Via HuffPo:
Gov. Don Carcieri vetoed legislation Tuesday that would give same-sex couples in Rhode Island the same right to plan the funerals of their late partners as married couples.Can we be clear about something? "The people" have no business determining what rights minorities deserve. "The people" sometimes get it wrong. "The people" sometimes get it very, very wrong.The socially conservative Republican said the proposed protection represents a "disturbing trend" of the incremental erosion of heterosexual marriage. Rhode Island does not recognize same-sex marriage.
"If the General Assembly believes it would like to address the issue of domestic partnership, it should place the issue on the ballot and let the people of Rhode Island decide," Carcieri said in a letter to lawmakers.
Gov. Carcieri is clearly an ass of epic proportions. That much is obvious. What remains obscure to me is why anyone could possibly feel that letting gay and lesbian survivors deal with the remains of their deceased loved ones is a threat to anything. (I'm amazed that heterosexual marriage has managed to survive for thousands of years, what with it being so terribly fragile.) Can someone please explain this to me?
Thankfully, sanity may yet reign in Rhode Island.
Democrats hold a veto-proof majority in the Legislature and frequently override Carcieri's objections.Please, God, let it be so. I can't handle yet more social conservative malarkey right now. And bless and keep Stephen Colbert.
Sen. Rhoda Perry and Rep. David Segal, the bill sponsors, said they would seek to override the veto.
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Gov. Don Carcieri is a good Catholic boy. Just like Maine, RI is falling in line. In DC as noted before, the Catholic church is threatening to close their shelters. This is coming from the very top of the church, (the pope). Where the last one spoke out but did not follow through this guy (Pope Horrid) does not speak out on the subject very much but there is no question he is behind it with his gorilla actions just as he was before he was pope. Well what is to be expected from a former member of the Hitler Youth.
ReplyDeleteI have bad news... if Teh People aren't behind the laws of the land, ultimately the laws of the land are the thing that gives. Legitimacy flows from The People, not from [obscene gerund] politicians. You can hide behind pols for a while, but it is a really bad strategy, IMHO.
ReplyDeleteAnd I can't understand what harm it does to permit SS partners to plan funerals either. However, that's not the point according to the quote. The point is letting partners plan funerals "as married couples." The issue isn't funerals, but marriage. To get those recognitions, win the public opinion battle!
GJ, plenty of laws have been passed contra the will of "the people," which they have managed to accept and which over time become the norm. Many of them have to do with civil rights, as it happens. Your argument is belied by history.
ReplyDeleteJG, If the voters had to decide on slavery, persons of color would still be in bondage, there would still be laws prohibiting their marriage and the list goes on. There has NEVER been one instance of genuine civil rights that were approved by the voters.... not one! The will of the people be damned. Some gay couples have been together for 40 and 50+ years. You are going to tell them they cannot arrange funeral services? Bullshit!
ReplyDeleteI simply don't understand how, if the will is laid out properly, that anyone can stop gays from managing the funeral if they are named the executors of the estate. Am I missing something here? People name non family members executors all the time. Absent a will I can understand it is the nearest family member, but simply put there should not be no Will, especially among committed gay couples.
ReplyDeletecharo
UJ, I disagree. Slavery ended in the West when most people recognized it as an evil institution. It wasn't that Parliament passed some magic law and slavery became unpopular. It was public opinion that led to the outlawing of slavery.
ReplyDeleteThink about it. If government could decide the norms of behavior over the objections of the governed, then government can do whatever the bloody hell it wants, including reinstating slavery and declaring dissent a capital crime...
"He admits to being a Republican, a sinner by Law! Cast him into the outer darkness."
JG, Nonsense as usual . What the Hell do you think the civil war was about. Oh I forgot you lost that one. Charo, It is unfortunate but bigotry does prevail in our country contrary to what others think. I believe the crux of the problem lies in preparation. We have spent thousands of dollars to ensure that our rights and were and are protected. As we moved about this country (in our employment with the Feds) each state required their documents to be in use. Over time that adds up to thousands. Not all persons were as fortunate as we were. We could afford attorneys to re-do and re-do and re-draft various documents and a slew of notarizations, (In some cases we were required to have four witnesses signatures, VA for example). Not all persons are as enlightened as you. Some day this will all be unnecessary but for now the situation stinks.
ReplyDeleteGadfly, you cannot possibly be averring that the Emancipation Proclamation would have been ratified had it been put to a vote in the South. Likewise, it's pretty obvious that civil rights legislation would have met a similarly dim fate had it been subject to public referendum. (Witness the fortunes of the Democratic Party in the South pre- and post-Johnson.)
ReplyDeleteDan, correctamundo about the EP. But the fact was the South was a member of a larger entity, and within that larger entity, slavery was not supported by a majority of citizens.
ReplyDeleteI do not think it is at all obvious that civil rights for minorities were not supported by a majority of US citizens in the early 1960s. The Southern Democrats were blocking that legislation despite public opinion in the US, and the Democratic party paid for catering to bigots and racists.
My favorite bumper sticker lately: Protect the sanctity of marriage: ban divorce.
ReplyDeleteAs your readers have said time and time again, heteros are doing enough to ruin their own marriages and families. Claiming equal rights will erode marriages is a red herring to distract from bigotry.
Charo,
ReplyDeleteYou are 100% correct, if estate planning is done correctly, nobody can stop anybody from doing anything for a funeral, nobody can stop anybody from passing real estate or personal items to another person. If the gay community spent half as much effort on explaining estate planning as they did calling people, printing flyers, and creating TV ads for their cause, they would realize that 90% of the "discrimination" they believe exists does not exist at all. It's the same wall that Bill Cosby and Obama run into when they speak to inner city youth - the issues these groups of people "THINK" afflicts them, does not (it's simply not real - well, 90% of it that is). Full disclosure - I am a white straight male...
-"Henrietta"