Political Gubbins

Not that I have an axe to grind or anything...

One of the allegedly key issues in the local Arizona elections this year is that perenial favourite Gay Marriage. There's quite a lot of nonsense being spouted about marriage being defined as "between a man and a woman".

I think that turns up in the Bible, which isn't part of the US Constitution, no matter how hard some people believe it should be.

There's a human cost to this, and I wanted to mention it in passing. I can't use real names, naturally.

Ms Smith and Ms Jones have a problem. Ms Smith is a world class scientist, a real asset to her company and a genuinely nice person. She loves Ms. Jones, and would like to spend the rest of her life with her. Ms. Smith was born in another country. Ms. Jones is a US Citizen. If they could marry, the LIFE act would keep them together and ease Ms. Smith's immigration paperwork. However, since they are both women they can't be anything more than domestic partners. I can chunter on about this, but here's what it comes down to - neither lady has hidden their gender preference, their families are good with it, their friends are good with it, but now Ms. Jones is being forced to make a tough decision: when Ms. Smith's visa runs out, she has to depart the USA and Go Home. Ms. Jones can attempt to go with her, but there is no guarantee of the immgration process to Ms. Smith's country being kind or enlightened.

These two people love each other.
If one were a man and the other a woman, there wouldn't be an issue.
There wouldn't be an issue even if they didn't love each other. One quick civil ceremony and Ms. Smith could fade into the background*.
The likelyhood is that they will be spilt up and may find it very, very difficult to maintain their relationship.

This isn't a question of "devaluing marriage" - and let's be honest, with the divorce rate at over 50%, those of us who can marry are already doing a brilliant job of destroying the sanctity of marriage - and it's not a question of sneaking immigrants in who have no skills and who want to sponge off Welfare. It's a question of being fair, and it's a question of seeing marriage for what it is: a union between two adults who want to make a lifetime committment to one another.

Anything else is just silly.






*True story: I was driving back to Phoenix from Tombstone. We had to pass through a Border Patrol checkpoint. The car in front of us contained two people we knew - one gentleman of Latino extraction, born and raised in Cali. The other, an Essex lad on an expired visa. The one the border patrol asked for ID was not the pale and nervous Essex lad. It is not the first time I have seen that happen, either.