SACRAMENTO — Motorists are getting gouged at the gas pump. Families are losing their homes. The war is a debacle and embarrassment.
Healthcare costs soar out of control. Food prices strain household budgets. Climate change could devastate the planet.
And we're supposed to worry about what two people living together in a loving relationship are called? "Partners" or "married"?
Whatever makes them happy, I say.
And clearly that means being dubbed married, as evidenced by the thousands of same-sex couples planning to get legally hitched starting today.
It took a few decades for me to reach that conclusion. As I wrote three years ago, my shift began in 1997 during a chat at the back of the state Senate chamber with then-President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer, currently California's treasurer.
How'd he feel about gay marriage? I asked.
"You know," he replied, "people have so many problems, and life's so short, if letting gays marry gives them some joy and happiness, why not? I say let them do it."
That made a lot of sense. What firmly switched me to Lockyer's side, however, was a long Senate debate in 2005 on a bill to allow same-sex marriages.
Particularly compelling was a speech by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), who talked about marriage "reinforcing traditional values: accountability, monogamy, commitment, the rule of law. . . . " Society should be encouraging that, he asserted, whether heterosexual or same sex.
The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who is gay, was passed by the Legislature and promptly vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor's thinking also seems to have evolved. Schwarzenegger has announced that he won't support a November ballot initiative to overturn the California Supreme Court's recent decision allowing same-sex marriages.
The public's shift from rejection of gay marriage toward seemingly inevitable acceptance can be seen among its elected representatives in the Legislature. Democrats gradually have become more warmly supportive while Republicans have cooled their opposition.
I remember one sordid Assembly debate in 1991 when a Republican assemblyman described in graphic, unprintable detail his vision of homosexual acts. A few years later, an elderly GOP rancher stood on the Assembly floor and rambled on about gay heifers. By 2005, only two Republican senators rose to speak out against the Leno bill, thoughtfully and calmly.
