Last night was another extraordinary moment in the civil rights movement of our time. After eight provinces had already guaranteed equal treatment under the law for gay couples, the national parliament voted for full marriage rights for gay Canadians. Spain will soon follow. By Christmas, Britain will have full marriage rights under the rubric of “civil partnerships”. (The only difference between CPs and CMs is a one-year waiting period for citizenship for the foreign partner of a gay Brit.) Meanwhile, the U.S. president backs an amendment stripping gay couples of all protections for their relationships and dozens of states have barred even domestic partnerships for couples whose main sin is wanting to settle down and commit to each other for life. When I came to America twenty-one years ago next month, I found a country brimming with freedoms and openness with respect to emotional and sexual orientation; it was a revelation coming from a far-more repressed Britain, and one reason I couldn’t bring myself to leave. In two decades, the reverse is true. We have made enormous gains (there have been close to a thousand marriages in Provincetown since last summer), but the logic of gay dignity and equality has somehow been blocked in many places here, while flourishing in the rest of the free world. One instrument in the majority support for gay couples settling down in Canada was a documentary, “Tying the Knot,” that was broadcast on national television twice before the parliamentary vote. PBS is too cowed by the religious right to show the documentary here. But it’s a powerful film, and you can buy it here. I recommend it highly – especially for those who think that gay couples somehow don’t face real hardship and cruelty because of their lack of legal protections, especially poorer couples in rural areas.
A NEW RATIONALE: Swift Report has discovered a new reason for the war in Iraq, as explained by president Bush.
The Dish 