Marriage Equality in Portugal

I went to the oral surgeon this morning for a connective tissue graft, and was at my desk by 10:30. I'm not sure if that was a good idea or not. We'll see.

You may have heard by now from all of the major news outlets (I'll link to the BBC's article) that gay marriage will soon be legal in Portugal, as President Anibal Cavaco Silva has indicated that he will not veto the marriage equality that passed with the support of the ruling Socialist Party. A couple of things that I think are worthy of note:

• Portugal in their national legislature has managed to assemble veto-proof majorities in favor of progressive social legislation. In the mean time, the House of Representatives can barely scrape together the 5 votes needed to provide health insurance as a basic right for all Americans.

• As part of his explanation for his decision, President Silva noted that ratifying the marriage equality bill would allow the legislature to get back to dealing with the most pressing issues of the day, namely that of managing the struggling economy. This point is the one that I wish someone would make more forcefully in the U.S.: of all the things we have to worry about these days, why spend your time worrying about who is marrying whom and what their genders are? Even if we weren't in a recession, why would you donate thousands of dollars to an anti-gay marriage initiative (as some of my family friends in the SF Bay area did in 2008 for Prop. 8) when you could feed literally thousands of people with the same amount of money if it went to the local food bank instead? I just don't get it.

In any case, as with each jurisdiction that signs onto marriage equality, the inevitability of gay marriage comes into clearer relief. I'm not foolish enough to believe that one day gay marriage will be legal everywhere, but I am optimistic that one day gay marriage will be legal in enough places that GLBT people around the world won't have to make the difficult decision of choosing between where they want to live and the rights and protections they'll have for their families. One day, we'll all look back and wonder what the fuss was about.

In fact, on this point, I got to thinking about all of the opponents of marriage equality like Matthew Holland and Orson Scott Card and Maggie Gallagher (all current or former members of the National Organization for Marriage): would they have supported interracial marriage, or would they have decried Loving v. Virginia when it was handed down through "judicial activism" in 1967? Of course, given the wide acceptance of race as a protected class now, I'm sure that they would all hail the issue as a vastly different one such that they would have been on the frontlines protesting anti-miscegenation laws from the get-go. But I'm not so sure, especially if, like Prop. 8, the Mormon Church had taken a strong position against interracial marriage.

Let me be clear: I'm not suggesting that these people are racist. What I am suggesting is that they follow too willingly and blindly the dictates of an organized religion. And when that organized religion prizes obedience and is also led by people whose worldviews about how society should be organized were shaped generations ago, you get the dangerous result of otherwise reasonable, fairly smart, and young people going along with social policy ideas that should have died out at the end of the Victorian Age. Call it the timelessness of morality if you want, but I think that's how crazy ideas get passed down.

Anyway, good for Portugal, especially since the Pope was just there peddling his bat-shit-craziness. Sucks not to have any credibility as a religious leader, doesn't it, Benedict?

And on a final note, it looks like Glee will be covering Bad Romance! (Everyone who is surprised by this should leave. Now.) You can listen to the full version of the song here (thanks, Morgan!).