Today’s letter - everybody loves a wedding, and nothing less

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

People are asking me, and probably still asking you, why the gays can’t just get Domestic Partnered instead of married.

As my fiancée and I prepare for our wedding next Tuesday, in terms of personal life milestones, it is not a Big Deal. We have already looked each other in the eyes and made our promises to each other. This license and ceremony doesn’t hold much meaning for us. It won’t change our legal rights, and it won’t change our relationship. So we’re getting married in the courthouse on the first day that we can.

But as somebody who has “jumped the broom” and domestic partnered, let me tell you that there is a world of difference in the way other people treat a marriage. A wedding is a Big Deal. Friends and family are getting upset that we hadn’t invited them; the in-laws are griping that we’re doing this in Orange County instead of closer to them; the rector at our church told us that she is upset that we aren’t allowing her to perform the ceremony; and my fiancée is out buying new tuxes and rings.

Nobody was this interested when we were getting Domestic Partnered. So when people ask you not to call it marriage, think back to your own wedding to Maria. Who would have come to a “domestic partnership?”

Whether people want to get married in the Central Library or a quiet courtroom, the Golden Rule still says “treat others as you would like to be treated.” Now, finally, you can do that.

Sincerely,

Today’s stamp: “wedding heart.” They don’t make “civil union” heart stamps.

Today’s letter - hate lost, now it’s time to do good

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

As you know, the California Supreme Court has decided that same-sex marriages will proceed, consistent with its ruling and the State Constitution.

In trying to convince the court to postpone the marriages until after a vote in November, the Opponents of Equality, specifically the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Campaign for California Families, claimed that “legal chaos” would result if marriage licenses were issued for six months and then blocked by a constitutional amendment. They might be right.

Well, the marriages are proceeding, and they are at risk of being overturned. If the Opponents of Equality truly want to avoid a nightmare scenario of national “legal chaos,” then it is their turn to give a little.

I think it would be sportsman-like and morally right for the Opponents of Equality to end their war against their neighbors and friends by taking the $10 million earmarked for divisive hate politics and contribute it towards healing the sick or feeding the poor. Or perhaps they could focus on the parental notification initiative that might bring a surprising number of allies from the lesbian and gay community.

Governor, please tell the Opponents of Equality – and your Republican colleagues – that fighting against the law of the land, and against California’s families, is unacceptable. Please ask them to end their support of the Constitutional Amendment to Limit Marriage.

Sincerely,

Today’s letter - everybody knows that it is time

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

A Field Poll of 1,052 registered California voters asked “Do you approve or disapprove of California allowing homosexuals to marry members of their own sex?” and for the first time since 1977 – when California’s law was changed to ban the unions – a majority answered that yes, they do support same-sex marriage.

As my Aunt wrote after she saw our story in the Chicago Tribune, “It’s about time.” The Wall Street Journal described it on their May 24 Opinion page, “Court Allows Gay Marriage: Tyranny or Its End?” And my Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa said “It’s time for us to bring every American out of the shadows and into the light, and this decision does that here in California.

Personally, I’m hoping to marry my fiancée of eleven years in a couple of weeks, and my friends, family and church are on the edge of their seats.

Please, Governor, keep supporting the freedom to marry in our great state. Keep fighting against the amendment. And most of all, please do whatever you can to make sure marriages start as soon as possible and continue after November.

Yours,

Today’s letter - I expect our government to follow the law

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

I discovered something terrible. Our own state Economic Development Department (EDD) has an entire tax unit and legal status called “HUS/WIFE.” The California Business and Professions Code Section 17913 (b) (4) even seems to authorize this, listing options describing the nature of the business as

(i) “an individual,”
(ii) “a general partnership,”
(iii) “a limited partnership,”
(iv) “a limited liability company,”
(v) “an unincorporated association other than a partnership,”
(vi) “a corporation,”
(vii) “a trust,”
(viii) “copartners,”
(ix) “husband and wife,”
(x) “joint venture,”
(xi) “state or local registered domestic
partners,” or
(xii) “a limited liability partnership.”

I don’t know why our EDD doesn’t just use the term “married couple” instead of “husband and wife.” Article 1 Section 8 of our State Constitution says “A person may not be disqualified from entering or pursuing a business, profession, vocation, or employment because of sex, race, creed, color, or national or ethnic origin.” Our 2005 Domestic Partnership legislation ordered this gender specific language to be changed, and it seems as though our State Supreme Court agrees.

