Sometimes I get a little irked when I see such a rush for same-sex marriage rights. Sure, it is important. And yes, a lot of rights (and responsibilities) are tied to being able to have your committed relationship legally recognized. But, I feel we are trying to do things a little backward.

Two reasons for this.

First, not every state in the Union has protection set up for the GLB or T communities. We can still be fired from our jobs, kicked out of our homes, thrown out of stores, and have the crap beat out of us without any repercussions. How can we expect to have our relationships recognized when we can’t even be recognized as an individual? If I as a singular person am not safe, and my partner is not safe either, then certainly our relationship is not safe either in any sense - even if it is ignored and treated as nonexistent.

Secondly, marriage itself is a messy issue. Marriage is both a religious and a legal institution - and unfortunately we do not have good words to separate the two. I’d like to call legal marriage a civil union, or just a union. But that means something else, now. It’s become the “separate but equal” option. We draw fire from the religious conservatives who hate us, because they imagine us gay-sexing it up in their churches as we try to get married there. Never mind the fact that the marriage we are seeking as a community is not necessarily the right to get married in their uber-conservative Six-Flags-Over-Jesus church, but the right to have our relationship recognized so that we can write wills, visit our loved one in the hospital, and get needed tax breaks - among other rights endowed with legal marriage.

So not only are we bypassing a critical step, but we are jumping straight into the (“holy”) fire. Again, it isn’t that I think same-sex marriage rights aren’t important. They certainly are. But, I DO think there should be an order.

We must crawl before we walk.

-butch