A Statement in Absence about Maine Marriage Equality

I'll be absent from the hearings in Augusta next week when many friends will testify about marriage equality in Maine. Work demands I stay seated and at the keyboard up here in Washington County.

But perhaps you will suffer a few random thoughts, based on experience.

For me, the cogent issue before us is citizenship. Other components of marriage equality stream from that such as equality and responsibility. But the real issue - and, I think, the most effective context for speaking about this issue - is citizenship. The benefits that flow from the way marriage is set up serve to protect and strengthen the smallest unit in our society. If we function as equal contributors in society and are willing to take on equal responsibility we should enjoy equal citizenship. That's it.

I learned a long time ago that appealing to a pol's sense of humanity, appealing to their hearts by showing that their friends suffer for lack of laws they refuse to enact, appealing to their own history, quoting doctors / psychiatrists / lawyers, and showing that societies in which enfranchisement has been established have not crumbled basically does not work. But speaking to their Puritan guts is effective.

That's why, if I was there next week, I'd say that I work 60 hours a week to improve the economic conditions in the poorest county in Maine. I volunteer with community and civic organizations. I attend my town meeting and vote every chance I get. I have a religious practice and participate a religious community. I have a creative life. Like everyone else I know I don't enjoy paying my share of taxes but I do it.

In short, I'm exactly the sort of person you want in your community: the effective, responsible, committed partner in society.

What I don't have is enfranchisement.

I pay more in taxes because my relationship is not recognized by the state and federal government. If I have a health crisis, my parents, with whom I have not lived in nearly 40 years and who are over 80 years old, could claim the right to make critical decisions about my care if they chose to challenge the decisions of my parter. If I were to die, my partner could legally be granted less time to grieve. I have no rights to disperse my property nor can my partner receive survivorship benefits. These and many other conditions flow from civil recognition of my committed relationship.

I'd tell them that I realize they'll make their decision to either change this condition or somehow find it within themselves to continue to apply the status quo. I'd encourage them to do the right thing.

D/DWWMSG Recommends One Nation Under Dog

I came home late from work recently - as I am wont to do too often lately - to be greeted by my faithful canine, Lucy who was all excited and very insistent that I pay full and immediate attention while she told me, in detail, about that night's proceedings of her Dogs/Doodles With Working Moms Support Group (D/DWWMSG).

She felt especially heard, she said, with this group. Way more nourishing than her reading group (which meets on the nights I teach creative writing) and her chess club (which meets on the Sunday afternoons when I must attend meetings of Downeast Farmers' Alliance).

It seems that some of the dogs (she's the only Doodle) in the D/DWWMSG are also in the reading group. All are excited about One Nation Under Dog: Adventures in the New World of Prozac-Popping Puppies, Dog-Park Politics, and Organic Pet Food. http://www.indiebound.org/book/0805087117

She has long been concerned, Lucy said, about the elevation of canines to their new status which, she believes, robs them of their rich and most essential dogness. But only recently, thanks to her support group, has she been able to put her thoughts into words. It's been a real breakthrough. Perhaps you can relate.

She believes that many canines who are taking prozac, for example, feel that the emphasis placed by human keepers on things like facials, counseling/channeling, high-end dog care products, and so on have, by their insistence on anthropomorphizing the dog they live with, deeply disenfranchised their dog from the pack.

In essence, no one has sought to ask dogs what THEY want! (Except for those who represent that they channel dogs but Lucy says most in her circle wryly assess that humans who purport to channel dogs are really channeling their own chemical imbalance.)

So I feel like I got a good overall sense of her concerns - she couldn't go into detail because of confidentiality expectations - and I promised that I'd pass on to this group, and to others who live with dogs, about the book and the website.

The bottom line, for Lucy anyway, (she wisely insists that she does not and cannot speak for all dogs everywhere) is simply this: It's The Toys, Stupid!