I have put off posting in my blog until I have time to get it set up in WordPress; probably not until after I finish my CS degree later this month. Personally I don’t know why marriage earns a person any rights over an unmarried person, but I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who can take advantage of the benefits. Still this seemed worth recording.
Some heterosexual couples, including Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend, support gay rights by refusing to marry until same-sex couples can. “According to the Government Accountability Office, a marriage license comes with 1,138 federal rights, including the ability to claim a dead spouse’s Social Security benefits and to make medical decisions for a spouse in an emergency.” One person in the article points out that as a heterosexual, he and his partner still enjoy privileges that homosexuals do not. If he is in the hospital no one is going to question his partner’s right to see him or ask for proof if she claims to be his wife. Another man says that he makes an effort to correct people that assume he and his partner are married. “It’s a really important dialogue with people I wouldn’t get to talk to otherwise.”