This and that - open thread

New York to Back Same-Sex Unions From Elsewhere
By JEREMY W. PETERS

ALBANY - Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada.

In a directive issued on May 14, the governor's legal counsel, David Nocenti, instructed the agencies that gay couples married elsewhere "should be afforded the same recognition as any other legally performed union."

The revisions are most likely to involve as many as 1,300 statutes and regulations in New York governing everything from joint filing of income tax returns to transferring fishing licenses between spouses.

In a videotaped message given to gay community leaders at a dinner on May 17, Mr. Paterson described the move as "a strong step toward marriage equality." And people on both sides of the issue said it moved the state closer to fully legalizing same-sex unions in this state.

"Very shortly, there will be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and probably thousands and thousands and thousands of gay people who have their marriages recognized by the state," said Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side and has pushed for legalization of gay unions.

Massachusetts and California are the only states that have legalized gay marriage, while others, including New Jersey and Vermont, allow civil unions. Forty-one states have laws limiting marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Legal experts said Mr. Paterson's decision would make New York the only state that did not itself allow gay marriage but fully recognized same-sex unions entered into elsewhere.

Read the rest.

www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/nyregion/29marriage.html?pagewanted=1&hp

On February 1, 2008, New York state's highest court ruled in Martinez v. County of Monroe et al that "marriages of same-sex couples entered into outside of New York must be recognized in" the state of New York (http://www.nyclu.org/node/1615).

Sounds rather like the good governor is giving state administrative agencies a kick in the pants to implement the Court of Appeals' decision.

First off, for now most GLBT couples who want children are going the adoption or artificial-insemination route (rather than attempting to fuse their gametes, which is probably a good 50 years away in humans and, anyway, is separate from the marriage itself).

And secondly, what's so bad about attempting to exceed our biological limits?  I've been limited by my non-functional pancreas since I was six, but I've managed to keep myself alive on insulin injections for 20 years; am I going to Hell for disobeying God's apparent will to have me shrivel up and die before reaching the second grade?  Will South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius (runs like the wind despite two prosthetic legs) similarly be consigned to eternal flame for transcending his physical limitations?  Does the whole medical profession get chucked into Gehenna for uncovering new knowledge and developing new treatments that have more than doubled the human lifespan over the course of only a few centuries?

Either they're willing to take their logic to the crazy conclusions it necessarily implies... or they're using it selectively for its convenience value, so they can sound Deep and Serious and Philosophical and thus get the hoi polloi to buy the anti-GLBTQ ill-will swill they're covering up for.  Either way, it's pretty hosed.

(By the way, perhaps this is a bit too snarky, but speaking of transcending biological limitations... how about that constant religious obsession with attaining eternal life?  :-D)

(And I hope that his boss springs to his defence -- because he's got a different skeleton in his writings.  Too often we get so -- justifiably -- annoyed at what these people are against, we forget to take a look at what these people are for -- and so do those newspeople who treat them as 'respectable' conservatives.)