 "rights" granted to married folk and their families that people the government won't grant a marriage license to don't have any way to get, even in states that recognize domestic partners). You have to have the government-issued name for the a family be the same word, even for different types of couples, or, over and over and over, the legal rights and responsibilities aren't the same.

And the minority gets the short end when the rights and responsibilities are not identical. Every time.

Well, except when the "minority" are hereditary rulers or have more money than Ghod...

[batyatoon]

I've been saying that for ages.

[batyatoon]

However, I don't think it's right to force any religious institution to have to recognize such marriages if it is in opposition to their established views.

Oh, absolutely not!

But by the same token, and really for the same reason, no religious institution's established views on marriage should have any bearing on legal recognition of same.

The state shouldn't be able to tell my rabbi that he has to perform a marriage ceremony for me and my hypothetical non-Jewish boyfriend. But it's for damn sure that my rabbi shouldn't be able to tell the state that it can't allow us a civil marriage.

Given the givens, of course, that particular question does not arise. But it makes about as much sense as this one.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

!!!

Excellent.

The meme is loose!

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Actually, he does. He's not legislating; he's providing directives to the agency he administers, changing their policies.

He's also encouraging the legislature to get him an appropriate law to sign, making this state law, so that the next governor who disagrees with him can't merely reverse the policy.

[notnormal23224.livejournal.com]

Tom I swallowed hard before clicking on the Bill O'Reilley link. I watched it and....wow, um who was that guy? I cannot believe that was B.O. I mean he skewered that guy with a question on a subject that he would normally be be having a party with him over. He must have been on a new medication, the type that has a side effect of logic and reason. Either way it was a GREAT question and will forever be used to deflate any argument against Gay marriage, I just can't believe Bill O. asked it.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

I think he's suffering from a sort of reverse Dennis Miller's Disease.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Wasn't that staggering? It's not as if I consider BillO to be even a marginally talented journalist or anything, but it is the core question, or at least one wording of the core question, and the guy was flummoxed. The clip has already been compared to Chris Matthews' smackdown of Kevin James (http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/15/kevin-james-appeaser/) the other week.

[notnormal23224.livejournal.com]

Yeah another great zing, is it me or are the gloves fleetingly coming off and those little voices of journalism that had been locked away and beaten with a stick slipping out now and then?
I've been rolling on the floor with the latest sad attempts of damage control with McClellan's book.
Hopefully we will keep hearing more of this.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

It sounded to me like BillO tossed out the question expecting something he could use as a hook for the rest of the segment, and got more and more irritated that this guy was on his show not answering his question.

[notnormal23224.livejournal.com]

He may very well have been looking for fodder to bolster his opinion (OK most definitely was), but it backfired so beautifully, we are fortunate that he didn't vet the question on himself first, he probably doesn't have a good answer for it either (and that makes me smile).

[joecoustic.livejournal.com]

I too almost didn't click on the link but... wow is right!

I guess he's trying to encourage them to come up with some fear type of tactic but it's certainly a cool moment as presented.

[salkryn.livejournal.com]

The video isn't showing for me. Anybody got an alternate link?

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

Honestly I've always been of two minds on the issue of same-sex marriages. I can see both sides of the issue, I have feelings on both sides of the issue. It's also a tad personal for me because I have more than a few friends who are gay and I don't want to hurt them. Which is why I usually don't talk about this particular issue.

Either way I can see a very long and very nasty court battle ahead on all fronts. That thought rather depresses me on a number of levels.