Strollerderby

But it's *not* one set of rights and responsibilities. It's two, at least. One set is from your religion, under which you enter the sacrament of marriage; the other is from your government, under which you enter the legal arrangement unfortunately commonly called marriage.

Marriage should stay a religious notion, and the government notion should be called something else, and you can have one or the other or both, with only the rights and responsibilities of whichever one(s) you have.

Legal next-of-kinship status is neither symbolic nor semantic. I'm surprised he phrased it that way. ???

I'd be rather happy, actually, if it were just a semantic issue. It would still suck, but it would suck while queer folks had free access to the 1000+ federal rights that are reserved for married folks only. I think that it was a good monologue for what it was, and I think it may fill a gap - 'I'm a straight guy, and see, other straight folks? This isn't threatening at all! I still feel passionately, but I'm a safe person to say all of this. Stop being freaked out.'

But when I heard the 'semantic' thing, as well as the statement that none of his professional acquaintances (Rachel Maddow) have experienced 'prejudice that still pervades their lives' it just underlined the fact that very liberal, smart people still don't get it. Maybe Maddow doesn't feel that she experiences pervasive prejudice, but I would disagree. She's placed in much femme-ier clothing on air to mask her butchiness and make her unthreatening, and even though she and Susan can marry in MA and have it still be legal in NY (don't know if they are), they can't be married federally, and they *don't* have access those 1000+ rights that they would have access to were gay marriage legal. All legalized prejudice is pervasive.