Something is seriously wrong with RI Dems. Five Dem Representatives, William San Bento (N. Prov/Pawtucket), Arthur Corvese (N. Prov), Peter Palumbo (Cranston), Jon Brien (Woonsocket), and Helio Melo (E. Prov) introduced HB 6159 Thursday. The bill states
This act would prohibit same sex marriages in the state and would prohibit the state from recognizing a relationship between persons of the same sex as a marriage.
Undoubtedly this is in response to RI Attorney General Patrick Lynch’s recent nonbinding opinion that same-sex marriages performed in MA or elsewhere should be recognized in RI because RI has no law proscribing them.
Marriage Equality RI has an online “contact you rep” gizmo. What can we non-Rhodies do to help nip this nasty bit of legislation in the bud?
h/t Pam Spaulding
Convince the Rhode Island Biotechnology Council to hire them?
It does work, doesn’t it? I did always think Fineran was a strange choice for the Biotech Council, but now you’ve explained it to me.
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Another thing to consider is that maybe stopping this bill isn’t really very consequential, and there are bigger problem for gay people, here and in Rhode Island: Even if RI recognizes Mass marriages, almost every other state doesn’t, and the Federal government doesn’t, and that means people in same-sex marriages have very limited protections and protections. (See Eve Tushnet’s review of Same Sex, Different States: When Same-Sex Marriages Cross State Lines
By Andrew Koppelman here) Instead of fighting for symbolic victories that satisfy your ideology but leave real couples unprotected, you could be pursuing a reasonable compromise that preserved marriage as conception rights and limited conception rights to a man and a woman, while recognizing state civil unions that could be just like marraige but without marriage’s conception rights, which would be much more likely to be enacted in all fifty states.
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Taking a step back and conceding that people should only have a right to conceive with someone of the other sex, and that therefore all same-sex couples lack a right that all both-sex couples have, would actually help real people, rather than provide entertaining self-indulgent make-work for activists and lawyers.
No one wants to hear about this bizarre egg and sperm obsession of yours. Spare us.
And it’s not so bizarre, it is law in Missouri and many other countries. How about that, in Missouri it’s illegal to implant an embryo that is not from a man and a woman’s joined gametes. And same-sex couples got NOTHING in return for that consession.
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Meanwhile, same-sex couples that are MARRIED in Mass have no security, their marriages only count as long as both parties remain in the state, which is a bizarre kind of marriage, unprecedented in history. They also have no federal benefits. These are surmountable problems, but it takes someone like me to propose a solution. It’s there for you to use, if you care about same-sex couples.
and perhaps the “Egg and Sperm” thing is related to your inaccurate track of action. The RI DOMA bill needs to be defeated, and doing so won’t stop activists from pursuing the other proposal you made to gain rights, should they be both 1) prudent and 2) actually possible.
Even if defeated, it won’t mean that Mass marriages have any more security or federal benefits. And a campaign to oppose it will not only be divisive, it will cause more similar laws in the few states left that haven’t banned same-sex marriage. On the other hand, just letting it pass won’t hurt the chances to enact civil unions that give all the rights of marriage except the right to conceive together. Such civil unions could be enacted in all fifty states much much easier than achieving equal benefits and protections through marriage, not to mention recognized federally. All you need is something to offer the opposition, which would be man-woman marriage and a ban on cloning and genetic engineering.
no, it matters.
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And I disagree with your course of action, and frankly I don’t understand why you are trying to push this kind of agenda.
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No, we will not just let it pass. I’m sorry you can’t seem to just accept that and call off your agenda.
You write: “Meanwhile, same-sex couples that are MARRIED in Mass have no security, their marriages only count as long as both parties remain in the state, which is a bizarre kind of marriage, unprecedented in history.”
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Not sure what additional security is needed in Mass. for married couples (same sex or not), since we have equal protection under the law. Even if the ban passes the next ConCon and loses at the ballot, existing same-sex marriages are not annulled. I call red-herring.
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In regards to the ‘unprecedented’ situation in regards to legal recognition in Mass. only, what do you think the status of interracial marriages were from state to state before loving vs. virginia? That’s one precedent for you.
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“These are surmountable problems, but it takes someone like me to propose a solution.”
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If you won’t spare us from the addled paranoia of your one-man crusade, perhaps you could spare us your egotism.
Not sure what additional security is needed
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How about knowing that your spouse can’t simply move to another state to abandon you and marry someone else? How about being able to collect federal social security survivor benefits? (Gee, it can’t be that young people might value the freedom of being able to abandon their spouse more than the security that comes from not being able to be abandoned, can it? Or that young people don’t care about the old gay couples that might actually need survivor benefits?)
