Cali’s Tourism Bureau Touts Gay Nups
With California looking to make about $370 million on gay marriages, the state’s Tourism Bureau doing all it can to drum up business:
With legal gay marriage set to go on Monday at 5:01 p.m., California is rolling out the rainbow colored welcome mat, with the California Travel and Tourism Commission’s website showcasing over four dozen wedding locales and packages specifically targeting same-sex honeymooners.From San Diego county to the Bay Area to the desert and everything in between, it seems, the offerings on the tourism website appear to have something for everyone – and every budget.
…
“There is no doubt that same-sex marriage and vacations to California will be good for the economy,” tourism commission exec Susan Wilcox said in a statement.
We know we should be cynical about this, but it’s just too awesome!
I do take the ‘rainbow carpet’ being rolled out with a grain of salt, but think about all the marketing that goes on to the straight customer: it’s endless…and virtually all we know. Let them court US for once. I’m okay with it. Advertisers are just starting to realize the powerful market we represent. It’s one of the side-effects of increasing acceptance. Small price to pay, if you asked me.
As a gay man who’s an officiant of The Registrar-General of Ontario, I’m still hoping that our lesbian-gay community can welcome this new institution/civil right into our community without the crass consumerism that’s so endemic in the traditional community. This is such a wonderful and exciting time in our community’s history – we’re now defining & laying down the foundations of how the tradition of marriage will be celebrated in our community – do we really need the “mother-in-law’s pearl handled cake cutters”? or indeed, do we need the traditional wedding industry to “court us”. We’re lesbian/gay – we know already how to party and we don’t need traditional communities to teach us (nor to show us how to spend money to “enhance any occasion). We’re lesbian-gay; we’re creative and we’ve got a blank canvas in front of us – I’ve already seen some great stuff since June 2003 when the Supreme Court ruled over here. Hopefully we won’t fall into the same mass consumerism as the traditional community and will celebrate it for what it really is: love between two people shared & declared in the company of friends and family!
Let’s not forget the major challendge that will be on the November ballot in California. It was big businessmen associated with the hotel and auto industry in California who paid the petitioners to mandate a constitutional amendment.