Seven years later, after she'd adopted my biological kids, my wife and I, along with other Canadian couples, sued Canada's federal government for same-sex marriage rights. After a three-year fight, we were victorious and, in 2003, just after our 10th anniversary, we wed, the coolest group of daughters and dragmaids at our sides.
In 17-plus years, I had never imagined, not even for a sliver of a second, that my wife and I would part through any means besides death -- that's how happy and bonded I believed we were. If anyone had asked me my favorite thing, my answer would have been to spend time with my wife. Doing anything.
Only days before she started making noises about leaving me, my wife and I were renewing our vows during a horse-drawn carriage ride under the Eiffel Tower, and while the horse hooves clopped their way along the cobblestone side streets of Paris, I was swooning. I was delighted at how fresh our love still was. We were not symbiotic or enmeshed, but independent, free and happy. Our relationship glowed with health. When we had issues, we had meetings and solved them, and nothing went along unresolved.
Then came the shock -- and the unraveling. [. . .] (Jane Eaton Hamilton, “What kept me together after the divorce,” Salon, 19 July 2011)
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Ms. Hamilton, you're demonstrated something very important
When it comes to matters of the heart, homosexuals are no different from heterosexuals. This is why it is a crime that homosexuals are not allowed to marry, and thankfully, that situation is changing. In my own state of Maryland, where legalizing same sex marriage narrowly failed this year, our Governor has just announced that he is making passage a personal legislative priority (unlike the previous attempt). I have no doubt we'll win this time. New York was a game changer.
Best of luck to you. (Beans&Greens)
@Beans&Greens, and world-at-large
Re: When it comes to matters of the heart, homosexuals are no different from heterosexuals.
I'm beginning to suspect that there are liberals out there who support such things as gay marriage now on the condition that it, one, keeps them feeling liberal, enlightened -- costumed in just the right way to keep them feeling "of the moment," enabled by momentum, protected; and two, because at some point they're betting "indisputable" evidence will come to light -- of the kind laurel/_bigguns keeps pointing out that suggests homosexuals ARE rather different in affairs of the heart: more promiscious; involved in relationships so distinctly different in kind that they are not transferable from homo to hetero, or hetero to homo -- that will permit them a full retraction. "You're actually like that!!! ... Well now, I was your friend, taking on every bloody elephant in the room in your support, on the condition you were as you presented yourself to me. I took you at faith, and you've been lying to me all the time!" With (the eventual coming of) tea partiers effectively neutered, with most everyone beginning to sound puritan and rigid, many democrats, in my judgment, are no longer going to be so much friends of homosexuals.
It may be even here, with the inevitable spread of gay marriage that will so show laurel how out of touch and impotent she is -- "rage away, lunatic; you're still fated to be just washed away in the torrent!" -- what we're actually seeing is a setup that will empower, justify a later heavy and nasty turnabout. The narrative setup may be here to make it look like the "fallen," homosexuals, almost took control of the very reigns (!) -- i.e., marriage -- that sourced the most profound virtues of the country!!! It may be something which will at the end not so much leave her soaked and humiliated, barely able to stand let alone shriek, but comfortably throned, expecting the cascade of inevitable tribute to start, with you just nearby on a spit. You're her greatest nemesis, and she'll ultimately dine on you, enjoying every chew of your multi-morseled torso-kabob, and in full concentration ("Beans&Greens but no beans and greens for mEEs tonight!"), but room first for a few more satisfactions of repentant Salon staff shuffling up to thank her for her early and brave more good faith stances, of the kind they humbly submit you couldn't deny they were at least attempting, but hadn't anywhere near the earthquake of soul to show it first so boldly and undisguised as she was able.
I would recommend people begin to more see and consider the implications of the numerous liberals about who are beginning to sound more and more conservative -- notably in regards to sex and relationships, but elsewhere too (note the commenter who explained how Andrew Leonard's ostensibly liberal stance towards government debt would have seemed conservative 40 years ago). What is going on here is not so much a change in heart -- though it is about turning on their own liberalness, "fretting" it now more and more as suspect permissiveness, unfettered indulgence, excess -- but a concern for purity, something which always works against groups like homosexuals for their readily being made to seem those who prosper when civilization has lost its way, an embodyment of its decadence.
If this happens, the best out there -- good people like you -- will still be supporting gay marriage, but I'm wondering if even for you this voice of love and support comes out strangely and humiliatingly muted, for your realizing you needed to believe homosexual love was the same as heterosexual love to provide so much unsecond-guessed support, to people who deserved your full support regardless. You might perhaps avoid knowing this, but because the source of this info will now becoming as much from ostensibly liberal sources as conservative ones, you'll have a tough time doing so.
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The only requirement for a marriage is MALE AND FEMALE -- in western civilization, we understand that to be ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN, which is very logical, as it takes ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN to make a baby.
Anything else might be lovely or wondeful, loving or even very long lasting -- but it is not a marriage.
Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.
I hope to see that become the law of the land, by Constitutional Amendment, in a few years.
I think the awful corruption and payoffs in New York will only ensure that pro-traditional marriage supporters get really galvanized in the next election cycle -- they realize now how easily their rights to traditional marriage can be taken away, by corrupt politicians bribed by big Wall Street money. (_bigguns)
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If ANYONE here can understand Patrick McEvoy-Halston's rant...
...I'd love to know what the heck he is saying. Honestly, dude, I cannot make ONE LICK OF SENSE out of anything you write -- not one -- and I can't even figure out what side you are on. (_bigguns)
Laurel, and the takeover of Salon
Laurel, you're not aware of your central lie: that you, at heart, and despite truly not wishing so, do not think gays are equal to heterosexuals. If you really thought so, THERE'S NO WAY you'd be as opposed to gay marriage as much as you are, making it seem as if the one thing that keeps civilization ago has just been stopped in its tracks. More than this, I think you think they deserve punishment for daring to enfranchise themselves in the same way heterosexuals are enfranchised, for SPOILING, permanently -- simply for trivial, of-the-moment pleasures they'll quickly come to learn they really have no use for -- their most treasured institution.
I've heard your call/request, and I'll interpret my post for you: I am NOT so much someone who suspects that at the end of the day you'll find yourself helplessly neutered from having any influence here at Salon letters or "abroad," but rather someone who thinks that even now you're increasingly "tolerated" here out of felt intuition that where, that who you are now is kinda where many Salonistas are going to find themselves in some not-so-long while.
You're registering more and more as simply a voice of punishment; absolute intolerance for the (ostensibly) idle, spoiled, and delinquent in whatever guise. Though they're hating it (i.e., your angry wrath) when you're directing it against gay marriage, I think some sense yours is the voice of the future, and are more likely to start abiding it than risk becoming another of its targets. More than this, and because there are in truth way fewer of these truly ideal Salonistas out there as you make seem, they're increasingly listening to the part of themselves that has judged this is a time for curtailment and responsibility and sacrifice, not yet more stretched-out claims for indulging yet more me!me! satisfactions -- what surely got us in these dire straits, in the first place.
Some imagine you howling, echoing, endlessly but alone, as if shut out for good from the rest of your kind, but I'm beginning to see you more as one who might well be speaking to the gathered's "hearts," drawing them to you. My strong hunch is that it will be good, loving (if however annoyingly smug) people like Greens&Beans -- the voices of true encouragement -- who will find themselves not so much listened to, at some point.
Link: What kept me together after the divorce (Salon)
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