Goldy has a piece on Slog about the IRS recognizing same gender marriages as long as they were preformed in states where it’s legal. It’s an important step. If you look at the map of where marriage equality is legal, it’s a few islands in a sea of discrimination. The Northeast, a few Midwest and Southwest states, and 2 West Coast states.
That’s it. The whole Southeast and other large swaths of the rest of the country are without any states with full marriage equality. But now people living in the rest of the country can come to a state where it’s legal, get married and bring some of the rights of marriage back with them.
That means you can be gay married in Washington but live in Alabama, and still be treated as a legally married couple by the IRS. Though why you want to live in Alabama, I’ve know idea.
Ugh. And not just the typo. I don’t know why anyone would want to live outside a few Northern metro areas. But the fact that they do is good enough for me. The fight for equality is necessarily the fight for equality everywhere. And people wanting to be treated equal in the town where they grew up, or where their family lives, where they love the climate, where they could find a job, or whatever other reason doesn’t deserve our sneering. We should stay focused on the governments that don’t allow full rights not the people who have their rights denied.
Major social changes take time, Carl. The South used to be a swamp of slavery abutting dry land called “free states.” You can’t drain a swamp and eradicate malaria overnight. To wipe out homophobia in the Bible Belt you’re going to need repeated applications of industrial-strength sunshine.
Yes and thank you, Carl.
I’m currently in Ames Iowa and despite the 95 degree heat and 50% humidity, the town seems like a really nice, livable place.
Exactly so, Carl.
I won’t make excuses for the typo, but Jesus, the humidity alone is enough to make Alabama unlivable for me. That said, I don’t understand why a gay couple would want to live in a region that does not tolerate them, when they are welcome in in so many cities around the country?