Marriage

I've written about marriage equality alot. It's an important issue to me and much of the gay community. Personally, I think it has less to do with actual marriage than with society's acceptance, tolerance, of our human condition. Gay men and women don't want to pushed aside as nuissance, or worse, as a subclass.

Yesterday, I was talking with co-worker, one of the few I really like and a genuine progressive in every sense of the word. She just returned from a trip to Israel and this ignited a conversation about the Israeli High Court's decision on same-sex marriage. (Side note: So far more progressive than the United States: Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Canada, England, Israel, and friggin' South Africa!)

I observed how frightening that the ultra-orthodox Jewish and Islamic leaders (and even a few Christian figures) could set aside their differences to hate the gays, opposing the effort by the mostly secular Israeli government to pursue fairness under the law.

My concern was immediately shuttled when she said that "Israel has more important things to worry about than marriage and the government shouldn't be concerned with this right now."

What's more important than equality? How can people settle a dispute about identity when its laws still allow the open discrimination and hostility to some sets of people? South Africa understood this when choosing recently to legalize same-sex unions -- they recognized that the once apartheid state could not seek a oneness of identity, black and white equal under the law, if they still allowed for codified discrimination.

Unfortunately, the twit at work thinks that you can do things in pieces. Ah, to "tradition!"...



PS: Damian and Chris, I can't help but think back to when y'all (plus Blair and my old roommate) helped prepare that dinner at the homeless shelter and we spent a few hours locked in the kitchen playing, "Tradition!"