Happy Massachusetts Wedding Day!

[filkertom]

A most excellent Monday this should be. As of today, gay and lesbian couples can be legally married in Massachusetts. I personally wish all of them congratulations and hope for marital bliss.

Anyone thinking of heading up that way and getting hitched might want to look at some of these resource sites:

Rainbow Wedding Network

GayNewEngland.net

Massachusetts Gay Weddings

Lesbian & Gay Marriage @ Lesbian Life

GayWeddings.com

Update: The Daily Kos has a first-person account of the happenings.

Comments

[angelbaby83.livejournal.com]

Hey Tom - I've been reading your LJ for a while but haven't spoken up before. Anyway, thanks for the goodwill. I've never been prouder to be a Bostonian...I'm at home rather than Cambridge City Hall right now because I'm fighting a cold, but I am frantically searching through my house for something rainbow-colored to wear tomorrow in celebration (I hate rainbows and pink so this is very difficult).

Now I just have to find someone with whom to exercise my (state) Constitutional right to get hitched! Any volunteers? :-)

Portland OR

[ixias.livejournal.com]

Love should be celebrated where ever it's found. Best wishes!

The county I live in allowed same sex marriages for while, but the state's Supreme Court made them stop. The justices admitted that the law stating marriages must have a male and female partner is probably against the state's constitution. So we'll have to wait and see.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

Go, Massachusetts!

One-and-a-half down (Vermont very nearly counts), 48½ to go... more importantly, now there will be legally married gay couples in the country, which means they'll have all the standing they need to attack DOMA in the Federal Appeals Court and Supreme Court--the lack of a decent suit so far has been because of the lack of a married gay couple that could claim discrimination.

Massachusettsans, Portlanders and San Franciscans give me a little hope for this country.

[galicola.livejournal.com]

That's nice.

I just hope it'll last. I mean the law, not the marriages.
Well, them too, of course.

I just hope that some day, in the far far future, people wouldn't have to fight for their right to marry their loved ones of either sex, race, or species.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Anne and I were talking about it last night -- "Who do we know that we can get married to, just so we can?"

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping it's not that far in the future myself. This country, this world has its priorities screwed up.

This just hit me....

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Here comes the bride,
Bride by her side,
In Massachusetts
They no longer have to hide.

Here comes the groom,
Groom's in the room,
Right Wing, I note
A distinct lack of doom.

Here come the rest,
The whole U.S.,
Kicking and screaming,
It's all for the best.

And the Twenty-
First Century
Finally arrives in
The Home of the Free.

[(Anonymous)]

[QUOTE]
I just hope that some day, in the far far future, people wouldn't have to fight for their right to marry their loved ones of either sex, race, or species.
[/QUOTE]

......... *sigh*, Furries!

Anyhoo, I think it's all good and fine that Massacheusettes is thumbing their nose at the Pretender-in-Cheif.

And if gay people want to get married, I say let 'em. It's their life.

Still, and this is JUST ME talking, but...

I can't really understand WHY they want to get married!

I mean, why would a group of people who for so long have made it a point of pride to go against tired, provincial institutions of mainstream society suddenly want to embrace a tired, worn-out bit of ceremonial dogma left over from an age of chauvinism and misogyny?

But hey, like I said, it's THEIR choice, and I'll be the last person on earth to stop 'em!

-G. Gentile

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I suspect that it's more a matter of, this is how our society recognizes that these people are a couple. It's a very public show of commitment. It also is pretty useful in getting control over the disposition and consolidation of assets -- at least, under the current rig of our legal system.

Of course, it could just be the boss clothes. When the Underwoods got married a few years ago, Karen was gorgeous beyond belief, and Tom looked good enough in that tux to be bestowed his own spy movie on general principles.

[jss]

(For future reference, unlike BBCODE, LiveJournal uses HTML/SGML markup. Instead of QUOTE in square brackets, use CITE in angle brackets, like "<cite>.")

Without going into the whole gay marriage debate here, there're a lot of benefits to the spouses associated with (civil) marriage, from taxes (inheritance and income) to survivorship to next-of-kin for legal and medical issues to insurance (health and life). When you get married, for the cost of your application or registration fee, you and your spouse get all those rights automatically. If you can't or don't get married, for whatever reason, you'd have to spend thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to get the appropriate legal paperwork all written, filed, approved, and registered just to get a subset of the same rights you'd get if you got married. But a Google search'll probably show even more reasons and rationale and, dare I say it, rhetoric from all sides.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Nolo.com has a nice introductory summation:

http://tinyurl.com/ibgd (http://tinyurl.com/ibgd)

[(Anonymous)]

So you're saying that the decision and process of marriage has just as much pragmatic application as moralistic?

I guess that would help explain a few things.

Ah, maybe it's just harder for me to grasp the whole idea, being a devout bachelor.

After all, I come from a long line of bachelors!

-G. Gentile

Fantastic Quote

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Over in the comments at The Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/), "Seonachan" asks: "If God frowns on this, why did he arrange for 70's, low humidity, and not a cloud in a sky across the entire commonwealth?"

Re: Fantastic Quote

[batyatoon]

Or in the immortal words of Daniel "Oz" Osborne:

"Well, we know the world didn't end, 'cause ... check it out."