I first posted this on my web site back in 1996. It is time for a good recycle. :-)
And now for the interval of mandatory joyfulness we call the Holiday Season. Let the lies begin!
Lie #1: Thanksgiving is the start of the Christmas season.
The holiday season used to begin when Santa appeared at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Now it begins well before Halloween, when the Hallmark stores display "collectible" mass-produced extruded plastic ornaments - Star Trek vessels, Barbies, Bugs Bunnies, Failed Third-Party Candidates, all hanging from green nooses like Lincoln assassination conspirators.
Lie #2: There are no Thanksgiving songs.
There are a few songs, but they just haven't caught on. The essence of Thanksgiving is communal gorging on decapitated birds, which does not lend itself to bouncy tunes. An accurate Thanksgiving song would go like this:
Harvey the Red-Beaked Turkey
Had a very shiny beak
And when they swung the axe blade
How he struggled and he shrieked
All of the other turkeys faced a future likewise bleak
Like Harvey, the other turkeys
Would be dead by late next week.
See? No fun at all. You could sing "O Butterball" to the Tannenbaum tune, or "Old Cold Coleslaw" to "King Wenceslas." ("Good dish old cole slaw sat there, once again uneaten...") or "O Slipp'ry Knife" to "O Holy Night." Let us sing:
O slippery knife, you slipped while I was carving
Now I am swearing while my wife calls the doc.
O slippery knife, you skidded off the breastbone
Now I am faint, and I'm going into shock.
I now regret those hours at the whetstone
I now suspect I've lost at least a quart.
Press on the wound! Cut off the circulation!
Oh knife so sharp; Oh knife, my tendon's shorn.
(Etc.)
The public has wisely resisted the very concept of Thanksgiving songs. Accept them, and you know they'll show up as mall Muzak in August.
Lie #3: In today's society, more and more men are helping with Thanksgiving dinner.
No. In my childhood, duties were clear. Mom cooked the bird. Dad carved it. I spanked the can of cranberries until a glistening gelatinous barrel plopped on the plate, wiggling uncertainly like a belly dancer who spies her pastor in the audience. I'm certain there are men who get up at dawn to help their wives shave the basil, or debone the gizzard, or whatever it is gourmets do to impress each other. Although David and I handle ourselves in the kitchen well, the majority of males avoid the kitchen, because they know they are as useful as porcupines in a balloon store.
Lie #4: The holidays have become too commercial.
The first people to complain about commercialization were the Three Wise Men, who argued bitterly about whether it was necessary to bring gold, frankincense AND myrrh. One of the Wise Men probably noted that they seemed to put up the Star in the East earlier every year.
Lie #5: Holiday meals contain a substance that puts you to sleep, a natural sedative called " tryptophan."
This is a myth. The sedative is actually called "conversation."
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Civil Unions Are Not Marriage
As I engage in my almost daily habit of perusing the latest news on marriage equality, I find myself increasingly frustrated that civil unions are still proposed as a potential “compromise.” It might sound like a viable and even perfectly reasonable solution to those who have not actually researched the matter. Yet for those who have actually pursued the law on behalf of the public have already come to agree that this is not an acceptable legal alternative.
In an effort to help enlighten others on the issue, I decided to share my research thus far. A civil union reflects a second-class status that fails to protect committed same-sex couples who choose to be married. How can this be, you ask? Is not the idea to provide same-sex couples with the same rights as married couples without calling it “married?” Let me answer that with a few examples of how it has worked thus far.
It has been established that there are over 1100 rights and responsibilities that come with being married in the eyes of the Federal government. But even on a state level, most states have an additional 1000 or more state rights and responsibilities. These range from spousal inheritance rights to the ability to file joint tax returns to child custody rules to the transferring of workers’ compensation benefits. Some of these are fundamental, some are mundane, but all serve to underscore how deeply interwoven states’ marriage laws are and how extraordinarily they reach into the lives of countless people.
Consider New Jersey which granted civil unions to gay and lesbian couples in 2006. Many employers refused to offer them partner benefits because they were not legally married. Hospitals denied them the rights of married couples, checking the “single” box rather than the “married” box on patients’ admissions forms, thereby denying them access to hospitalized loved ones. Gay and lesbian couples were put at risk in emergencies when traveling because civil unions, unlike marriages, are not recognized across state lines.
All of these legal uncertainties led the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission to ultimately declare civil unions a failure, finding that separate categorization “invites and encourages unequal treatment of same-sex couples and their children.”
New Jersey is not the only state to have arrived at that conclusion. Connecticut and New Hampshire have both replaced their civil union statutes with marriage for all couples. And legislators in Vermont voted to do the same by a two-thirds, bipartisan majority.
Simply put, a civil union is not a marriage, nor is it an adequate substitute for one. To suggest otherwise is a cruel fiction. Even if all of the inherent confusion and complexities could somehow be resolved and civil unions could provide couples with the same rights and responsibilities of a true marriage, the separation of the two institutions creates a badge of inferiority that forever stigmatizes the relationships of committed same-sex couples as different, separate, unequal and less worthy.
In an effort to help enlighten others on the issue, I decided to share my research thus far. A civil union reflects a second-class status that fails to protect committed same-sex couples who choose to be married. How can this be, you ask? Is not the idea to provide same-sex couples with the same rights as married couples without calling it “married?” Let me answer that with a few examples of how it has worked thus far.
It has been established that there are over 1100 rights and responsibilities that come with being married in the eyes of the Federal government. But even on a state level, most states have an additional 1000 or more state rights and responsibilities. These range from spousal inheritance rights to the ability to file joint tax returns to child custody rules to the transferring of workers’ compensation benefits. Some of these are fundamental, some are mundane, but all serve to underscore how deeply interwoven states’ marriage laws are and how extraordinarily they reach into the lives of countless people.
Consider New Jersey which granted civil unions to gay and lesbian couples in 2006. Many employers refused to offer them partner benefits because they were not legally married. Hospitals denied them the rights of married couples, checking the “single” box rather than the “married” box on patients’ admissions forms, thereby denying them access to hospitalized loved ones. Gay and lesbian couples were put at risk in emergencies when traveling because civil unions, unlike marriages, are not recognized across state lines.
All of these legal uncertainties led the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission to ultimately declare civil unions a failure, finding that separate categorization “invites and encourages unequal treatment of same-sex couples and their children.”
New Jersey is not the only state to have arrived at that conclusion. Connecticut and New Hampshire have both replaced their civil union statutes with marriage for all couples. And legislators in Vermont voted to do the same by a two-thirds, bipartisan majority.
Simply put, a civil union is not a marriage, nor is it an adequate substitute for one. To suggest otherwise is a cruel fiction. Even if all of the inherent confusion and complexities could somehow be resolved and civil unions could provide couples with the same rights and responsibilities of a true marriage, the separation of the two institutions creates a badge of inferiority that forever stigmatizes the relationships of committed same-sex couples as different, separate, unequal and less worthy.
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