Visible Man: Love and obliteration

Flying in the face of President Bush's declaration of support for a Constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage, and watching as the Massachusetts State legislature squirmed and resisted their own highest court's directive to provide same-sex marriage for citizens of that state, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had just had enough. He ordered the city clerk to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, and city officials, marriage commissioners and Assemblymember Leno started performing marriages, one after another, for as long as they could.

His Honor the Mayor extended the city clerk's office hours each evening, and through the long holiday weekend, to get as many couples married as possible before a possible injunction is issued, though at this writing, I'm not sure such an injunction will be forthcoming. And that is likely to increase the ire of the Alliance Defense Fund, the Liberty Counsel and the Campaign for California Families, all code names for groups that, like the Bush Administration, view marriage as an institution that is weakened, if not fundamentally threatened, by same-sex relationships. What a great way to spend Valentine's Day and the Presidents' Day holiday: getting married when the President says he thinks it's OK to deny you and your bride or groom the right to do so.

Assemblymember Leno also introduced important state legislation on February 12: Assembly Bill 1967, the Marriage License Non-Discrimination Act, to provide for gender-neutral marriage. This bill says:

"Section 300 of the Family Code is amended to read:

300. (a) Marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman two persons, to which the consent of the parties capable of making that contract is necessary. [...] (b) Where necessary to implement the rights and responsibilities of spouses under the law, gender-specific terms shall be construed to be gender-neutral, except with respect to Section 308.5. [Section 308.5 states: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." I wonder why this section wasn't simply deleted, but I suspect that will be revealed as this bill is discussed and debated in committee and on the floor of the legislature.] 301. A Two unmarried male persons of the age of 18 years or older, and an unmarried female of the age of 18 years or older, and who are not otherwise disqualified, are capable of consenting to and consummating marriage.

There are provisions for the marriage of people under the age of 18 with parental consent.

The number assigned to this bill is significant: 1967 was the year the U.S. Supreme Court struck down prohibitions to interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia). It may surprise some readers to learn that California, in 1948, was the first state in the U.S. to legalize interracial marriages. It took 19 years for the rest of the country to catch up. Now, once again in California, we have the opportunity to legislate against prejudice and inequality, and because of Mayor Newsom we will fight this battle in the courts as well as the legislature. And we have more reason to be hopeful about the outcome with respect to fairness and equality than we ever have before.

This is an important issue for transpeople, too. Transsexual people who think they have earned the right to heterosexual marriage privileges simply because they have had some genital reconstruction need to be aware that bigoted anti-trans forces could choose to campaign to remove their legal access to reassigned sex status. Gender-neutral marriage rights would go a long way to protect and preserve transsexual marriages, too, whether or not those marriages look like heterosexual ones. It behooves all transpeople, heterosexual or not, to join the fight for same-sex marriage.

It is almost impossible to describe the joy and poignancy of the moment -- the many moments that have been taking place in San Francisco City Hall since Phyllis and Del took their vows and filed their papers shortly after 11 a.m. last Thursday, February 12. I saw brides in gowns skipping arm-in-arm though the elegant rotunda area. I saw blushing pairs of grooms wearing jeans and leather jackets. I saw the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence encouraging a lesbian whose partner is not an American citizen to go ahead and get married to help her partner remain in the U.S. (though if these marriages are ruled invalid, that standing would not hold, either). I saw couples that had been together for over 10 and 20 years finally being able to have their union recognized within a civic institution.

And that night on the television news, I saw my friend Willy Wilkinson and his female partner, Georgia, getting married in the first wave of ceremonies. Willy identifies as transgender, on the FTM spectrum. He appears male, but he is legally female. While in some jurisdictions he could marry a woman if he has nothing more than a driver's license that declares him male, his legal status is still female until he meets the qualifications of the state or country in which he was born and is able to change his birth certificate. But what if he doesn't want to be legally male? What if he wants to be in that in-between, trans state, as Willy does? Same-sex or gender-neutral marriage is the way to go. And Mark Leno's bill seems to be the best way to get there right now. Here's hoping the Massachusetts legislature will one day see the light.

But just because we've made this progress, we should not become complacent. The forces behind the Bush Administration are formidable and well-financed. Though we have drawn a line in the sand, thrown down the gauntlet and committed ourselves to fight, we face an uphill battle.

Already the forces in opposition are carving out their turf. According to a February 13 press release from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), "the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is retreating from its long-established policy of investigating and enforcing disciplinary action against sexual orientation-based employment discrimination against federal workers. The OSC removed references to sexual orientation-based discrimination from its complaint form, the OSC basic brochure, training slides and a two-page flier entitled 'Your Rights as a Federal Employee.' The OSC also removed from its Web site a press release issued by the OSC in June 2003 that announced the settlement of a case involving discrimination based on sexual orientation against an applicant to the Internal Revenue Service," the HRC release said.

This is an alarming tactic: obliterating the enemy. The federal government will simply pretend LGBT people don't exist. There was another uproar recently over the removal of footage of an LGBT demonstration on the Capitol Mall from a National Parks Administration film that showcased the function of park rangers in Washington, D.C. The current administration and their right-wing "Christian" cronies want LGBT people to go away, and if they can't make it happen in reality, they'll make it happen in their propaganda. This is media manipulation of the very worst sort. It is our civic duty to ensure that our voices are not silenced, our civil rights are not denied and our lives are not sacrificed to their ideology of hatred and bigotry.

As Mark Leno said the other day, if there is one way in which all human beings are alike, it is in our ability to love and to make solemn commitments to our relationships. Standing up for the civil rights of all people was never more important than when a powerful elite tries to pretend that reality is only what they want to see through their own blindered eyes. Let's show the world that a diverse populace is all the more beautiful for its rainbow colors, and that trans people, whether we are gay, straight or bi, can be perfectly at home wherever people are given their equal rights and respected as themselves. Let's have love obliterate hate.