...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Thursday, February 19, 2004
      ( 1:59 PM )
 
The Mayors Step Up

A push for a constitutional amendment codifying discrimination against gay couples may well find its waterloo at the steps of city halls across the country. The president and his conservative agenda makers are pushing the issue this election year thinking that the division it will create in the country will go their way. They didn't count on citizens of the country taking the issue into their own hands to prove that not only was gay marriage not a "threat" to marriage, but it is an act that after taken has no further horrific repurcussions than so many more couples dealing with the ups and downs of marriage. The fabric of the social construct of Northern California is not being ripped apart this week, as we all are witnessing. In fact, what we keep seeing are grateful couples who are celebrating even the briefest chance to have a taste of equality that they are not allowed under federal law.

Now Chicago Mayor Daley has said that he would not object to a San Francisco-style protest allowing marriages between gay couples to go forward at the County Clerk's office.

"They're your doctors, your lawyers, your journalists,
your politicians," the mayor said. "They're someone's
son or daughter. They're someone's mother or father
. . . . I've seen people of the same sex adopt children,
have families. [They're] great parents.

[...]

A devout Catholic, Daley scoffed at the suggestion
that gay marriage would somehow undermine
the institution of marriage between a man and
a woman.

"Marriage has been undermined by divorce, so
don't tell me about marriage. You're not going
to lecture me about marriage. People should
look at their own life and look in their own
mirror. Marriage has been undermined for a
number of years if you look at the facts and
figures on it. Don't blame the gay and lesbian,
transgender and transsexual community.
Please don't blame them for it," he said.

Daley said he has no control over marriage
licenses in Cook County. But if Orr wants to take
that bold step, the mayor has no problem with it.

This issue is about equality, it's not about a threat to marriage. The amount of gay couples that want to marry in this country is so small that how they can be a threat to the enormous number of heterosexual couples who marry and then throw their marriages away of their own accord is a mystery to me. I hope more mayors and more city halls and county clerks will take up the call for equality. It's a good sign that freedom, dissent and democracy truly are still alive in this country.


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