NEW YORK’S ALL RIGHT ...
Jun. 26th, 2011 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogJudging from my F-list – and the fact that it’s a big national news story – you don’t need me to tell you that gay marriage is now legal in New York.
It’s also possible you don’t need me to tell you that this is (as Andrew Sullivan calls it) a BFD in part because NY is controlled by Republicans, and yet somehow the law passed because just enough of them changed sides.
One interesting angle is one of the reasons why enough of them changed sides – a provision in the bill that preserves the right of churches and religious groups not to facilitate gay marriages if they don’t want to.
In other words, it’s legal for The Gayz to get married in New York, but that doesn’t mean yr guaranteed a church wedding if that’s what you want.
It’s an interesting distinction, because basically it preserves discrimination to a point – it’s all right to discriminate against The Gayz as long as you do it for religious reasons. Which should make for an exciting court case when the marriage registry office clerk turns out to be a Mormon and starts turning down gay applicants. And you can pile that on top of all the other legal challenges that will probably be filed against the new law. So in that sense the debate in NY is probably far from over.
I also wonder if it’s always possible this is as good as it gets in a country where religious freedom is written into the constitution, and if this is a trade-off worth taking, at least for now. I’m sure some will argue that churches already have to follow the law of the land, and that should include anti-discrimination laws, so the religious-freedom provision is bullshit, etc.
Maybe. But the problem with all-or-nothing strategies is that they take a hell of a lot longer to achieve, especially when they involve undoing thousands of years of social intolerance. Personally, I’d rather see a NY law that legalizes secular gay marriage and allows enough marriages to normalize it and show the dingbats that their fears of straight-marriage degradation and the collapse of society as a result of gay marriage are largely unfounded. Then we can worry about what the Pope thinks about it.
Well, anyway, the good news is that if you DO want a church wedding in New York, you’ve got at least over 430 venues to choose from that might accommodate you.
Either way, of course, we’re a long, long way from convincing the other 44 states to go the same route. Not every Repub is going to accept “maximal religious liberty” as an acceptable trade-off – especially the ones who don’t believe in a secular state, and especially the ones in Tennessee, where … oh, YOU know …).
Or am I ruining the victory party?
Sorry. Never mind. You kids carry on.
Love is in the air,
This is dF
It’s also possible you don’t need me to tell you that this is (as Andrew Sullivan calls it) a BFD in part because NY is controlled by Republicans, and yet somehow the law passed because just enough of them changed sides.
One interesting angle is one of the reasons why enough of them changed sides – a provision in the bill that preserves the right of churches and religious groups not to facilitate gay marriages if they don’t want to.
In other words, it’s legal for The Gayz to get married in New York, but that doesn’t mean yr guaranteed a church wedding if that’s what you want.
It’s an interesting distinction, because basically it preserves discrimination to a point – it’s all right to discriminate against The Gayz as long as you do it for religious reasons. Which should make for an exciting court case when the marriage registry office clerk turns out to be a Mormon and starts turning down gay applicants. And you can pile that on top of all the other legal challenges that will probably be filed against the new law. So in that sense the debate in NY is probably far from over.
I also wonder if it’s always possible this is as good as it gets in a country where religious freedom is written into the constitution, and if this is a trade-off worth taking, at least for now. I’m sure some will argue that churches already have to follow the law of the land, and that should include anti-discrimination laws, so the religious-freedom provision is bullshit, etc.
Maybe. But the problem with all-or-nothing strategies is that they take a hell of a lot longer to achieve, especially when they involve undoing thousands of years of social intolerance. Personally, I’d rather see a NY law that legalizes secular gay marriage and allows enough marriages to normalize it and show the dingbats that their fears of straight-marriage degradation and the collapse of society as a result of gay marriage are largely unfounded. Then we can worry about what the Pope thinks about it.
Well, anyway, the good news is that if you DO want a church wedding in New York, you’ve got at least over 430 venues to choose from that might accommodate you.
Either way, of course, we’re a long, long way from convincing the other 44 states to go the same route. Not every Repub is going to accept “maximal religious liberty” as an acceptable trade-off – especially the ones who don’t believe in a secular state, and especially the ones in Tennessee, where … oh, YOU know …).
Or am I ruining the victory party?
Sorry. Never mind. You kids carry on.
Love is in the air,
This is dF
