‘When the people of California voted to strip the over 1,000 legal rights afforded married couples from gay Californians I decided I could no longer serve in the military’
—RD (a pseudonym), a 10-year armed services veteran and psychologist recently back from Afghanistan, in his nakedly pointed series “Diary of a Gay Officer at War”
Thanks @marksnyder for the separate but equal argument. No, they didn’t take anything away at all. Keep on believing that while you wait for the majority to give you your rights.
The only problem I have with this statement is the assertion that the Democrats are for big government while the Republicans are for smaller government. It may be a Republican talking point that works well for them because of it’s simplicity, but that doesn’t make it true.
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I didn’t say anything about separate but equal. I’m all for equality. I’m just stating the fact that my partner and I, who are registered domestic partners, did not actually lose 1000 rights. In fact, we did not lose any rights. Can you name them? Name one other than the word marriage? Our domestic partnership form specifically said “all the rights and responsibilities of marriage.”
I personally believe that the perpetration of the falsehood that we lost thousands of rights in California is used to fuel multi-million dollar marriage ballot campaigns that drain money from issues that should be our top priorities such as the epidemic of homelessness among LGBTQ youth. It’s a shame.
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@marksnyder: You did lose something … potentially. When DOMA is repealed and other states are required by the Full Faith and Credit Clause to recognize marriages performed in other states then your “domestic partnership” will have cost you the rights in other states.
It is also disengenuous to say you didn’t lose anything when the word marriage was taken away and domestic partnership was substituted. You lost the force of the civil law. You got something that is parochial and not portable (potentially). It may seem equal to you, but it is separate and therefor not equal. Were it equal people would be willing to call it civil marriage and not a domestic partnership. 99 does not equal 100 — it is almost 100, but not quite.
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@ No. 3 · marksnyder
In the May 2008 In Re Marriage Cases decision, the state supreme court noted nine differences between Domestic Partnerships and same-sex marriage in state law, including a cohabitation requirement for domestic partners, access to CalPERS long-term care insurance (but not CalPERS in general), and the lack of an equivalent to California’s “confidential marriage” institution.
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Thank you Cam for the distinction/correction, but again, it’s not factually correct to say it is 1000.
Those nine differences exist but I just want to again reiterate that the certificate we had notarized said “ALL the rights and responsibilities of marriage.”
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Factually wrong. Californians did not lose any rights except the right to call our partnerships marriages. Our state Domestic Partnership law grants “all the rights and responsibilities of marriage.”
We never had the federal rights to begin with.