(1) Takei's Wikipedia entry states that he and Brad Altman will actually be married on "September 14th, at the Democracy Forum of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles (George is one of the founders). Walter Koenig will be his best man, and Nichelle Nichols will be the matron of honor."

(2) No internet discussion of George Takei is complete without this clip.

w00t w00t for George Takei and the rest.

Congrats to the happy couple.

George and Brad look so happy. What a wonderful day.

WOOT.

And I'm happy for him and his partner, too.

*big grin*

And I'm happy for him and his partner, too.

But, no--no more circumlocutions! Fiancé, his husband-to-be. We can say that now. How very glad I am that we can say that now!

(Well, here in California, anyway. And Massachusetts, of course.)

I no longer remember the source, but somebody on the Internet made the obvious joke that they need to make sure to get married at the same time as a couple of guys in red shirts, who will draw the effects of the inevitable anti-gay backlash, allowing Takei and Altman to escape and remain happily married.

Anyway, congratulations to Takei, Altman, and everybody in California. Here's hoping more states follow suit.

Congratulations for the happy couple, and the great many other happy couples that will result from this court decision!

Photos and profiles of newly married couples. I'm especially fond of the profile and photo of Dave Greenbaum and Mike Silverman, from Lawrence, Kansas.

Lisa Shapiro, left, and Beth Shapiro, both from Cleveland, Ohio, get married by Andrew Minko outside of the county clerk's office in Redwood City, Calif. Is that a canopy those be-suited folks are holding over the Shapiros?

My friend Seth's recollection of serving breakfast to folks in line at SF City Hall four years ago. Quote:

Because of all the interruptions, we were all the way to McAllister and Larkin before Heidi found out that I was straight. We had a few moments to chat before we reached the main entrance again and started our way through the line. By this time we had given out all the food Heidi and I had brought, but the cart was still full. Someone had supplied dozens of onion bagels. I hope newlyweds like onion bagels. How many people, if asked to predict what they would eat on their wedding days, would say "I guess some guy is going to hand me an onion bagel out of a pushcart and his friend is going to apply a little cream cheese?"

And Rivka's "Can't Put The Genie Back In The Bottle" from four years ago (scroll down):

Looking at pictures of the newly married, I feel certain that I'm in the presence of something sacred. I recognize the awed, holy, joyous look on their faces, because I've seen that expression in my own wedding pictures. The state may eventually force annulments, but these people are married. They're not going to go away, cowed and quiet, back to their rightful place as it's defined by the state. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

Some people who love each other are married.

Now that you know, you can at least prepare yourselves. Good luck.

And every picture I see of the two of them together just makes me so happy I can't stand it.

I watched a news clip on YouTube, that featured one couple apparently doing an interview, and when one woman turned to the other and said "Will you marry me?", I totally lost it and started bawling. And the NYT featured an incredibly adorable picture of two brides and their baby daughter that made me cry again. I've never in my life been a Wedding Story kind of person but for this, I am.

I almost said "the world's most adorable picture" but I think the picture in this post has a strong claim for world's most adorable picture. I've rarely seen two people look more totally overjoyed. I want to go back to CA and stand outside various city halls throwing rice and handing flowers.

As I said to my boyfriend last night, "They started doing gay marriages in California today. You will note that the world has not yet ended." And the sun rose this morning, and everything!

And I want to note the following: "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State."

I got to explain to my son what was going on and why it was so wonderful. It is fantastic to think that he may grow up knowing civilization and equality as the norm.

What I want to know, and what no one has explained to me (I have, on the contrary been threatened with physical violence, albeit over the internet, for asking), is how same-sex marriage threatens my marriage?

It depends, I think, on whether one sees happiness as a limited resource or an unlimited resource. If happiness is limited, someone else being made happy threatens to take away your slice of happiness. Only so much to go around.

Also, if you see marriage as something you should do because you should do it, or if it is something you should do if you want to do it. People, in their minds, are obliged to remain virgins until married, marry someone approved by their parents, and promptly provide their parents with an abundance of grandkids. They'd probably be happy with arranged marriages, if they could get away with it.