The EDD ought to defer to the Family Code for the definition of marriage instead of making up their own. The EDD expects me to follow the law; I expect no less from the EDD.

Sincerely,

Today’s letter - sliding down the slippery slope

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

I wanted to explain to you why the stakes are so high for this November’s ballot initiative limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.

Michigan’s State Supreme Court ruled yesterday 5-2 that their 2004 ballot initiative to limit marriage also included “similar unions” and stripped at least 375 gay couples at public universities, community colleges, school districts and local governments of their benefits. It doesn’t’ take a crystal ball to realize that as soon as the Limit on Marriage passes, the Opponents of Equality will be gunning to unwind domestic partnerships too.

Because of the Domestic Partnership legislation that you signed in 2000, I have been able to make a pretty good life here in California, marry my husband and have two kids through surrogacy. I have been able to contribute back to the economy and society through taxes and tithing. But the Limit on Marriage proposition threatens to take all that away.

Your reaction to the initiative that would wreck my life has been merely neutral. I know that there are a lot of other things that are important these days, but could you amp it up a bit? A few words in opposition to the people in your administration, government and political party who are dedicated to eliminating same-sex partner benefits, child custody, and adoption would do wonders. You need only to remind them of the golden rule – and why limiting marriage is a truly bad proposition.

Yours,

Today’s letter - checkbox for hate

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

I still need your help again to fix the language on California EDD Form DE1-HW. I wrote to you in July 2007 complaining about the checkbox for HUS/WIFE. As members of a California Registered Domestic Partnership trying to hire a nanny, we were quite alienated by this clear state preference for man-on-woman marriages in contrast to the letter and intent of the law that you signed in 2000 authorizing our partnership (and our Constitutional bans on discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation.)

At the time you referred us to Mr. Robert Affleck, Deputy Director, Tax Branch, who referred us to Mr. Stan Adge, Tax Administrator, Taxpayer Advocate’s Office. Through ensuing conversations with Mr. Adge, he made it clear that this issue would be considered for the “next revision of the form.” Then he left the department, Ms. Leslie Weiss took over his job, and Ms. Michelle Mosley took over the mantle to fix this form.

According to verbal conversations with Ms. Mosley, “the form has been revised” and is “awaiting internal review” before being released to the Web site. But I have been unable to secure written confirmation if and when this will happen, and nobody in my community has had an opportunity to review the revised form to see if it complies with our need for equal treatment under the law.

Above all, this slow response and obscured process has made me feel as though this critical change to comply with an eight-year-old law is not a priority within EDD as it is within our community. I fear that the process has been derailed, the outcome will further alienate my family, and the result will please no one. This should be an emergency change to comply with state law, not a “suggestion” to be “considered with the next revision.”

Would you “work your magic” to get EDD to take this seriously? I don’t have anybody else to turn to to make sure that as long as lesbian and gay couples are being treated separately in California, they are at least treated equally.

Yours,

Today’s letter - my husband

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

I’ve been having problems figuring out how to refer to my spouse. A lot of people try to insist that I call him my “registered California Domestic Partner,” but that doesn’t seem right to me.

We have been living as a married couple for ten years, ten months and twelve days; we were officially married at the earliest opportunity, on Valentine’s Day in 2004; we had two kids almost fourteen months ago; this year we even filed joint taxes.

I think I have to refer to my spouse as “my husband.” Anything less would be disrespectful to him and to our relationship, and confusing to the people that don’t quite know what a “partnership” is.

We shouldn’t be making up new words to describe marriages – we should be using the words that society has already defined. I wish you and your administration would do more to help people like me use the right words to describe our relatives and relations. I wish you would explain to the people that blocking same-sex couples from getting married is bad for our economy and our society.

Yours,

Today’s letter - traditional marriage

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

When President Gerald R. Ford was running for his first term in congress in 1948, he delayed his marriage to Elizabeth Warren until after the election because he was worried that voters would punish him for marrying a divorced woman.

That was “traditional marriage” back then: you got one try to get it right, and after that you were ‘defective’ and couldn’t even take communion at church.

Much has changed in fifty years. Now Tom Cruise can get married as many times as he wants to, and nobody bats an eye. Obviously “traditional marriage” is simply a social and economic construct that unites two people and their families according to their individual choice.

Governor, would you help bring “traditional marriage” back to the people, by allowing all of the people of California to marry the person that they want to?

