But if you want a really fun parody instead, check out this sweet video by Garfunkel & Oates. Or read the article and then watch the video. Whatever works for you.

Related at Good Vibrations:
I Rub My Duckie™ 3-Speed Vibrator

It seems that the proposed law will add the words “permanent partner” to those qualified to seek such residency. Permanent partner is defined as an adult who is in a committed, intimate, financially interdependent relationship with another adult in “which both parties intend a lifelong commitment.” Doesn’t that sound a lot like marriage to you?

The fact that there needs to be an additional law to create a measure of equality for same-sex couples is why we need marriage equality in the first place!

Yet the joy for many of us is tempered by the passing of Proposition 8. The country has come so far in electing an African-American president and at the same time the blue state of California has voted to ban gay marriage. One prejudice was torn asunder while another erected a rampart.

It’s been that kind of election cycle. Our African-American president got here by telling us we should not vote for the woman candidate.

Meanwhile, the Republicans did nominate a woman to be vice-president. But her reliance on her charm, good looks and cutesy attitude rather than her intellect made her a giant step backwards for feminism.

Then there is the possibility that the reason prop 8 passed was because the African-American candidate brought too many African-Americans to the polls. The theory is that Black Churches were preaching against the abomination of gay marriage.

Of course Barack Obama never said he was in favor of gay marriage, either. It’s like our fiancé is so sweet to us when we’re alone but is a different person when his friends are around. If Obama had come out in favor of same-sex marriage he probably never would have gotten elected. Politics is a funny game that way.

In the spirit of that game I have a proposal, a new proposition to go up in a special referendum: Proposition 8 ½.

Proposition 8 ½ states that marriage shall be defined as the union of two people who love each other. Said unions shall be recognized by the State regardless of all manner of craziness and lunacy that may ensue.

Proposition 8 ½ has been carefully worded to encompass as much of the human comedy as possible. Rather than target the institution of marriage and ask specifically that same-sex couples be allowed in I am proposing we swing the doors wide. With some of the relationships that pass as marriages already this broader approach is n everyone’s interest.

Let us look at what this proposition means.

“Two people who love each other.” That seems pretty straight forward, or gay forward, which is just like straight forward only better dressed and it leans slightly to the left.

It is the second sentence that needs a little unpacking. “Said unions shall be recognized by the State regardless of all manner of craziness and lunacy that may ensue.” What does this mean?

Put most simply, marriage already encompasses a wide swath of relationships, many of them crazy and lunatic. By stating that the State must recognize all manner of craziness we are throwing the doors wide open for gay relationships. When you look at marriage today two men or two women being married just isn’t that odd.

Let’s look at some relationships that already exist and qualify as marriage.

You can live in separate houses, you can live in separate states, and so long as you are straight be considered married under the law.

You can claim to be staying late at work while carrying on an affair that your spouse knows about but doesn’t want to admit and so she punishes you with cutting remarks in front of friends, your marriage bed a cold, desolate wilderness, and, so long as you are straight, still be considered married under the law.

You can be polyamorous sex gods, at least in your own minds, sleeping with every living, breathing soul within 25 miles of San Francisco and so long as you’re straight still be considered married under the law.

You could have gotten married because you thought it was the right time, you know, because you were tired of going out every Saturday night looking, and because all your friends were getting married and you wanted someone to go with to their weddings, and now you realize you don’t really know who he is but as you’re starting to learn you realize you don’t like him and so lately every time he comes through the front door you are seized by a desire to punch him in the face. That could be your situation, and so long as you’re straight you are considered married under the law.

You can be in it for the money and so long as you are straight be considered married under the law.

You can lie to your spouse about everything except your name and so long as you’re straight…

But you can be in a committed relationship for 10 years, own property together, raise children, love one another in the face of strong societal resistance, and if you are the same sex not be considered married under the law.

Unless of course that law is Proposition 8 ½. Then the State has to recognize all manner of craziness and lunacy.

Proposition 8 ½ holds a mirror up to straight people and their marriages. Let’s not let the churches promulgate the myth that marriage between a man and a woman is considered holy simply by being. Let’s not let them control the image.

Let’s put it into law, marriage is all kinds of crazy.

