First, let me clear my throat:

These thoughts are the outgrowths of a discussion I was having with a friend (I’ll call her Gigi). I am not sure that it is germane but let’s note that I am a straight, married man and that my friend identifies as queer and cannot, as of yet, legally marry her partner in New York State.

That is, if she wanted to. As it is, she is against marriage. For both straight and gays. Period.

Anything insightful, original, or radical in this post, I would have to attribute to her.

That isn’t without caveat. The first point that she and I agree on is that, and this is a direct quote from her:

relationships free of commitment can lead to a lot of exploitation and can wreak havoc on women and children who only gain protection through formalized relationships.

The other point we agree on is that marriage, if it exists at all (this last clause would be revelatory to my wife), should be available to all. It is in that vein that we celebrate the truly groundbreaking, epochal California marriage decision.

I know now that those on the right – religious or otherwise – and the other know nothings will take this decision as their battle cry to not only reverse it, but to also erase gains that gays, lesbians and the transgendered have made in our society. We must stop them from doing this.

But we cannot just play defense.

Another direct quote from Gigi:

Giving rights to married people and using those rights to exclude others for me makes the state a moral judge, an enforcer of cultural norms, and does injustice to the complexity of our lives and does violence to a wider, larger concept of love.

How about, instead of extending such protections only to people who have sex with one another, that the protections that “marriage” contain be extended to all the myriad ways that family and commitment manifest in our lives.

Gigi:

People should be able to contract their relationships. For instance, two sisters who live together and share finances should be able to draw up a contract for a 5, 10, 20 yr agreement which dictates they share rights of inheritance or end-of-life decision power for one another.

Or two people who are sleeping together draw up a contract that says they share x, y, and z — but want their property to revert to their children if they should pass.

The point would be not to limit those options and not to give any relationship a privileged status.

So, let the battle be joined. We should draw up our own manifesto on where we should be as a society and put that up against the people who, against all reason, would plunge society into the dark ages.

By NATHAN KOPPEL and T.W. FARNAM , May 16, 2008; Page A1

The California Supreme Court opened the door to same-sex marriages in the nation’s largest state, reigniting a hot-button social issue amid a presidential election campaign so far dominated by economic issues and the war in Iraq.

The ruling makes California the second state, after Massachusetts, to give gay and lesbian couples the right to marry. But lawyers said the state’s national influence and size — representing 12% of the country’s population and one-fifth of the electoral vote need to win the White House — make the decision the most important legal victory to date for proponents of same-sex marriage. The decision, coming six months before the presidential election, also could galvanize voters on a topic that in this campaign cycle has largely been on the sidelines.

“The California Supreme Court is a famous and respected court, and [same-sex couples] have lost more legal challenges than they have won, so this is big news,” said attorney Jeffrey Trachtman, who lost a 2006 case that attempted to overturn New York’s ban on same-sex marriages.

A handful of states, including California, Vermont and New Jersey, allow same-sex couples to enter civil unions or domestic partnerships that afford many of the rights of marriage. But the California court, which was considering whether state law prohibiting gay marriage violates California’s constitution, voted 4-3 that such protections didn’t go far enough.

“[R]etaining the designation of marriage exclusively for opposite-sex couples and providing only a separate and distinct designation for same-sex couples may well have the effect of perpetuating a more general premise — now emphatically rejected by this state — that gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects ’second-class citizens,’” wrote the court.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Friday, May 16, 2008

Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr says that when it comes to gay marriage, what happens in California is California’s own business. He’s a states’ rights man.

Here’s the statement Barr’s issued, which — one week before the Libertarian national convention in Denver — is likely to generate some talk:

“Regardless of whether one supports or opposes same sex marriage, the decision to recognize such unions or not ought to be a power each state exercises on its own, rather than imposition of a one-size-fits-all mandate by the federal government (as would be required by a Federal Marriage Amendment which has been previously proposed and considered by the Congress).

The decision today by the Supreme Court of California properly reflects this fundamental principle of federalism on which our nation was founded.

Click to continue reading…

Obama says he will bring change to America. Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama and rival Hillary Clinton traded victories in an epic struggle from Connecticut to California on Super Tuesday.

Barack Obama is winning some states but Hillary Clinton appears to be winning the significant ones. California is not in but, based on what’s gone on so far, I just don’t expect Obama to win there. I don’t know why I thought he could win in New Jersey and New York. Clinton not only won here but also in Oklahoma and Tennessee.

