Unmarried States.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Unplugged - Same sex marriage - Essay

My partner and I have been together twenty-one years. She likes the soft inside of the bread; I like the crust. She does TurboTax; I make H&R Block guys weep. She does the set-up; I do the punch line. She likes to wait until I'm in the kitchen, and she has her head in the medicine cabinet, to speak to me. I prefer to talk in the same room. I was making tea the morning after our governor, David Paterson, came out strongly for marriage equality, when I heard her say something about marriage. Or porridge. Or the fridge.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"What did you say?" I shouted, as I gave the teabag a final vicious squeeze and brought her a cup of tea.

"I said if we get same sex marriage in New York State, I guess we'll have to get married."

I put her cup down on the sink and asked, "Is that your idea of a proposal? You're going to have to do better than that."

She countered with a story about Annie Leibovitz and estate taxes.

I offered my when-we-get-a-federal-marriage-ruling-we'll-think-about-it hedge.

It was very romantic.

We support marriage equality. We do not want to get married. Friends ask how we live with the contradiction. For me, it might be collateral damage from learning to live under the baffling, bifurcating rubric of "love the sinner; hate the sin." For my dear partner, the nonpracticing lawyer with the radical feminist roots, marriage is property; property is theft. And we could elope tomorrow.

My friend Randy reassures me that my unmarried state here in the Empire State is safe with Governor Paterson since he can't even get an MTA budget passed. Democratic majority leader and Pentecostal minister reverend senator Rubén Díaz and three other conservative Dems said they would not support the governor. Díaz was steamed about the timing of Paterson's announcement, the day after the installation of the new beer-drinking, baseball-loving, marriage-equality-not-liking Cardinal Dolan. Revnator Díaz took it as a major arch-diocesan dis.

The blue of some of us New Yorkers turned red with embarrassment...