You can hate your husband and still be married. You can love watching your wife have sex with large Turkish men and still be married. You can also be two men or two women and still be married. If you’re in love, that’s enough for us.

There is a flip side to Proposition 8 ½. By defining marriage as something that exists between two people who love each other we would be effectively annulling, well, more marriages than I care to name here.

(To all my friends who think I might mean you, I don’t mean you. I mean our other friends who we’re always talking about. You know who I mean.)

There you have it, Proposition 8 ½, subversive and loony but perhaps just what we need.

Proposition 8 ½: If you’re in love, that’s enough for us.

What can I say, it’s a good bumpersticker.

Redundant, say you.
No, say I.

Bachelor Parties aren’t really for bachelors, they’re for almost married guys. And there’s a big difference between living alone with no promises made and having a fiancé, a caterer, a hall, a guest list and your parents in town.

Just because the ring is in your pocket doesn’t mean you’re still a bachelor. The ring going on your finger is a technicality. And technicalities don’t count in matters of love.

The bachelor party I attended recently began at 8 a.m. Yes, as other bachelor party attendees stumbled home in a bleary-eyed haze, I sauntered by bright eyed and bushy tailed, sober and chaste, on my way to a sensible breakfast in Glen Park. From there we went south to shoot clay pigeons.

The reason for this was that the bride-to-be had expressed extreme duress over our going to a more traditional venue. I believe the direct quote was, “No f—ing lap dances.”

At first I was as disappointed as you. There are few things as much fun as going to a strip club when it is not your idea. “I’m not really like this – just here with the boys – being supportive – trying to help the ball club – hey you’re pretty.”

On the drive down I listened to a guy describe how much he loved surfing. His wish was to find a “part-time parenting situation”, 2-3 hours a day, 3-4 days a week so that he could teach a kid to surf.

That, my friends, is a bachelor.

My friend, the groom to be, was not.

Lying on a picnic table, comatose from too much barbeque and too much sun, surrounded by the gentle lullaby of shotgun blasts I had my epiphany.

There was my friend, a man who had made a big decision in his life, a brave decision. He was going to stand up in front of his family and friends and declare his love for a woman.
It’s a beautiful thing. It should be up to us, his friends, to support him in that decision.

The night before or the week before a man’s wedding is not the time for a man to carouse as he once did in the past. It is a time for his friends to celebrate his future, to pay tribute to the life he has chosen.

A traditional bachelor party is actually a subversive act. It focuses attention on a man losing his freedom rather than a man choosing his life. By it’s very nature a traditional bachelor party denigrates marriage as not a choice but an obligation, a giving in, a failure.

The night before the wedding one should not be mourning the loss of bachelor hood. One should be celebrating the creation of a new role, that of husband.

Which brings me to this, Bachelor Parties should continue. They just shouldn’t take place any where near a wedding.

A Bachelor Party should be all about celebrating the fact that you’re still a F***ING BACHELOR.

26-years-old? No girlfriend? Have a f—ing Bachelor Party; girls, guns, blow, donkeys, whatever you want.

Does it make sense to wait till you have a fiancé to go out and have the biggest blow out of your life? Does it make sense to wait to hire strippers until you have someone in your life you need to keep it secret from? Why wait to have your dirtiest night until you have reason to feel guilty the next morning?

Men, for god sakes, start having your bachelor parties while you’re still legitimately bachelors. Celebrate the fact that you can do anything and not feel guilty. Celebrate that there’s no one waiting at home for you; no one to keep a secret from, that you don’t have to explain your night or what you did in that hot tub with Kia and Iris. That’s a bachelor party.

Luckily, we figured this out on the picnic tables and so you are all invited to Steve’s official and legitimate Bachelor Party; a grand shindig where we will celebrate the licentious beauty and carnal delight of Steve’s bachelorhood.

Anywaaaaay, by the same token, I have no desire to go playing Army with a lot of beefy guys in uniform (although strangely enough, that does sound kind of enticing), but I want the right to do so without the stipulation of Not Asking, Not Telling, and Not “Being All That I Can Be.” The Marines need a few good men, but apparently not men loving men, just killing them. By the way, May 20 is Armed Forces Day — take a sailor to lunch or breakfast in bed. You might even get an honorable discharge out of it.

