Congratulations Newlyweds
July 31, 2013 4:51 PM   Subscribe

Marriage equality comes to Minnesota and Rhode Island at midnight, August 1, and the Minnesota DFL state senators wanted to congratulate their same-sex newlywed constituents. posted by roomthreeseventeen (34 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 




Congratulations Minnesota and Rhode Island!

Now with any luck the predicted economic benefits of same sex marriage will finally lead Hawaii to do what it should have done years ago.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:00 PM on July 31, 2013


It must be nice to live in a state that has successfully evolved up from the Neanderthal period.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:02 PM on July 31, 2013 [2 favorites]


Huh, I guess that is tonight. I didn't put that together when I was thinking about paying my rent. Never fear, our mayor has been ordained by the Universal Life Church* and is ready to go.

*Yes, really, that is why Rybak is able to marry people.
posted by hoyland at 5:03 PM on July 31, 2013 [6 favorites]


Congratulations, Minnesota! But let's not forget the gold standard here. Let's watch those New Zealanders singing again.
posted by bicyclefish at 5:05 PM on July 31, 2013 [3 favorites]


This is so nerdy-cute. It goes in and out of polished and ...less-than-polished, which is exactly as it should be.

Also I'm not sure if I'd rather gay-marry Sen. Wiger or Sen. Marty. Stupid anti-bigamy laws.
posted by Lemurrhea at 5:05 PM on July 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


Yesterday I was walking up the Ngong hills just outside Nairobi with my partner and our favorite cab driver and the two guys with automatic weapons that one is required by the Kenya Forest Service to hire before going up the Ngong hills. One of the guards was a really friendly young guy named Linus who really seemed to enjoy getting to walk up the hills with foreigners on a regular basis and try to reason out what we might call Societal Differences. After a bit of discussion about the Kenyan media's recent obsession with bestiality (Linus: "I think it is because people only cause each other problems, but a cow will never say a word!"), we moved on to gay marriage in the US.

Now, this is a talk I've had with a few Kenyans, partly because it weighs heavily on the Kenyan sense of self. There is, after all, a lot of identification with Obama, and people find it upsetting that he a) is supporting something that the mass of seventh-day adventists think is the root of all evil, and b) recently skipped Kenya during a trip to Africa because of the newly-elected president-cum-ICC-defendant. This leaves a lot of national angst: Is Obama just a stuck up guy who can't get remember his roots in Luo-land, or is there something more fundamental going on?

Linus asked why there were so many gay people now, when there weren't fifty years ago. I explained that it was because the numbers were the same, but people didn't want to get ostracized and/or lynched fifty years ago. So gays are more visible today. Linus explained that he gets the argument, but he's never once (not even ONCE) met a person who claims to be gay themselves.

I pointed out that gays are still regularly beaten up and/or killed in many parts of Africa, and kept to myself that we were talking a walk to a nice secluded space and he had a loaded AK slung so casually over his shoulder. He seemed like a great guy, but, given the stakes and circumstances, it's not a situation where pretty much anyone would be confident of declaring their homosexuality.

But in the end, I think he gets it, or is at least starting to get it, that gays are just like anyone else. He still doesn't think that gays should be allowed to adopt children, but there's a start. It's encouraging to see the progression of gay marriage in the US having an effect in this part of the world. There's even a kind-of-everyone-knows gay club in Kisumu now: by day they're the best cake shop in Western. Things are looking up.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:19 PM on July 31, 2013 [26 favorites]


Man, there are a lot of things about the Minnesota Senate that drive me crazy ($7.50? C'mon!), but this so perfectly captures some of the wonderful and hilarious personalities around there - Senator Marty is a HUGE, delightful nerd. Senator Torres Ray (who carried and fought to pass the bill I worked on this year, thankyouverymuch) is elegant and powerful and just freakin' kind. Senator Weiger is a goof.

Noticeably absent: Any of the Rangers, including Majority Leader Bakk. Drag.

Every day is a good day, but tomorrow will be a great day for love in Minnesota.
posted by elmer benson at 5:34 PM on July 31, 2013 [2 favorites]


I am just home and it is 1:50 in the UK, so congratulations to all in MN abnd RI who are planning to marry today!
posted by marienbad at 5:52 PM on July 31, 2013


Drinky Die: "Congrats! I'm hoping my home state will be one of the next dominoes to fall. "

Not until we get that idiot governor out of Harrisburg. I saw Allyson Schwartz (who's the front-runner for the Democratic nomination) speak last month and was pretty impressed and she's polling way ahead of Corbet but November 2014 is still a long way away.
posted by octothorpe at 6:03 PM on July 31, 2013 [2 favorites]


This is the second time round on marriage equality for me. I left California about three days after marriages started in 2008. This time around feels much less momentous to me, even though, objectively, it's arguably the opposite. I've been trying to think about why off and on for the last two months (why exactly did we need to wait two months?) and don't know that I'm getting any closer to an answer. I don't think of myself as a Minnesotan, so that makes some of the rhetoric fall a bit flat for me, but then I didn't think of myself as a Californian, either. It's obviously not that I'm trying to plot my exit from Minnesota and subconsciously trying to maintain some kind of distance, which is my standard explanation for feeling eh about things that are objectively good here, given that I had a plane ticket out of California when the court decision came out.
posted by hoyland at 6:06 PM on July 31, 2013


As I've said before, it's pretty dizzying not feeling angry and ashamed of the EI state legislature. On the other hand, I am sure they will restore my regular feelings soon enough. Still, a friend is getting married tomorrow, so well done, land of Roger Williams!
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:13 PM on July 31, 2013


A twofer! Awesome! What will the next state or country be?
posted by orange swan at 6:31 PM on July 31, 2013


Here's the Minnesota House DFL's video.
posted by elmer benson at 6:46 PM on July 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


This time around feels much less momentous to me, even though, objectively, it's arguably the opposite.

