Marriage Has Less Meaning for Me Now

Well, it looks like California's Proposition 8 is going to pass, with only the absentee and provisional ballots left to count. That means that a goodly number of people will have their California marriages invalidated. Marriage is supposed to be about two people wanting to make a lifetime commitment to each other. Why should a certain set of people be treated like second class citizens?

This is extremely similar to the miscegenation laws in place a while ago. When Barack Obama was born, his parents' interracial marriage was illegal in 16 states. I'd like to coin a new word to describe California's new constitutional change: idegenation. It comes from the same general derivation as miscegenation, but instead of using the Latin miscēre for "mix", it uses idem for "same". California now has an idegenation law on its books.

Perhaps there needs to be another Million Man March on Washington, only this time with the new set of second class citizens: the homosexuals.

When referring to the person who sleeps next to me in bed, I think I may just refer to her as my Partner from now on. Sure, that person is of the opposite sex, but so what? Marriage just doesn't mean as much to me now as it did when it applied to all people.