If Gerald Ford can marry a divorced woman and be elected President, I should have the freedom to marry the person I love, whether they are a felon, foreigner, divorcee, widower, ugly, white, Catholic, Republican, or – in my case – male.

Yours,

Today’s letter - people who are unhappy with fairness will never be happy

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

I was astonished to learn that even the opponents of equality believe “domestic partnership” and marriage are in fact the same things.

Kentucky State Senator Vernie McGaha introduced legislation that would bar state agencies and schools from providing health insurance for the domestic partners of their employees, even when fully paid for by the beneficiaries. Sen. McGaha said that he was concerned about the erosion of the sanctity of marriage by the provision of domestic-partner benefits.

That the bill was defeated in committee was no surprise. State Senator Ernesto Scorsone explained “I think most Kentuckians believe if you are able to pay for the insurance, you ought to be able to buy it.”

What shocked me was that six of the fifteen committee members voted for the legislation, apparently considering simple domestic partnership benefits to be an offensive intrusion by the gays into the world of marriage. These people will not be happy until I am exterminated.

Governor, it is time to choose between encouraging marriage and encouraging intolerance. The voters of this state are on the verge of changing our Constitution to block people like me from forming partnerships. Whether this comes out nine to six or six to nine depends on your support. I wish you would tell the people that you support the freedom to marry.

Yours,

Today’s letter - just don’t call it “day”

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

Today is so-called “leap day” that only comes along once every four years. This “day” was fabricated and imposed on us in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII just so that Easter would fall at around the same time of year. It is really just a collection of hours to make up for the six hour discrepancy between the traditional year and the seasons, and not a “day.”

In ancient times, the adjustment was a whole ten-day month that happened every 25 years; by 46 BC, Caesar created a whole month – one day long – to deal with the problem. The month was legally identical to the day before it, “separate but equal” one might say. Clearly, it is a time period like no other in the calendar year, and it requires special treatment, for calling it a “day” demeans all of the other days of the year.

Where is the incentive for the sun to rise if just any time adjustment can be called a “day?” We need to protect the traditional definition of a year – which everybody knows is 365 days – against this assault to logic.

I propose that instead of calling this a “day” we call it a “domestic time adjustment interval” and that people who are born or die during this time period are recorded on the previous or following day.

You don’t call a “domestic partnership” a marriage – you should not call “February 29th” a day, or else the calendar, the foundation of our society and economy, would surely collapse.

Yours,

Today’s letter - the United Nations holds us together

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Today I want to talk to you about Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

How do you reconcile this with what me and my family experiences every time your administration segregates me and my “same-sex domestic partner” because of our gender?

Is it not an invasion of our privacy to compel us to check “domestic partnerhship” (or “other”) on forms sent to the government? Does it not humiliate and demean our honor and reputation when you say we are less worthy of marriage than you and your wife? By what measure does the law protect our family, home and correspondence when the law does not treat us as equals?

The only way I can see you justifying this is by dancing on the word “arbitrary.” But if you have a reason for violating Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I have yet to hear it. Would you be so kind as to do that before you next violate my freedom to marry?

Yours,

Today’s letter - let Oscar wed too

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

At last night’s Academy Awards, the Best Short Documentary went to a film called “Freeheld” about the struggle that a New Jersey police Lieutenant faced as she tried to include her partner in her pension while she also battled cancer. Had her partner been a different gender, it would have been automatic; instead it was anything but.

I know that you intend for Domestic Partnership to provide same-sex couples with all of the time-tested social and legal features of marriage. The truth is that Domestic Partnership fails miserably at bringing even basic parity to California’s gay partnerships.

When Director Cynthia Wade tells three million people that “It was Lt. Laurel Hester’s dying wish that her fight against discrimination would make a difference for all the same-sex couples across the country,” she is telling three million people that leaders like you are the problem; that people like you, for all your best intentions, are merely obstacles to individual liberty until you support the freedom for all of us to decide for ourselves who we marry.

Yours,

Today’s letter - political courage, not dawdling

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

In today’s New York Times Opinion section, the editors discussed New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine’s statement about same-sex marriage. In response to a commission’s report pointing out the second-class nature of Civil Unions, the Governor said he would sign a bill ending gay couples’ exclusion from marriage, “but not in an election year.” Doing so, he asserts, would be unnecessarily divisive.

The New York Times writes “we appreciate his candor. But to achieve real marital equality will take political courage, not more dawdling.”