I know I sound ridiculous but, from this point on, Obama is running for vice president if he stays in the race. The sort of magic he packs shrivels in a vice presidency. Besides, with Bill as a virtual co-president, Mrs. Clinton won’t need anyone substantial as her vice president. Is there a Joseph Biden clone out West or in the South?

Obama could be President Clinton’s first nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I found this New York Times story very fascinating. The Sanchez sisters’ story was affecting but the story that affect me the most was the one involving Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste.

Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste, a married couple who met while serving in the Clinton administration, have actually started debating each other. Not just at their kitchen table, but in front of audiences across California and on television.

“It’s not easy,” Ms. Echaveste, who is a paid consultant to Mrs. Clinton, said in a joint telephone interview with her husband, who advises Mr. Obama. “You’re having a discussion and your husband is basically saying that your candidate doesn’t have a moral compass.”

With that, Mr. Edley broke in. “Or your wife is saying that your candidate isn’t smart enough to figure out where the bathrooms are,” he said.

“I never said that,” she replied.

The couple has relived some of the campaign’s most rancorous moments, such as when Ms. Echaveste, echoing Bill Clinton, told her husband that Mr. Obama was “naïve.” The word conjured up racial stereotypes for Mr. Edley, who is black, and has known Mr. Obama since he taught him in law school. “There’s the childlike Negro,” he explained. “There is the superficial but glib minstrel.”

Ms. Echaveste, who is Hispanic, now understands why her husband exploded in response. “Regardless of being dean of a law school” — at the University of California, Berkeley, where both teach — “he’s still in a box called being a black man,” she said. Still, she said, “I ought to be able to make that point and not trigger these reactions.”

And with that, Mr. Edley responded, his wife countered, and they started to debate once more.

This couple’s conflict played out for me this way:

I was open-minded about Hillary Clinton’s campaign for nomination and could have seen myself voting for her. Then, in a Jan. 13 appearance on ‘Meet the Press,’ she refused to answer Tim Russert’s question about whether Obama was qualified to be president. Obama has more years in elected office than she does and he’s the exact same age Bill Clinton was in 1992. So what is the problem? And this was going on at a time when Hillary and Bill were channeling Lee Atwater in South Carolina by turning Obama into “the black candidate.”

Call me sensitive, thin-skinned, but it became hard for me to support her after that. I started wishing John Edwards had been a stronger candidate, that his message had resonated with the voters more. I did not want Obama to benefit from my disappointment with Hillary Clinton.

So, this is where we’re at.

I found out at the last minute that Barack Obama would be making a noon campaign appearance at the Izod Center (the former Brendan Byrne Arena) in the Meadowlands in Rutherford, New Jersey. My 10-year-old son really wanted to go but, thinking we would not be able to get in anyway, I insisted he go to school.

I ran some errands in the morning: took my laptop to be repaired, went to village hall to pay property taxes, then to the post office to mail bill payments. On a moment’s inspiration, I went to the gym. I hadn’t been for four months, since my soccer season ended in November. Did some strength training, which hurt but I was glad I went.

I suggested to my wife we take a drive to the Obama event, see if we could get in. She was game so we went.

We missed Newark Mayor Corey Booker’s full-throated speech. We could hear over the loudspeakers that old warhorse Ted Kennedy giving a vintage performance getting the crowd primed for Obama. Obama took the podium as we were taking our seats.

He gave the same speech I watched him on C-Span give to a St. Louis, MO campaign event, hit some of the same grace notes the very same way I had seen on television. I have seen so many Obama speeches now that I come to expect certain bits and I’m disappointed when I don’t hear them. But Obama rarely disappoints. There are new twists to some old themes but it’s still the same campaign speech.

My wife was still undecided between Hillary Clinton and Obama and was deeply disappointed by his handling of an issue the New York Times wrote about. I, too, am disappointed. It is cases like this that might put doubt in a person’s mind about whether Obama is a real change agent, as he claims to be.

Obama does seem to have a good heart and, because of his service in the Illinois state senate, I believe he has valuable experience. I like that he was a community organizer. That has largely fueled his campaign. He has done a good job against incredible odds and built unprecedented support among the young and across a broad section of our society.

His best moment of the campaign, surpassing even his Iowa caucus victory, was in his defeat in New Hampshire. Listen to his speech. A portion of that speech has even been set to music. Never mind the rich people in the video. Just Listen to the words.

I don’t know what my wife will do in the morning but I believe I will vote for Obama.