Nonetheless, perhaps we should consult a noted nationally syndicated radio shrink-talk show host about this. Let’s say, oh I don’t know, Dr. Laura Schlessinger? Even though she has no degree in psychiatry or psychology (or ophthalmology — since she is obviously short-sighted; but she might have a degree in ornithology, since she is such a bird-brain), Dr. Laura has taken it upon herself to educate the public about the psychology of homosexuals and their “deviant” yet “curable” behavior, many being “pedophiles” and all of them “biological errors,” according to the faux doctor.

But we should allow her to blather on, because after all — what about free speech? So what if she actively campaigned against gay adoption, gay marriage and equal benefits? Isn’t it her Constitutional right to say what she wants over the air? Yes, unfortunately. But it’s also our right to scream and picket and make a huge fuss over this biological error of a fascist moralist. Free speech becomes rather costly when it leads to suicide and hate crimes. By the way, you might want to click onto the very useful www.stopdrlaura.com website and check out the activist strategies there. Stopdrlaura.com has just gone public, and I’m happy to report my pink chip stocks in it are already splitting all over the place. Okay, I lied about it being an IPO, but it’s still a terrific investment — of time.

But I digress. We were talking about gay marriage.

Vermont is for lovers

The good news is the Vermont House has approved legislation that creates the closest thing to gay marriage America has ever seen. This just goes to prove my long-held belief that Vermont has more to offer than just maple syrup. If the bill allowing gays to form “civil unions” becomes law, the state will have gone further than any other in recognizing same-sex couples. Not far enough, but at least it’s progress. The Vermont bill provides for unions that amount to marriage in everything but name. But as that old poofter Will Shakespeare would say, “What’s in a name? A spouse by any other name would smell as sweet.” Or Gertrude Stein might say, “A spouse is a spouse is a spouse.”

By way of this bill, partners could apply for a license from town clerks and have their civil union “certified” by a justice of the peace, a judge, or a member of the clergy. Sister Dana is already planning to hang his plaque out on the Perpetual Indulgence convent gate: “Nun available for queer marriage ceremonies, premarital counseling, and post-nuptial three-ways.”

Of course, with marriage comes divorce. Gay partners who want to split up would have to go through dissolution proceedings in Family Court, in the same way that married couples have to pursue a divorce. They would also assume each other’s debts like married couples do. Hey waitaminnit, all of a sudden this isn’t sounding so great. It could get very messy. Can you just imagine the arduous task of dividing up the community property? “The leather and fetish wear are mine; the cocktail dresses, wigs, and high heels are yours; we’ll have to argue about the country western gear; you can have the ferret and I’ll keep the gerbil. And I don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do about the diva CD collection!” Hmmmm, maybe I’d better add “pre-divorce counseling and one-last-three-way for old time’s sake” when I hang my shingle.

Civil governments have a long and ugly history of restricting marriage based on race, gender, location, income, tribe, health, etc. After all, it was just back in 1967 when the US Supreme Court finally told the last 13 States to remove laws that banned interracial marriage in the landmark Loving vs. Virginia decision. We can help stop this similar form of discrimination. One million signatures are needed to place an initiative on the California ballot, changing the state constitution to allow marriage between two people of the same sex.

Check out www.samesexmarriage.org, the home of Californians for Same-Sex Marriage. CaSSM, rhymes with orgasm, is a registered California campaign committee run by a bunch of way kewl grassroots activists.

All this gives us an excellent opportunity to polish up our activism skills. For instance, last year on IRS tax deadline night, some of us Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence gathered around the main post office chanting “2-4-6-8, IRS discriminates,” and holding placards reading, “Equal rights are civil rights,” “Gay couples would gladly take the marriage penalty,” and “No joint returns allowed for gay couples.”

I suggest gay folks all get vans and decorate them with wedding crap and a big “Still Not Married” sign and show up on the front lawn of some of these homophobes against queer marriage. What if every unmarried same-sex couple could “return” a used toaster or other damaged wedding present to the Mormon Church and all those pro-Knight organizations? Pile the steps of their temples and buildings with useless wedding gifts — like broken blenders, chipped china, gouged goblets — not to mention shredded wedding dresses, tattered tuxes, and old dried up, flaky bouquets; and top it all off with lots and lots of stale, sticky wedding cake. Spray cheap champagne everywhere. Throw a fit while you throw the rice.

