How can people be better informed with what this next [Bush] term will bring with regard to Gay Rights? Even though we are a blue state and a blue city, how can New Yorkers get involved?

We in the blue states (New Jersey's one too) can tell our legislatures that we want to distinguish our states from the red(neck) states by legislatively extending legal marriage to same-sex couples under the name "marriage" rather than the euphemism "civil union". "If it walks like a duck..." Legal "marriage" IS "civil union". The only thing government can do is sanction civil unions. It has no power to define marriage for any church, and if the Catholic Church recognizes as married only people it marries, that's the Catholic Church's business. What is the State's business is the LEGAL rights of married people (about 1,000; somebody counted), and we should make plain that either everybody should have the right to marry and use the word "marriage", or NOBODY should be allowed to "marry" legally, so ALL nonreligious unions are merely "civil unions", and only churches are entitled to "marry" people. Since straight people who tie the knot before a judge or justice of the peace aren't going to want to be unable to say they're "married", present-day civil unions are in fact called "marriages"; and since some churches are perfectly happy to "marry" same-sex couples, we can easily make the case that using two terms for one phenomenon is just plain silly.
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Moreover, since the Constitution requires "full faith and credit" be given by other states to any marriage performed under the laws of any state, even the red states will have to accept that a couple married legally in Massachusetts, New York, or New Jersey is entitled to recognition as married by every other state and by the IRS and other Federal entities. If that irritates the hell out of them, SO MUCH THE BETTER!
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I'd like to see my city, Newark, become the gay-marriage capital of the world, vying with NYC as to who can get more gay tourism by offering the best wedding packages. The South would go NUTS! Oh, I'm sorry. They're already nuts. They would go BALLISTIC! Cheers.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:49 PM