Which is not to say that it's not worth asking the question anyhow; it may make someone else who's reading the conversation think about questioning their own internal assumptions, and that's a win.

As for staying virgin until marriage, the number of actual Southern Baptists and Pentecostals who do that is not, I think, very large. However, I am mindful of the woman I saw in a computer lab writing a contract which said 'we shall make one "whoopee" a week' (this was in deepest Kentucky back in the mid-1990s).

I am so delighted for George and Brad! I wish them, and everyone else who can now get married in California, many happy years ahead.

And a quality quality it is, too.

I think it may also have to do with what you conceive of marriage as. If you think marriage is one dominant husband-boss, who:
-makes all the decisions or has final say on all decisions
-brings home a paycheck
-pays the bills
-works on the car
-mows the grass

and a submissive wife-subordinate who:
-raises the children
-does the laundry, cooking, cleaning
-does what she is told,

then a gay marriage may make your brains seize up. The biological sex of the people does not tell you which rigid role they fill! Nevermind that for a lot of people, their man-and-woman marriage does not look like the above either. It's easier to ignore that than it is to ignore 2 men or 2 women together.

This reminds me of Torcon, when at least two gay couples whom I knew slightly got married. I made a point of buying "Wedding Congratulations!" cards for each of them.

It's not that they think there's a limited supply of happiness: it's that they realize, rightly, that there's a limited supply of power.

I once had a major confrontation with someone on this topic; she kept posting about how she personally was being oppressed by all the gays who wanted to do Bad Things like have equal rights and so on. Every time I replied to her, she ignored me, and then complained to others that I was breaking the rules. She finally deigned to answer me, and claimed that she felt sorry for me. In no post of hers did she explain how I was oppressing her, yet that remained her mantra.

It's all about their worldview, and how no one seems to realize that. ;-)

Some of it is that a person can pretend that the family is "normal" as defined in 37, if the couple is a man and a woman. If the couple is the same sex, it is very obvious that someone is taking on *shock, horror* the role of the opposite sex - a man is acting like a woman, and doing womanish things! It does not occur to this person that no one has to lead and dominate, that a co-equal marriage can exist, that partners can decide for themselves who will do what, based on who is best or worst at what, who likes and dislikes different things, rather than the equipment in their pants.

For a lot of fundamentalists I think the problem is not that they know they're right, but that they are terrified that they might not be. There are many people who accept fundamentalist religions to get the certainty that they know what the rules are, so the chaos and uncertainty of the real world can't threaten them. But those rules all have to be right or that certainty is gone. Present them with the possibility that one of the rules is incorrect and their fear will cause them to respond with hostility and denunciation.

His wife was the breadwinner, but beyond that, I remember a passage from his work where he talks about changing poopy diapers, and the people who would call him a girly-man for doing it.

He told them to piss off, that raising children was the Lord's work and was not to be diminished, no matter who did it.

How beautiful a cat is George Takei?! What faith his parents taught him—in this country, in its Constitution, in its people—that he could come out of an internment camp with such love and such a desire to work for the community.

And now he's all gay-married to his longtime partner! He's like a living illustration of Martin Luther King's idea: the arc of his history has bent toward justice, in a big, big way.

Every so often I find myself explaining to Christian fundamentalists that homosexuality cannot properly be described as "unnatural", because it happens in nature - in several species with long-term relationships, studies have shown that some of those relationships are same-sex.

Fragano, I hope you and your wife are happy destroying this traditional model of marriage (I know I'm happy with you doing so).

Your wife may fall in love with another woman, and divorce you to marry her :)

Pardon the emoticon; I felt the line needed that extra 'wink'.

What worries me is the apparent underlying assumption that sexuality is chosen (I hear this sometimes from my students, they then start hemming and hawing when I ask about the conscious process of choice), and that homosexuality is both more attractive and morally inferior to heterosexuality. So society has to be protected from people who would be attracted to it and make the depraved choice. Letting gay couples marry each other would legitimise their evil choices and attract the unwary to an evil lifestyle, or something on those lines.