Indeed, the Opponents of Equality have not hesitated to choose election years to deliberately divide this country. Through your dawdling, Governor, you have given them another opportunity to turn neighbors in this state against each other.

Governor, I wish you would find the political courage to tell the people of California and Supreme Court next Tuesday that domestic apartheid is not acceptable. All California families deserve access to the time-tested legal and social structure called “marriage.”

Yours,

Today’s letter - Baltimore copied us

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

The greatest complement, it is said, is to be copied. By that measure, Maryland has given us a great big hug.

The Maryland State Senator from Prince George’s County, Gwendolyn T. Britt, was arrested in 1960 for riding the wrong part of a segregated merry-go-round in Glen Echo Park. Since then, she had adopted a new civil rights battle: to legalize same-sex marriage.

Although she died Jan. 12, her legislation was introduced last week with 49 co-authors. The bill is almost identical to the California law that you vetoed last fall, even in name. The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act would remove language in the state code that limits marriage to unions between men and women, and exempt religious leaders from having to perform or recognize same-sex unions.

I’m proud that California was the first state where the people’s branch of government put a marriage equality bill on their governor’s desk, setting an example for legislative action throughout our great nation. But I am equally sad that we were also the first state to have a civil rights bill like this vetoed by its governor.

Maryland didn’t introduce this bill to copy us, they did it because they know that strong families and individual choice are the cornerstone of Maryland’s economy and a free society. It is too late for you to sign AB 43, but it’s not too late for you to support the freedom to marry for all Californians. Please, Governor, I don’t want to have to copy Maryland.

Yours,

Today’s letter - endorse individual freedom

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

I read today that you finally endorsed John McCain for President in 2008. You said “McCain has a great vision to protect the environment and also protect the economy” and that strong investments in green technology can lead to a cleaner planet without sacrifices in quality of life.

Republicans say they believe in their core that individuals make the best decisions about what insurance they want to buy and how green they want to be, but you and Senator McCain both stop short of letting individuals decide who they can marry.

In 2004, Senator McCain was on the right path when he said “The constitutional amendment [banning gay marriage] strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans” because it would take individual decisions away from states and give them to the federal government.

Well, thanks to Republicans like John McCain, the power to block same-sex couples from marriage is in the hands of the states. Now, Governor, it is your turn to send that power down to the people themselves.

Republicans say they believe that individuals can make the best decisions about making their family healthy and strong. Under that mantra, the only people who should be deciding if they should get married are the people getting married.

Yours,

Today’s letter - Your approach to same-sex marriage is wrong

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

Yesterday you told the Los Angeles Times “I have learned a lot of things where I felt one way before I went into office, and all of a sudden you learn things are not quite this way and you change.”

One position you have not changed is your approach to same-sex marriage.

In four years, you have never once spoken out against a system where some people – like me – who pay taxes just like everybody else, but can’t get married like everybody else.

Anybody with the brains God gave geese knows having a separate set of laws for straight couples and gay couples causes harm to every Californian, every day. It pushes people in committed relationships away from the commitment of marriage and into something less. Yet you continue to oppose the legislature’s efforts to correct this domestic apartheid with one proper law.

You say “I would rather flip-flop when I see something is a wrong idea than get stuck with it and stay with it and [keep making] the same mistake.”

It’s time for you to flip-flop on your stand against the freedom to marry.

Yours,

Today’s letter - State of the State

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

In your “State of the State” address last Tuesday, you asked legislators to work with you to tackle some of California’s most pressing challenges. While your list had many important items, I expected that your agenda would have been topped by the plight of over 100,000 Californians who are specially blocked from getting married. That’s 100,000 Californians who would like have the freedom to marry the person they love, but are specially excluded from participating our economy and society.

While we are still debating whether people have a right to health care or clean air, we are all in agreement that the people have a right to live free from discrimination based on their gender, religion or sexual orientation.

I wish you would assume leadership of this issue like you have on the budget, education, growth, health care and the environment, because of all of the great things you want to accomplish, there is nothing more important than ensuring that all Californians have the freedom to enjoy them.

Yours,

Today’s letter - Please make an example of the best

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

As Governor of California, could you make an exception to the law so that my fiancée and I can get married?

We are both outstanding citizens, we have lived together for ten years, and in California for more than eight. Our newborn children bear both our names. We are good, faithful, committed Christians. We would be readily able to provide you with testimonials from all fo