Galileo
06-10-2009, 01:33 PM
Sign Galileo on marriage law petition
By Pat LaMarche
I’m looking for straight married people. Never mind, this works even if you are a closeted gay person living as a straight person in a straight marriage. You can also answer if you’re straight or pretending to be straight and planning to marry soon. It doesn’t matter what your motives are. You could be marrying for love, money, health insurance, to get your green card, to have kids, because you already have kids, or just to keep from being alone.
How’s it going? I know your relationship has been battered lately. The economy, bad debt, illness, unemployment, under-employment and kids can take quite a toll on your marriage. But right now I’m talking about the latest death blow current events have dealt your relationship — you know, the legalization of gay marriage.
On the sixth of May when Gov. John Baldacci signed the new gay marriage bill into law, I know you must have wanted to run right out and get a divorce. What with the institution of marriage now destroyed, what’s stopping you?
Are you staying together for the kids? Or is it because you need the two incomes to pay the mort-gage? Or is it because you want your spouse to inherit your wealth or visit you in the hospital?
C’mon, you can tell me. I’m divorced, I’ll understand.
I wish I’d held my marriage together long enough to see gay folks get married.
Here I’ve been blaming myself all these years for making some other person miserable. If I had just waited for the Maine Legislature to legalize gay marriage I could have blamed gay people for wrecking the institution and consequently my relation-ship.
I don’t have to go on with this charade, do I? You know deep down in your heart — no matter how bitter and spiteful that heart may be — that no stranger’s going to ruin the institution of marriage for anybody else. And when an outside person does wreck a marriage, it’s a mistress or an in-law and they had an accomplice on the inside.
See, the Legislature passing a law that allowed equality in marriage regardless of gender is a good thing. It promises to allow people to discover more about themselves and the relationships they form and the financial alliances they make regardless of whom it is that they love. Lessons my marriage taught me.
Now, thanks to threats by some anti-equal rights folks, it looks like the law could be delayed or, worse yet, reversed. Maybe that’s why you haven’t filed for your “oh they’ve ruined marriage by letting just anyone do it” divorce yet.
You’re not so sure this whole gay marriage in Maine thing is a done deal. And you’re hoping that maybe you can save your marriage by denying someone else the same opportunities you have.
Maybe the groups fighting marriage equality will get their way and talk decent Mainers into repealing the bill. They’ve delivered all of the paperwork to the secretary of state and have begun circulating a petition and maybe they’ll talk you into signing it. You’ll recognize the people asking you to sign the petition to repeal the gay marriage law because they come from one of several organized religious groups.
Equality Maine — the group at the forefront of equal marriage rights — says it won’t ask you not to sign this petition.
Maybe it won’t, but I will.
Hasn’t organized religion learned anything about separation of church and state? If there’s one thing religious dogmatists have made painfully clear — and I mean the burning at the stake and enslaving brown people and blowing up the Twin Towers kind of painfully clear — it’s that churches aren’t supposed to make the laws on earth. It seems their kingdoms are in heaven.
If you’re getting pressure from your church to sign that petition, do me a favor, don’t sign your name, sign Galileo Galilei. Lord knows, organized religion was wrong about him. Sign it in honor of his finger, which is on display at the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence, Italy. Ironically it’s the only piece left of him. And after all that he went through for disagreeing with the church, you can guess which finger.
Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the author of "Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States." She may be reached at [email protected].
28 comments on this item
http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/107994.html
By Pat LaMarche
I’m looking for straight married people. Never mind, this works even if you are a closeted gay person living as a straight person in a straight marriage. You can also answer if you’re straight or pretending to be straight and planning to marry soon. It doesn’t matter what your motives are. You could be marrying for love, money, health insurance, to get your green card, to have kids, because you already have kids, or just to keep from being alone.
How’s it going? I know your relationship has been battered lately. The economy, bad debt, illness, unemployment, under-employment and kids can take quite a toll on your marriage. But right now I’m talking about the latest death blow current events have dealt your relationship — you know, the legalization of gay marriage.
On the sixth of May when Gov. John Baldacci signed the new gay marriage bill into law, I know you must have wanted to run right out and get a divorce. What with the institution of marriage now destroyed, what’s stopping you?
Are you staying together for the kids? Or is it because you need the two incomes to pay the mort-gage? Or is it because you want your spouse to inherit your wealth or visit you in the hospital?
C’mon, you can tell me. I’m divorced, I’ll understand.
I wish I’d held my marriage together long enough to see gay folks get married.
Here I’ve been blaming myself all these years for making some other person miserable. If I had just waited for the Maine Legislature to legalize gay marriage I could have blamed gay people for wrecking the institution and consequently my relation-ship.
I don’t have to go on with this charade, do I? You know deep down in your heart — no matter how bitter and spiteful that heart may be — that no stranger’s going to ruin the institution of marriage for anybody else. And when an outside person does wreck a marriage, it’s a mistress or an in-law and they had an accomplice on the inside.
See, the Legislature passing a law that allowed equality in marriage regardless of gender is a good thing. It promises to allow people to discover more about themselves and the relationships they form and the financial alliances they make regardless of whom it is that they love. Lessons my marriage taught me.
Now, thanks to threats by some anti-equal rights folks, it looks like the law could be delayed or, worse yet, reversed. Maybe that’s why you haven’t filed for your “oh they’ve ruined marriage by letting just anyone do it” divorce yet.
You’re not so sure this whole gay marriage in Maine thing is a done deal. And you’re hoping that maybe you can save your marriage by denying someone else the same opportunities you have.
Maybe the groups fighting marriage equality will get their way and talk decent Mainers into repealing the bill. They’ve delivered all of the paperwork to the secretary of state and have begun circulating a petition and maybe they’ll talk you into signing it. You’ll recognize the people asking you to sign the petition to repeal the gay marriage law because they come from one of several organized religious groups.
Equality Maine — the group at the forefront of equal marriage rights — says it won’t ask you not to sign this petition.
Maybe it won’t, but I will.
Hasn’t organized religion learned anything about separation of church and state? If there’s one thing religious dogmatists have made painfully clear — and I mean the burning at the stake and enslaving brown people and blowing up the Twin Towers kind of painfully clear — it’s that churches aren’t supposed to make the laws on earth. It seems their kingdoms are in heaven.
If you’re getting pressure from your church to sign that petition, do me a favor, don’t sign your name, sign Galileo Galilei. Lord knows, organized religion was wrong about him. Sign it in honor of his finger, which is on display at the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence, Italy. Ironically it’s the only piece left of him. And after all that he went through for disagreeing with the church, you can guess which finger.
Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the author of "Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States." She may be reached at [email protected].
28 comments on this item
http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/107994.html