Search Results for: gay marriage

Gruff voiced and fuckable San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom — who popped out of the womb with a full head of game-show-host hair and a glass of champagne in his hand — has officially announced his candidacy for governor of California in 2010.

Praise be the Holy Lord Obama!  Gays across the land are elated and relieved today that a handsome, liberal, eloquent black man is going to be our next President, instead of that scary, angry, old white man and that moronic, gun-loving cougar he hired to court the folksy white woman vote.

The election, and therefore the referendum on gay marriage in California, is mere weeks away and while we’ve been big, mush-mouthed whiners when it comes to letting you all know that Gay Marriage isn’t really our *deal*–and haven’t you heard? monogamy’s curable–we’ve nonetheless stepped up to the plate and reported on it at random moments, just so that you can’t say we’re haters for the cause. 

Canadian gays, who have had the right to marry for a year, aren’t rushing to the altar like their American counterparts, partly because they have full rights in civil unions and partly because it “signifies an effort at conformity.”

In an intimate ceremony at their home attended by 19 guests, dyke power duo Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi we married this weekend, as reported on Ellen’s website. Today, photos have surfaced of the ladies.

In other news, more organizations and individuals are heaping millions into the coffers on both sides of the Prop. 8 battle in California. In case you’ve been on a bender or institutionalized since May, Prop 8 is the ballot measure, up for a vote in November, to approve an amendment that would explicitly remove the right for same-sex couples to marry in the CA state constitution.

Just to prove to you all that we aren’t completely cynical killjoys about this whole gay marriage thing, here’s a quick roundup of notable news items from this week in California’s Summer of Gay Marriage.

First off: A new poll shows that opinions may be shifting when it comes to approving a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would ban gay marriage. 51% of voters now say they are against the amendment-which will be on the ballot in November as Prop 8 -with 42% saying they are for it.  Back in 2000, 68% of voters approved Prop 22, which ostensibly defined marriage as between a man and a woman and which the CA Supreme Court (you may have heard) recently deemed unconstitutional. We look forward to about 900 similar polls to follow.

It may not be our cause celebre, but we know big news when we see it-and we love a good media circus! In case you’ve been on a silent meditation retreat for the last month, today’s the day that county clerks across California are issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Last night two elder lesbians were married here, and elder lesbians statewide went to receive licenses in offices open late to mark the official moment the law took effect, at 5PM.  Update: We were out in front of San Francisco City Hall, and there were no Phelpses!

So, the Phelpses are already out in front of City Hall in San Francisco and SFist has already posted an interview (“Tim Russert  promoted the fag agenda…”).  Looks like they’re going to be here tomorrow when the clerk’s office opens at 9AM, and not making it to Contra Costa until later, or perhaps they’re splitting their time, with their poor brainwashed spawn and crazy Shirley in tow and those downright HILARIOUS signs.  We’re looking forward both to greeting them, and to greeting the throngs of gays and lezzies happy to finally be getting legally hitched tomorrow. Look here to The Sword for some live-blogging of events in the streets, photos and some exclusive video footage of the great circus that will be San Francisco City Hall tomorrow.

In the meantime, please appreciate our mixtape.

The New York Times published a piece this weekend about legally married gays in Massachusetts–sort of a follow-on to their magazine piece about young gay marrieds that we mercilessly mocked last month–with the kinda funny title “Gays Find Marriage Is a Mixed Bag.” No shit, huh! We’re not marriage-phobic so much as we are pragmatic about all this breathless brouhaha surrounding the marriage issue: Not everyone’s dying to be married, or dying for gays to fall into all the same boring traps that our hetero counterparts have in re: picket fences, suburban malaise, oppressive monogamy and crying, pooping babies.  The article was, on a whole, a snooze flash (two thirds of those who’ve gotten gay-married in MA are lesbians! Who knew!) but they did cite a few interesting facts.