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You might be right that interracial marriages were similar. I’m not sure what their federal recognition was. Perhaps Richard Loving could have legally married a white woman in Virginia without divorcing Mildred, in spite of their legal Washington DC marriage. But generally, states have recognized existing marriages even if they would not have allowed the marriage themselves. The reasoning is that it’s too late to stop it once the marriage has been consummated, even if they are first cousins or too young. This might be why the original charge against the Lovings was cohabitation (the police told them something like “that’s not valid here” when Richard pointed to their marriage certificate hanging on their bedroom wall), but it was changed to a crime of going across state lines to enter into an illegal marriage.
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perhaps you could spare us your egotism
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Well, I’d love to, I pray that the conception rights issue will get picked up by people with a little more intelligence and much more credibility and that it can be widely discussed without anyone mentioning me. It isn’t me that keeps bringing me up, you’ll note. But when “pucknomad” responds to my carefully constructed comment regarding the RI strategy just to tell me to go away and spare everyone my obsession, a personal response is called for. Also, my point was that the reason this solution hasn’t already been worked out is not that it isn’t workable, it is just because no one has proposed it yet, so it takes someone to propose it to get the ball rolling. The solution is a good one, and now that someone has thought of it, you should push for it, so that actual couples can have real security.
…It strikes me as being very strange. But people are entitled to their lunacies.
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What I can’t figure out is why their lunacies should be written into public policy.
Why should I be surprised about anyone, Democrat or Republican when it comes to the subject of Marriage Equality. After the January 2nd ConCon my organization contacted the Mass Democratic Party and asked for some leadership on the issue. I told its spokesperson that LGBT have been working for and alongside the Dems for so long now that we are “owed” a statement from the Dems as to why so many still have a problem supporting equal marriage in Massachusetts.
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I was told that the Democratic Party will not make any such statement because, now get this, “marriage is too ‘political of an issue’ in Massachusetts.” So there you have it.
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Also, I hope you all took note of Hillary’s comment when asked if General Peter Pace was right, “that Homosexuals are Immoral.” Hillary responded, “I will leave that one for ‘other’ to decide.”
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As a gay man, an activist, a recently naturalized American, a ‘husband’ of 20 years, I have learned oh too quickly that NEITHER party can be trusted with my equality.
we are “owed” a statement from the Dems as to why so many still have a problem supporting equal marriage in Massachusetts.
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Alexander, maybe they look at the whole country, and realize that equal benefits and protections are more attainable via civil unions than marriage, and that pushing for marriage will not only hurt same-sex couples chances for true equal protections, but their chances for getting elected also (and therefore set back enviromental and economic progress for everyone). Maybe they have an inkling (not yet fully understood) that there might be a problem with giving all the rights of marriage to two people of the same sex, because they recognize (again, perhaps only subconsciously) that giving same-sex couples the right to tinker with their offspring’s genome in order to attempt to have a child together is problematic, unnecessary and wasteful.
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Would such a statement be acceptable to you?
I told its spokesperson that LGBT have been working for and alongside the Dems for so long now that we are “owed” a statement from the Dems as to why so many still have a problem supporting equal marriage in Massachusetts.
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I was told that the Democratic Party will not make any such statement because, now get this, “marriage is too ‘political of an issue’ in Massachusetts.” So there you have it.
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Did you get the disconnect there? A political party unwilling to opine on a political issue because it was to political.
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Let’s understand something. The Democratic party doesn’t give a tinker’s damn* about queers**. (I’d have used a phrase that begins with “flying” and ends with a four letter word that means “sexual intercourse,” I’ll refrain for civility purposes.) They just want our money. I was rather appalled by Kos of the DailyKos web site endorsing a particular Democratic candidate from one of the Dakotas for US Representative in 2004 despite the fact that she was anti-gay.
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There are, indeed, individual Democrats, both at the state level and at the federal level, who support equal rights for gay people. But the “Democrat” label is not an indication that the particular candidate is. There are some individual Republicans who are, too. It was reported, after Joe Moakley died a few years ago, that the Republican candidate (I don’t recall her name) was actually more gay-supportive than the Democratic candidate. That’s why, if I support any candidate, it will be on an individual basis, not party identification.
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On a broader note, it seems to me that the only party at the national level that actually accomplished anything positive for gay people was the Republicans. Through the repeal–for at least a short time–of the federal estate tax. I can leave my estate to my long-time partner free of federal estate tax. What have the Dems at the federal level done for gay people? Clinton signed DADT and DOMA, crowed about it, and then tried to make nice with gays when he was in trouble because of Monica. Give me a break.
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*”Tinker’s damn is not an epithet.
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**I use the term for purposes of sarcasm directed to the Democratic party, not at gay people.