We were invited by Maya Scott Chung of the Marriage Equity Project to create a panel for a quilt, celebrating gay marriages and advocating for the right to marry with the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual couples. It was a wonderful event and a great reminder of the context in which the simple, personal love that Maya and I share is complex, public, and political. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the issue, it's pretty simple. Hetero marriages are recognized in every state in the union and confer 1,138 rights and responsibilites while California domestic partnerships only confer about 300 rights and protections. 
Under the law, gays and lesbians are second-class citizens. Furthermore, the whole issue of gay marriage has been used by the Republican right as a devisive wedge issue to distract Americans from, oh little things, like the war in Iraq and the spiraling costs of health care.In my last post I announced that I'm truly excited about Barack Obama's candidacy for the presidency. I'm still very motivated to work to get him into office, but I must say that I was disappointed to read that he believes "that marriage is between a man and a woman." He does a great job of pointing out that the isssue of gay marriage is devisive distractory deployed by the right to keep Americans from considering more important national issues. But as usual, the political is personal and for many gays and lesbians, the right to marry is as fundamentally important as the right to, oh, little things, like deciding who you fall in love with and who you want to build a family with. Is there any more important issue than the right to legally safeguard your family?
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