Prop. 8 Stands, So Do Existing Marriages

Back in the fall, when I started at St. Dymphna, several families at our very Catholic school were planning weddings.

I got to hear about one of them during the freshman orientation. The uncle of one of our freshman girls was going to have a formal wedding to the man he'd been with for some years. She was thrilled, because she was going to be in the wedding party. This meant she got to wear a long dress, and heels, and her mom had said she could wear her hair up and get her makeup and nails done professionally. Oh, and also she was going to get to do one of the Gospel readings, which was nice, but obviously not as nice to a fourteen-year-old girl as professional makeup and wedding cake.

More casually, I got to hear about the wedding plans of another gay uncle, from his nephew, who was also going to do a Scripture reading, but had no plans to get his makeup done. It was that nephew who breezed into class on the Tuesday California voted Proposition 8 into law, and told me that his uncle and the uncle's young man had gone to City Hall Monday afternoon and gotten married, on a hunch that they should do it while the doing was good. The formal wedding was still on, but they had the paperwork.

I'm glad the existing marriages stand legally. I feel sad for the people left in the cold, angry at how hard this is. Who profits if people who love one another can't get married?

I don't know if the court could have done anything else legitimately. But I hate this precedent. We get to vote now, on who gets access to legal rights? Whooo, boy. Not a good idea.

I'm glad Shimon's uncle got married in time. I wish it hadn't been, as a man on the news this morning said, a limited time offer.