As much as the issue sort of bores us, news just keeps spewing out everywhere about gay marriage and we’re sure it’s going to be like this all summer long. So, in the spirit of swallowing our medicine quickly, here’s a quick roundup of this week’s snooze flashes with regard to the whole gay marriage in California.

A coalition of LGBT groups put out a big memo this week encouraging all litigation-happy lesbigays out there not to rush to the courts (after rushing to CA to get hitched) to sue their home states for marriage recognition.  Because this is ultimately going to come down to a Supreme Court battle, and because the Supremes have historically been reluctant to weigh in on social issues until multiple states have settled the issue, the groups encouraged patience  saying, “Bad rulings will make it much more difficult for us to win marriage, and will certainly make it take much longer.” If you want to know more, look here, or here, or here, or here.

In the only other state with a gay population that even comes close to rivaling California’s, gay marriages performed in other jurisdictions like Canada, Spain, Massachusetts and California will be recognized in New York.  The state’s newly installed governor, David Paterson, who took over for Eliot Spitzer in the wake of that whole hooker mess, has side-stepped the legislature to become the latest hero of the gay marriage movement, paving the way for New York to likely become the third state in the union to legalize gay marriage. 

Honestly, it’s like last on our list of political concerns, but we know, we know, equal means equal, blah blah.  Anyway, this week the Governator came out and admitted that he’s banking on big gay bucks to come flowing into the state with this whole marriage clusterfuck. Yes, all you Idahoans and Tennesseeans and poor unfortunate Alabamians, you can hop on out to Cali one long weekend and we’ll still marry you regardless of whether you’re a state resident or not.  We’re not stuck up like silly Massachusetts.

No sooner had Thursday’s ruling come down but the SF Convention and Visitors Bureau shot off a press release inviting gay couples to come get married in the city where it all started, calling the City by the Bay the place where “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history continues to be made.”  Unlike Massachusetts, where marriages are limited to couples claiming state residence, California does not limit marriages to residents only.  The bureau, and probably every wedding planner in town, is hoping that San Francisco will be the destination of choice of quickie summer nuptials for gays across the land.

We’re not as bad off as yesterday, but we’re willing to bet a lot of you Californians were out a little too late and drank a few too many vodka sodas with splashes of cran last night! There was an impromptu, city-sponsored street party on Castro Street in San Francisco, where in between bumping house beats revelers were greeted by City Supervisor Bevan Dufty (who showed up with child and invoked Harvey Milk), and State Senator Mark Leno (who also mentioned Milk, but we were a little tipsy at that point, and we’re still waiting for you, Gav!).

Ten months after his much ballyhoo’d marriage to Michael Simpson, Dead or Alive front-tranny Pete Burns is getting a divorce.  It sounds fairly obvious from Burns’ public statements on the matter that Simpson was cheating on her/him.  “There’s a lot of promiscuity in the gay community. I don’t understand why they take that union. How low is their self-esteem?” Our own thoughts on marriage aside, we ourselves wouldn’t use our own scorn as an excuse to call the entire concept a “total joke” as Burns recently did, also going so far as to say that he was much happier being married to a woman.

We’re apparently not the only Negative Nancys around who always foresee the end of a relationship before it even begins.  State lawmakers in Olympia, Washington unveiled legislation on Tuesday that would extend the state’s already established domestic partnership rights to include provisions for separation or divorce as well.  The legislation would establish community property rights, probate protections and joint responsibility for debts for domestic partners, as well as extending end-of-life rights, nursing-home visitation, veterans benefits and spousal testimonial privileges now held only by hetero marrieds.  Openly gay state Representative Jamie Peterson (D-Seattle) says, “[it’]s just an issue of basic fairness,” and we would have to agree.

Republican Presidential hopeful and former whale Mike Huckabee compared homosexuality to animal fucking today in an interview with Belief.net, stating his worry over the slippery slope our society might careen down should civil unions between gays become legalized. After expressing his desire to amend the constitution to read more like the Old Testament, Huckabee offered the following pearl necklace of wisdom: