I’m going on another of my cross-country road trips this weekend, and the news today gives me reason to reflect once more on a simple, devastating fact: I can freely travel all over America, only because I am single.

Had I a spouse, a same-sex spouse because I am a gay man, we would have to take care not to set so much as a toe in states like Virginia, and Nebraska, and any of the other states in the Union (maybe we should start referring to it as a Dis-union now…), that have not only passed constitutional amendments banning same sex marriage, but also any legal recognition whatsoever of any possible legal right a same sex couple may need to have, in order to defend their union. Because if anything should happen to either one of us, it would be a nightmare for the other. A nightmare like this…

When Sharon Kowalski was injured in an automobile accident in November 1983, her partner, Karen Thompson had to fight a nightmarish legal battle with Kowalski’s parents lasting ten years. During that time, Kowalski’s parents placed her in a nursing home where they could insure that Thompson would be kept away. The nursing home was unequipped to give Kowalski the physical therapy she needed, and which might have made a difference in the extent of her recovery had it been given to her early on. When Kowalski was given a typewriter to communicate, she instantly began typing out calls for Karen. The typewriter was taken from her.

…or this…

When Juan Navarrete came home in 1989 and found his partner LeRoy Tranton lying bloody on the concrete driveway to their house, it marked the beginning of a bitter fight with Tranton’s brother who prevented Navarrete from seeing his beloved in the hospital. Despite Tranton’s persistent calling for his lover Juan, he was kept away. When Tranton later died, Navarrete was unable even to visit the grave.

…or this…

In 1993, a Virginia judge ruled that Sharon Bottoms was an unfit mother because she was a lesbian, and awarded custody of her 20-month-old son, to her mother, who had sought custody of the boy when she learned her daughter was a lesbian, and in love with another woman.

…or this…

In 2000, a court in Tacoma Washington ruled that Frank Vasques could be denied his lover of 28 years’ estate because the two where in a homosexual relationship. They had shared a house, business and financial assets for 28 years.

…or this…

After NBC news cameraman Rob Pierce died in a helicopter crash, his family visited his partner Frank Gagliano, in the Miami condominium the two had shared. After mourning together, they told Gagliano he should take a walk on the beach. Then Pierce’s family changed the locks on the condo, and when Gagliano returned, told him he was no longer welcome there. Gagliano had to go to court just to get his belongings.

…or this…

In Massachusetts, after Ken Kirkey’s partner Mark died of cancer, Mark’s family removed his ashes from the home the two shared. Kirkey discovered he had no legal right to Mark’s ashes, though they were among the first to take advantage of Vermont’s new Civil Unions law.

…or this…I

n 2001 Sharon Smith was told she had no legal standing to file a wrongful death suit against Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, after two of their dogs mauled her partner Diane Whipple to death in the hallway of her apartment.

…or this…

In 2002 Officials at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center barred William Robert Flanigan Jr. from his dying partner’s bedside, saying he was not "family", and that ‘partners’ did not qualify. Though Flanigan had legal power of attorney for his partner, Robert Lee Daniel, officials at the Shock Trauma Center insisted he would not be allowed his partner’s bedside. Only when Daniel’s mother arrived from New Mexico, was Flanigan allowed into Daniel’s room. By that time, Daniel had lost consciousness. He would die two days later. Because Flanigan was not present during Daniel’s final four hours of consciousness, Flanigan was unable to tell Shock Trauma that Daniel did not want breathing tubes or a respirator. When Daniel tried to rip the tubes out of his throat, staff members put his arms in restraints

…or this…

In 1999 Earl Meadows 56, passed away a year after suffering a stroke which left him unable to take care of himself. He was cared for by his lover and partner, Sam Beaumont, 61, on the Oklahoma ranch they had both worked together for a quarter century. Meadows cousins, filed suit and Beaumont lost everything he and Meadows had worked together for, the ranch, the cattle, everything, because even though he had a will, it lacked a second witness signature, and a judge ruled it was invalid, and in a state that has a constitutional amendment banning not only same sex marriage but any legal recognition of same sex couples, as far as the law was concerned, Beaumont and Meadows were legally strangers.

After Meadows’ cousins won his worldly goods in court, they went back to court and sued Beaumont for back rent for every year he lived on the ranch.

This is the future that jackasses like Andrew Sullivan, and the Deep Thinkers at the Independent (sic) Gay Forum, who preach the virtues of "federalism"and letting each state go their own way on same sex marriage, are condemning gay couples to: a patchwork of states they can safely travel in, embedded in a dangerous no-homo-land where the law doesn’t merely fail to acknowledge your rights as a couple, but actively seeks to destroy your union, and throw the two of you into a living nightmare, when given any opportunity whatever to do so. For all the same reasons that a nation half free and half slave would not work, for all the same reasons that a nation where rights are allocated on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion different in every state would not work, a nation where some couples are allowed to live in peace in some states and in a state of fear in others will not work. You cannot build a democracy out of "some animals are more equal then others, depending on their sexual orientation and their physical location at any given moment".

In Georgia, where the question was about how many different subjects a constitutional amendment ballot could embrace, the court unanimously decided that the subject in question was not, after all, a combination of same sex marriage plus civil unions, but one simple all embracing expression of animus by the heterosexual majority of Georgia toward same sex couples as a class. On that basis, the heterosexual majority of Georgia could have thrown every knife at gay people they could have gotten their hands on in that ballot question, the right to hold property, the right to vote, the right to walk down any street in Georgia without getting your head bashed in, and the subject of the ballot question would still have been only the hate, not the particulars of how that hate is expressed. On the other hand, let’s face it, that is pretty much a correct view of what the subject of the ballot question was: Resolved – same sex couples have no rights the heterosexual majority is bound to respect…

But for this week’s laughing mockery of justice, the court in New York has to take top honors. This is their rational, I am not kidding, for keeping marriage in New York a heterosexual prerogative:

First, the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. Heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not. Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and the Legislature could find that this will continue to be true. The Legislature could also find that such relationships are all too often casual or – temporary. It could find that an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born. It thus could choose to offer an inducement — in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits — to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other.

The Legislature could find that this rationale for marriage does not apply with comparable force to same-sex couples. These couples can become parents by adoption, or by artificial insemination or other technological marvels, but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse. The Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples, and thus that promoting stability in opposite sex relationships will help children more. This is one reason why the Legislature could rationally offer the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples only.

What they’re saying there, is that a "rational" reason for limiting marriage to heterosexuals only, "could be" because heterosexual couples are less likely to provide stable homes for children, because heterosexuals can have children just by randomly fucking around, and probably will, whilst homosexual couples are more likely to provide stable homes for children because they have to work harder to bring children into their homes.

Never mind that this is, once again, arguing that the purpose of marriage is to provide an environment for the raising of children, which is patently is not since having children, or even being physically able to have children, is not a requirement for marriage.  Never mind that.  This argument is pathetic on its face.  I guess you have to have grown up during the Stonewall years to appreciate the irony of it all. Once upon a time it was your gay and lesbian neighbors who were begging for some meager measure of rights, or at least a shred or two of human dignity, on the grounds that it wasn’t our fault that we were mentally unstable, and it would be cruel to punish us for something we cannot help. Today, at least in New York, it is heterosexuals who are saying they need rights because they cannot help being unstable. But if heterosexuals relationships are too unstable to exist without marriage, then heterosexuals are in no position to pass judgment on the fitness of their gay and lesbian neighbors for marriage either.

Except that they are the majority, so they can anyway. That is the rational here, nothing else. We outnumber you, so we can. The rights of heterosexual couples are enshrined in the fabric of our democracy, our constitution. The rights of gay couples exist, or not, a the discretion of heterosexuals. We can beg for rights, but we cannot assert a right of equality because we are manifestly unequal to heterosexuals in the only way that matters in George Bush’s America: we are fewer. What two state supreme courts have said today, is that this means the majority can do whatever it damn well pleases with our households, and any hopes and dreams we might have ever had or ever dared to want for happiness and peace and a life together with the ones we love, simply because they outnumber us. My Country ‘Tis Of Thee…

And here I am, slowly packing my things for another cross country trip, looking at my path through Virginia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and so on…and wondering how the hell I could possibly make such a trip if I had a spouse. I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t. It would be too dangerous for both of us. The minute either of us became sick or ill or incapacitated in some way, everything we made of our lives together, and every hope and dream we ever had for the future, could be annihilated by laws designed specifically to be relentlessly hostile toward same sex couples. 

And never mind vacations.  My employer is sending me to the OSCON Open Source conference in Portland Oregon at the end of the month.  Do I tell them I can’t go because Oregon passed a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage and if I get sick or injured out there my spouse could be legally barred from taking any sort of care of me, let alone visiting me in the hospital, or seeing to it that my medical wishes are respected.  Robert Flanigan Jr.  Karen Thompson.  Juan Navarrete. 

And then there is the matter of families being torn apart.   I have family in Virginia, and my mother’s grave, that I could never see again, if I had a spouse.  They say Virginia’s anti same sex laws are so draconian, they may even disallow joint checking accounts between same sex couples.  How the hell do I even go lay flowers on my mother’s grave, when every moment I am in Virginia, I am putting my spouse at risk for a legal nightmare?  It is impossible.  No family of mine has the right to demand I risk flushing our marriage down the toilet, simply to come down for a visit.  If the people busy passing these laws really believe that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex, then there are a lot of families in those states, in for some bitter awakenings in the years to come.  Of course a lot of these people just discard their gay and lesbian children anyway, like so much human garbage.  But not all of them do.  I guess the message to those families is, if you love your gay children, there’s probably something wrong with you people anyway.

Anyone who thinks this state’s rights approach is fine for solving the issue of same sex marriage in America is smoking crack.  It is a recipe for tearing this nation apart, one family at a time.  And friends from friends.  I used to have straight friends who would have told me today, to count my blessings, and be glad that I am still single. That is why they are now ex-friends.