Massachusetts is closer

Closer than California, although the west coast certainly has its charms as a wedding destination.

On July 29, the Massachusetts House agreed with the state Senate, voting 119 to 36 to repeal a 1913 law (“a shameful vestige from another wrong-headed time of denying marriage to interracial couples”) that prevents out of state couples from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriages would not be legal in their home states. Governor Deval Patrick has said he will sign the repeal.

Last June, the Massachusetts Legislature defeated (by 151 to 45) a proposed state constitutional amendment intended to eliminate the constitutional right to marriage equality for all couples.

The simple fact is, the sky isn’t falling because the partnerships of loving, committed same sex couples are being recognized and celebrated in the public square. The sky won’t fall in Virginia any more than it has in Massachusetts, or in any of the other jurisdictions where common sense and simple humanity has prevailed.

And that outcome is inevitable. I say this with rapidly shrinking empathy for those who feel compelled to stop it, in the wake of murders and maimings in Tennessee by a man goaded into violence by violent rhetoric – rhetoric which is escalated to a call for armed insurrection in this absurd document by science fiction author and radical Mormon Orson Scott Card. Card has a long history of inflammatory anti-gay writing; see for example his uninformed and frankly loopy essay from 1999 arguing for the preservation of “laws against homosexual behavior.”

Near the end of a rambling, illogical dissertation in which he seems to believe that he and those like him are being somehow rendered unable to “raise each generation” to “continue civilization,” he makes this remarkable statement:

[W]hen government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary…

…How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn. [Emphases added]

Regardless of law? I suppose that would apply to law whether interpreted by a court, enacted by the elected representatives of the people, or voted on by the people themselves. The “end of democracy,” indeed. Where’s that terrorist watch list when you need it?

There is much, much more to be said about this bizarre screed, but I see that Yonmei at Feminist SF has already thoroughly and most entertainingly said it. I especially appreciated her riff on what Card’s writing reveals about his own marriage. Poor Mrs. Card.