NOM BLOG

After SSM in NY, Now What?

 

It appears Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo are not the only ones more interested in the right, than in exercizing it:

Bryan Lowder, a 23-year-old journalism student at New York University, had just completed the annual "Drag March" of all kinds of cross-dressers with his partner of two years, Cam McDonald, when they encountered the celebration of the new law outside the Stonewall Inn, which occupies the same space in Sheridan Square as the predecessor establishment of the same name.

"I felt pretty ambivalent, I have to say," said Lowder. "It's definitely not something I'm unhappy about." But he wondered about the appropriateness of only extending new rights to gay people who embraced the specific model of heterosexual marriage. "Of course there are many other kinds of relationships, especially within queer culture, whether it's open relationships or nonsexual companionship or polyamorous relationships. These nontraditional relationships have been championed in the gay community in the past, and I do think all types of relationships should be honored, and not just the people who fit this model."

Lowder's 29-year-old partner shared all of his ambivalence. "I suppose I do think the right to marry should exist," said McDonald. "Which is not the same thing as saying that I'm interested in exercising it. I'm not sure it threatens our identity -- that there's actually a danger that we're going to stop being different. I think that will persist. But I think it's a little sad that what we've devoted ourselves to here is, at its core, about transfers of wealth and property."

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