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COPYRIGHT 2004 Curve Magazine, Outspoken Enterprises, San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 863-6538
IT BEGAN BACK IN FEBRUARY. THE newly elected Democratic mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, decided to issue marriage licenses to lesbians and gay men and perform marriage ceremonies at San Francisco City Hall. Within weeks, several other communities were doing it as well, in New Mexico and New York. By March, it was happening in Arizona and New Jersey. Now, in May, queer marriages may be happening--with full legal rights attached--in Massachusetts, where the fight began in earnest when the Massachusetts State Supreme Court stipulated in a January
ruling that to deny lesbians and gay men the full rights of legal marriage would violate that state's constitution.
President Bush called the San Francisco marriages "troubling" and attributed the Massachusetts ruling to "activist judges trying to overturn the basic fabric of American society." In February, the president called for a constitutional amendment banning marriages between anyone other than one man and one woman.
Bush has turned the queer marriage issue into a referendum on cultural conservativism in his re-election campaign, and Democratic contender Sen. John Kerry has tried to avoid the issue as much as possible. Kerry is on record as supporting civil unions and opposing gay marriage, but as one of the senators from Massachusetts, he will have to come...
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