Whatever we do, let’s not stand idly by and watch queer rights get jerked from gays. And if you happen to run across a cute eligible bachelor, tell him Sister Dana is currently auditioning for an ex-husband.

You probably know that gays, lesbians and bisexuals parade in June to commemorate the Stonewall Riots that happened in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1969, when gays fought back against harassment by police. But did you know that the Sexual Freedom League sponsored parades in San Francisco for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and everybody else, even before Stonewall? When my heterosexual friends who love the gay parades tell me sadly that they wish there was a parade for everybody, I tell them they should have been out in the streets in the late 1960s with the SFL. (Of course, many of them hadn’t been born yet when the SFL was in its heyday!) In San Francisco a pre-Stonewall blow for gay freedom was struck when police tried to close down a gay dance and found they’d arrested several ministers, there to investigate reports of gay harassment. After the cops so graphically proved the point, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual was born.

Gay and lesbian politicos (in organizations like Society for Individual Rights, One, Inc., the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis) were busy before Stonewall, too, working hard to educate politicians about “homophile” issues. When I see old photos of ladylike lesbians and business-suited gay men picketing the White House when LBJ was the tenant, I marvel at how far the movement has come — and at how hard we’re still working. If homophile activists hadn’t fought for the rights of gays and lesbians to use the US Mail for their publications, we might not be able to send the Good Vibrations catalog to you today. (The indefatigable activists in the reproductive rights movement, too, helped open the mails to information about sex.) As the Sexual Freedom League knew, the sexual rights of one are related to the sexual rights of all.

So how about the recent spate of headlines? The marriage ban has gotten the most attention. How can this be everyone’s issue? Everybody else, after all, can get married already.

That may be, but have you read the wording of the version of the marriage bill favored by the most conservative politicians? Something about marriage being recognized as a union between one man and one woman (careful, or someone might try to slip an extra wife and/or husband in there) for the purposes of procreation. Hello! Does that mean all the vasectomized guys can’t get married? All the post-menopausal women? All the heterosexuals who think a marriage bond is about love and desire for your spouse, not baby-making?

This must be giving Zero Population Growth a migraine. I have nothing against reproduction, when people choose to reproduce — but mandating reproduction is downright scary. (Downright unconstitutional, too, I’m sure, but the fact that there are folks who take this seriously still ought to give all of us pause. If not hives.)

Care to join me and all my gay and lesbian friends as we live in sin?

The other big news is more hopeful for those of us who think human rights equal sexual rights. The conservative backlash against equal rights laws finally hit the Supreme Court, who recommended, in essence, a little peek at the Constitution to supplement Bible study. They treated the Colorado bigots who gave that state Measure 2 like the schoolyard bullies they are, instructing them that we are not to pick on people just because of sexual orientation. Ironically, the anti-gay forces behind efforts like Measure 2 finally gave the nation proof of what gays have been saying all along: “We need protection under the law specifically because some people do want to pick on us.”

Friends, let’s bring peace to the schoolyard. Everyone can do something about this issue — vote non-homophobic politicians into office, challenge thoughtless remarks, help create a friendly climate for people of all sexual orientations. The folks who bring us homophobia really don’t care much for anyone’s desire for sexual freedom and erotic choice, you know — remember that under several states’ still-enforced sodomy laws, a heterosexual married couple can be criminally charged for having oral sex. If you’re browsing our web page, I know that’s not the kind of country you want to live in — but politicians will be cowards on the issue of sexual rights unless we, the people, insist that they take a progressive stand.

Our sexuality — whether it’s gay, lesbian, heterosexual, bisexual, or anything else – is basic to us: to our pleasure, our partnering, our selves. This Gay Pride Month, do something about preserving our rights to sexual pleasure, whether you’re gay or not. March in a parade (out and proud, or with Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Write to your congressional representative. Accept your own sexuality a little more. Work on accepting someone else’s. We’re in this together, and together we can make sure our sexualities are a cause for celebration.