I’m in an unusually impatient, cranky-assed mood today, and this post from one of my oldest friends ain’t doin’ much to cheer me up.

The last paragraph sounds tacked on, but it’s actually the basis for the whole argument. The gist is this – Jamie lives in the U.S. and is a born-in U.S. citizen. Tanya lives in the U.K. and is a born-in U.K. citizen. They met at a scout camp in the U.S. several years ago and, over the course of a wacky relationship (and, really, what relationship isn’t), they fell in love. But, in all that time, they’ve never been able to spend more than a few months together at a stretch because of both the U.K.’s and U.S.’s immigration laws. But they’re so in love that they want to be married. This would actually solve the problem – whether Jamie moved to the U.K. or Tanya moved here, their legal marriage would ensure that the foreigner in the relationship would have citizenship rights.

One catch – Jamie and Tanya are both women. And in both the U.S. and the U.K., gay marriage is illegal. The answer? Go to Canada, where gay marriage is legal, but they will both become foreigners.

Lame. So very, very lame and backwards. That these two have to leave their home countries so that they can live their lives normally is beyond absurd to me. The gay marriage debate has detractors in both the straight and gay communities – many straight folks feel it weakens the insitution of marriage (speaking as a married guy – two years next Tuesday – that’s a crock of shit. Britney Spears and husband number one have done WAY more to desecrate the sanctity of marriage than any gay couple every will). Many gay folks feel that the traditional concept of marriage is, like, too straight and that being married that way is like succumbing to “the man”. They want something that’s different in name and tradition but similar in concept.

Traditional marriage, I think, is irrelevant here. There are really two kinds of marriage – the religious kind (get married in a church before God and your family; promise to stay together according to some church doctrine) and the civil kind (you are legally bound to share your finances, household and future; doesn’t matter who marries you). The latter kind supercedes the former in the U.S. It grants you special rights, like the aforementioned citizenship to foreigners who marry U.S. citizens. It also determine property rights – should I pass, my wife get’s all of my worldly posessions by default. She also is automatically granted my power of attorney in case something happens to disable me from acting on my own behalf. This is appropriate as we share a home, a life and a bed together, so she should be able to act in my best interests better than anyone else.

So, if Jamie and Tanya were able to live together for an extended period of time, share a household, share their life, etc. why should they not also have the same legal rights my wife and I enjoy by virtue of our marriage? What if we called the legal doctrines of marriage something like, oh, I dunno, “Domestic Partnership” and let the religious folks keep the actual concept of marriage to themselves? Like, you can legally be declared a domestic partner by obtaining a “domestic partnership license” (replacing the current “marriage license”), etc., and have a judge or justice of the peace read you your marriage rights. If you then later deicde to do the religious marriage thing, no worries – you’re covered on both counts. After all, the only thing that desecrates a legal domestic partnership is the termination of that partnership. IF MArriage is something defined as the union between a man and a woman, fine – let the church handle that. If homosexuals prefer to call it something other than “Marriage”, so be it. What matters is the rights conferred to the couple in question – nothing more, nothing less.

I’m, of course, being naive here. This seems like a perfectly logical answer to the problem, but it presupposes two things – that church and state are separate (they are not; they may never be) and the folks who make such decisions have nothing to lose by allowing this (they do, in the form of tax revenues and the extra cost big businesses must incur by increasing their partner benefits by a roughly Kinseyan 10 percent).

It is dumb, discriminatory, unconstitutional and flat-out un-American to deny domestic partnership rights to any couple, gay or straight, who has publicly declared that they are intending to partner for life. That I am straight and married to a woman makes me no more capable of keeping my marriage strong than any other couple in the world, as the 50 percent divorce rate in this country can attest. But, while the Christian Right will continue to discriminate and blaspheme over this (there’s a long, long history of failing to “love they neighbor”, “hate the sin, not the sinner” and “do unto to others as you’d have done to you”) and claim that Gay Marriage destroys the concepts of marriage, keep in mind that it’s all a self-righteous smokescreen. It’s about the money and the fact that the folks in power will see a profit drop if such laws are passed. Money is always the deciding factor – God is just an excuse.

Until these laws are changed, the U.S. will continue to lose good, productive, intelligent and, above all, completely decent people who can not enjoy the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that this country was founded to defend. I know of too many gay couple who have stronger relationships than most straight couples I know – my own father has been remarried and divorced no fewer than four times! Many of the gay couples I know have also adopted and raised kids – bright, strong children who are well on their way to being productive contributors to this nation. But, more and more, we’ll see such families leave and go where they’ll receive the respect they deserver. It’s not the main reason for the apparent dumbing of America, but it’s certainly a contributing factor. Canada is better off for our prejudices. They’re going to get Jamie and Tanya, who, once they can get past all the crap their respective countries have put them through, will no doubt happily live what was once considered “the American Dream” under the shadow of the maple leaf. Idiot America, indeed.