I think there's a clue in that word, momentous. The first wave of gay marriage legalization, especially in MA and CA, felt momentous, as in a moment at which a great hammer was swung at the wall of Injustice, and enormous cracks smashed into it, and all of a sudden The Wall Is Cracked when a moment before it had been whole and even seemingly eternal. This wave, though, doesn't feel like a single moment in time - it's a rapid patter of smaller events, a stream, slamming the hammer at the wall and opening it more and more, so that more people can leap through Injustice to the other side. In the long run, what matters is that we smash down the entire wall, but the great moments that stand out are never in the middle - they're the big huge ones at the beginning, when the impossible becomes real, and the very last ones, when the task is finally complete.

This is not a moment for justice. It's a new age.
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:48 PM on July 31, 2013 [4 favorites]


Between Abbie the cat and this, it's clearly Metafilter's Day to Make Me All Sniffly. I can only add (a) Minnesota, this makes up for at least some of the WTFery you've been getting up to since I moved away (see: Michele fucking Bachman what is wrong with you Minnesota??), and also (b), John Marty, you are DORKTACULAR and I am very glad I got to vote for you in the dear departed days of long ago. And yeah, many joyous congratulations to all the newlyweds, and thinking of all the folks who *should* have been celebrating today. (Especially Allen Spear, and Brian Coyle ...)
posted by Kat Allison at 6:48 PM on July 31, 2013


A twofer! Awesome! What will the next state or country be?

Easy money's on Illinois, which almost got their Senate in line this year, and probably Hawaii before too long. Oregon has a ballot initiative coming up that you can be pretty optimistic about, and New Jersey will go in the blink of an eye once Chris Christie's out of office.
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:49 PM on July 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


1) I love this.

2) There's something just the slightest bit... dystopian(?) about camera-ready members of the government against a bright white background saying "we congratulate the newly equal on their elevation to equality, which we have granted them." Like, if I was a filmmaker or a comic artist, I'd be dropping this in a reference file somewhere.
posted by GameDesignerBen at 6:58 PM on July 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


YAY! YAY!

Scheduling note: mark your calendars for October, Michiganders, cross your fingers, hang up a horseshoe, and put on your lucky socks.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:36 PM on July 31, 2013


If you want to watch the first weddings (at midnight) at Minneapolis City Hall, you can watch them on The Uptake.

Right now (10:10 PM in Saint Paul) the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus is warming up, and I'm already crying.
posted by elmer benson at 8:10 PM on July 31, 2013


bicyclefish: Congratulations, Minnesota! But let's not forget the gold standard here. Let's watch those New Zealanders singing again

"Open the doors! OPEN THE DOORS!"

And then it just gets better.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:49 PM on July 31, 2013


So happy and proud to be a Minnesotan tonight! They're holding midnight weddings not just at Mpls City Hall, but also at the Como Conservatory in St. Paul and at the Mall of America Wedding Chapel in Bloomington.
posted by marsha56 at 9:34 PM on July 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


My best male friend is gay and lives in Minnesota. One of the first thoughts that popped into my head when my partner proposed was, 'Is it right to accept this proposal of marriage when my best friend couldn't get married if he wanted to?'

Now that won't be a problem! Go Minnesota :)
posted by horizonseeker at 10:00 PM on July 31, 2013


Man Kaibutsu that was an amazing story!
posted by Teakettle at 10:27 PM on July 31, 2013


Liveblog with lots of wedding photos.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:54 AM on August 1, 2013


And some of them get free cake!
posted by kmz at 7:13 AM on August 1, 2013


There were also 18 weddings that took place at midnight in the Clay County courthouse. That's where the city of Moorhead is, as in Fargo-Moorhead. Hope some of that love spills over the border into North Dakota and gets them moving forward into marriage equality as well.
posted by marsha56 at 7:59 AM on August 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


Those accents make me homesick. It's the least of this, but it's true.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 8:04 AM on August 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


They could not be more Minnesotan if they tried. God, they're great.

Oh, Minnesota. Why you gotta have even more snow than Wisconsin? I still love you, baby.
posted by Madamina at 8:21 AM on August 1, 2013


Why you gotta have even more snow than Wisconsin?

To weed out the posers.

Anyway more MN cheesyness.

In honor of the first legally-recognized same-sex marriages being performed in Minnesota on August 1st, Minneapolis Rep. Keith Ellison got out his guitar to perform the Woody Guthrie classic, "This Land is Your Land."


That would be US congress' first Muslim Keith Ellison mind you. Kind of a nice balance to that other MN congressperson (she-who-will-not-be-named) who is leaving after this term.
posted by edgeways at 2:26 PM on August 1, 2013 [1 favorite]




Scody beat me to posting these photos! I am in floods of tears at how joyful everyone looks, at 3am no less. Truly lovely.
posted by goo at 7:36 PM on August 2, 2013


Those photos from Minnesota are amazing, and they made me cry. Congrats!
posted by malthusan at 12:33 AM on August 3, 2013


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