That is the title of Kathy Sullivan’s most recent contribution to the Union Leader. "Straight? Republicans Want To Meddle In Your Marriage, Too." And I must confess that my initial reaction after trying to wade through her editorial and then through HB 569 to see if she was just making stuff up again was, "what the hell is this bill?"
And then it dawned on me. (or maybe the coffee kicked in.)
The sole purpose of HB 569 is to preserve existing civil unions and Marriages while removing the State almost entirely from the business of marriage altogether. HB 569 does not dissolve your marriage, it simply (well, not simply) re-defines the state’s role in the decision of any two legally eligible persons to form a domestic contract, with or without a religious ceremony referred to as a marriage.
It’s like a union between "State" and "none of your damn business."
So do not fear. Your existing marriage, Straight or crooked, is safe if HB 569 passes. It simply changes the state’s statutory use of the word marriage to domestic union, the way you might properly clarify the use of the word Kleenex as tissues, or Roller Blades as In-Line Skates. HB 569 does not annul your marriage, it removes the states trademark infringement on the word Marriage, but leaves everything else in tact.
So Sullivan isn’t making stuff up, she is exaggerating, fear-mongering, lying by omission, and spinning for political points. So all is as it should be.
She is trying to scare you into thinking that removing the state from the process of a Marriage to anything other than a keeper of the checklist, makes your marriage illegitimate. But that’s like saying that removing the state from your paycheck invalidates your job, or that reducing your property taxes to zero means your house no longer exists.
So in Kathy Sullivan’s New Hampshire, you can’t really be married before God at a church of your choosing unless state law says so.
And this is odd. Anyone who supports the liberal definition of a separation of church and state–that’s the made up codification of a personal letter by an old dead guy modern Democrats don’t particularly like into rock solid constitutional law–should be thrilled to expunge the religious concept of marriage from the statutory language of the secular state. But here we have Kathy Sullivan coming out in favor or the state’s intimate involvement in the codification of religious union.
Why?
Because HB 569 creates real marriage equality and removes any state based religious prejudice. Homosexual couples are now just as entitled to a marriage as heterosexual couples, free from state meddling, if and when a Priest, Pastor, Reverend, Rabbi, or so on marries them. The state sees it without prejudice as a domestic union. And if religion ain’t your thing, or you are not religion’s thing, go see the clerk and sign up for a domestic union. Same benefits, same conditions, same everything–in the eyes of the state.
So Kathy Sullivan doesn’t like it because it de-politicizes marriage, and the left has worked for years and spent millions politicizing marriage. If a bunch of Libertarians and Republicans manages to take the politics out and creates real, un-prejudiced, marriage equality, that would ruin everything the democrats have worked for.
Note: Sullivan makes a separate case in the same editorial for the problems with another Bill HB 587 which changes the grounds for divorce by irreconcilable differences. We’ll look at that later.
