A gay commitment ceremony planner in Phoenix has filed a proposal to create "civil partnerships" in Arizona that would entail all the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage but leave the magic word "marriage" to the straights. It's the usual list of visitation and inheritance rights, plus marriage-like requirements for financial support of spouse and children, as well as provisions for legal dissolutions mimicking divorce without calling it that. He even included a bit barring the partnership ceremonies from being performed during any religious service in order to calm fears among the more hysterical Christian set that their churches would be co-opted for leather bear weddings every Saturday in June (although that probably means the proposal automatically flunks constitutional muster, but I do appreciate the effort).
Cathi Herrod isn't biting.
Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, which backed both earlier ballot measures, said her group will oppose this plan to create what she called "marriage counterfeits.""Marriage — and the benefits of marriage — should be reserved for one man and one woman," Herrod said.
So another day, another plea for special rights from the people who backed a constitutional amendment that was marketed as only being about protecting sacred sacred marriage from the homos, and goodness me of course isn't about taking anyone's rights away and certainly isn't going to keep anyone from hiring very expensive lawyers to cobble together some documents that don't cover every contingency and may or may not stand up in the face of opposition from conservative ICU nurses or distant Baptist relatives you met once who are more entitled to your property after you die than is your partner of thirty years. Of course it's not about that.
Except, of course, when it is.
1 comment:
Grrrrr..... Enough said :(
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