I have a little to say about Suze Orman's coming out. The PBS financial guru declared herself during a recent interview. "It's killing me that upon my death, K.T. (her partner Kathy Travis) is going to lose 50 percent of everything I have to estate taxes. Or vice versa. Both of us have millions of dollars in our name."
Can I just say that her comments seem to reinforce my attitude towards the grand ol' institution of marriage. That it exists primarily to protect the goodies of the rich, and that lesbians of the monied kind are no different from anyone else with dosh.
I know I'm swimming against the tide here, OK? I also have some good friends who live in Amsterdam - gay marriage capital of the world - who are in the forefront of the movement to legalise marriages between same sex couples. At a fundraising event in Oakland a few years ago, I was out-manouvered and out-argued by an amazing 20 something gay marriage activist who seemed astonished by my reluctance on the issue. She argued, rightly, that without the civil, legal, and financial rights conferred on the 'married' ie heterosexuals, lesbians and gay men exist as 2nd class citizens of the US and the world. I totally agree and let me be clear - I know first hand what it means.
I spent 7 years coming and going to America on tourist visas - quite legally - but without any rights to residency, work or legal protections, even though I was in a 'committed' relationship with one woman, living with her and sharing a life which included dogs, cats and family. Each time I had to leave and re-enter the States, she never could be completely sure that I would emerge from the Immigration Hall at the airport, or for how long I could stay. Had we been straight the solution would have been pretty obvious. Get married. In fact, one local lesbian politician, who went on to a dazzling Saccamenna career told me to just get over myself and do exactly that.
But I didn't want to get married. Not to the woman I loved, and certainly not to a man to be able to legally stay with the woman I loved.
This isn't about whether I understand the need for some basic bloody civil rights. If you are a lesbian, gay or transgendered person in Amerika, you are a second class citizen. My opposition is about why, at this point in time, lesbians seem to have become pre-occupied with this issue, and whether it has more to do with the fact that many more of us are moving to the mainstream of American life, and with that have come the trappings of financial power, home ownership, adoptions, corporate involvement and political conservatism. The need for pre-nups and estate planning soars.
As my friend Andrew said to me at dinner 'Jill, why shouldn't lesbians have nasty divorces, just like the rest of us?' And I guess there it is.
We're not still battling across the world for the very right to exist, right? General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, didn't just call same-sex relationships “immoral” when asked to
comment on the policy which bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S.
Armed Forces, right?. He didn't compare “homosexual
acts” to “adulterous affairs", did he?
Hey, let's all get married. Then the love we express can be called adulterous even while we're waving our marriage licenses in their faces. Cool.
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