Also, telling my grandparents story reminds me of yet another reason recognizing gay relationships is important. Gram and Pop had the right to be together in their assisted-living home and no one else in the family had any legal right to challenge that. My heart breaks when I think of the two elderly gentlemen in Sonoma County, CA who weren’t offered the same dignity by the county officials who put them in separate homes and auctioned off their home and belongings. While it is true, that in California, there were laws they could have taken advantage of to prevent that, but they were older, and perhaps they would have gotten a domestic partnership had the law been around sooner, and the fact is also that other states have no protections for such couples at all. There’s a really good documentary called “Tying the Knot, that tells the story of such couples.

I would like to point out, however, that marriage does not necessarily bring contentment. If it did, divorce would be nonexistent.

Good point.

However, marriage does seem to lead to improved health. Or, at least, Harvard Medical School seems to think so. And it doesn’t take the santimoniousness of NOM to report the results of studies.

Of course, you may not experience any added value from marriage or from finding a partner. It’s not for everyone.

But I do have to warn you about claiming too loudly that you will stay single. One of my best friends told me that about two years ago… and though he had been single for a decade, he didn’t last six months before he fell in love. The Fates have a wacky sense of humor, you know.

I would also like to share that throughout my life I have had thousands of sex partners. I’ve never had an STD and I’m HIV negative. Seems to me the important thing is to be safe, not married. Married people cheat and if you’re not safe, you bring what you have to a partner.

I’d also like to add that I’ve never wanted to get married. I’ve had a great time being single and my best friends have been much closer to me than any partner I’ve had. I’ll get old with a couple of my best friends and I doubt any married couple loves their spouse more than I love my best friend. My best friend and I would do anything for the other. In other words, you don’t need to be married to have loving, very long term, reciprocal relationships.

Is the gay community going to be as sanctimonious about marriage as the NOM idiots?

Just wonderin’

November 2nd, 2010, after 16 years of being together, Bill and I married in Boston, MA

This year? 2011 marks the first time since September 15, 1999, that I have not been hospitaliz­ed, at least once, in any given 12-month period. With less than two weeks remaining, I have not been hospitaliz­ed, nor undergone a major “cardiac event”, this year.

(Oh, and my heart was ablated in December, 2010, killing my heart’s ability to create its own beat and, instead, forcing my implanted defib to generate the contractio­ns of my heart… so that might have a little something to do with it… but I like the “I’m healthier because I’m married” meme…)

That’s not at all what I got from it. The study shows that if one group of conservatives is given a popular conservative claim such as tax cuts increase revenue, and a second group is given that claim as well as a refutation the second group is twice as likely to believe the popular conservative claim as the first. I.E. evidence that a popular conservative talking point is wrong makes conservatives far more likely to believe its true than if they hadn’t been presented with the evidence that it was wrong.