During the War, American soldiers in Britain were horrified when they came across interracial couples and forcibly separated them. Since quite a few of these couples were married, they were very shocked.

I suspect that these sorts of people don't care whether sexuality and sexual orientation is inborn or chosen. The point, to them, is that people are required to follow the "right" roles, and the issue of happiness, or whether those roles are natural to the individual, is irrelevant to them, since the roles are the "proper" ones.

People may be happy acting according to their inherent sexual orientation, and unhappy when forced to act otherwise. But that only matters if happiness matters. If you frame the desire for personal happiness as selfishness, and a vice, then every sane argument about lifestyle choice disappears.

You may not get to choose to be homosexual, but if you choose to live happily, as what you are, instead of filling the "proper" heterosexual role, that's the problem, to them. Conformity, not happiness or honesty, is the greatest, the only, virtue.

Every once in a while I get that bee in the bonnet and have to go pound my head against an immovable object. In other words, take a bull by the horns and lead it through the china shop.

I'd probably have a lot more success with the bull than with her. ;-)

Wrenching this back on topic, I hope (hope HOPE hope) California doesn't roll back the legal marriages for us. If the referendum is defeated, I think we'll take a trip to CA next year, to visit my aunt.

I hope you'll be able to take that trip to California.

That was the one thing that was interesting about the 64KB copy-and-paste from 'raphael' the other day: the argument that there was creation, and then there was a reboot/remake of everything following the 'oh, that didn't work out so well' of angels revolting (this was claimed as not a new creation of everything). It was clearly (to me) an attempt to reconcile the two versions and still have literal truth.

There were a few others of my acquaintance who got married, just because they could, to make some kind of social/political point. In at least one case, that led to significant messiness later, when they learned about the legal consequences. Especially since, at that time, the laws about divorce didn't yet cover the same-sex cases.

I'm glad that the U.S. seems to be heading in the right direction on this issue. Finally.

I don't know. I think sending out invitations will be hard enough. ;-)

Where's the bit about the angels revolting? I can't find it. Certainly doesn't occur between Genesis , 28 and Genesis 2,5.

P.S. I wanted "this clip" for the first time this morning. Found myself chuckling about it at inappropriate moments all day.

Why are typos always more visible after you've hit the "post button?

I think the whole "is gayness a choice" question is, for a lot of people, also backfilled from a set of feelings/hopes to an assertion about the universe--in particular, if you don't want to believe that your son is really, honest-to-god gay, then you have a strong reason to believe that it's a choice, that somehow he can pray or meditate or medicate himself into being straight.

Now, I have absolutely no idea whether that's possible. Zero. I can't visualize how I'd make myself change sexual orientation if I wanted do, but maybe that's just lack of imagination.

It's worth pointing out that the "being gay is inborn, not a choice" position doesn't have much inherent connection with gay rights. For folks who are mortally offended by the existence of gays, believing that gays are born that way wouldn't make them less offended--they'd just say "see, just like psychopaths, gays can't help it that they're evil, so we have to lock them up/treat them/whatever." Similarly, I have a hard time seeing many people who are pro-gay-rights changing their minds upon, say, strong evidence that it's possible to change your sexual orientation with therapy or willpower. Why would it matter? With great effort and willpower, I could presumably also change religions, or change fields, or substantially change all kinds of things about my life. What business of anyone else's would that be?

A friend pointed out a fun legal/political question associated with this, a couple days ago. Suppose the state wipes out all those marriages because of the referrendum. Wouldn't that be sorta like a taking? (If someone externally dissolved my marriage, I'd certainly think it so. It's surely more of a taking by the state than some restrictive change in zoning laws!) Could the affected couples sue for compensation from the state?

Ginger: If any conservatives complain about your getting married, you should simply explain that you're trying to decrease the number of unwed mothers in your state by two. (Though I still want to know, when two women get married, whose father holds the shotgun.)

One of you, from what I can gather, may or may not need to be vetted.

Serge #74: Hear! Hear!

I understand your point about the wishful thinking of some people -- my daughter can't be a lesbian, and I can straighten her out (no pun intended); my son is confused, and prayer or medication will fix the problem -- leading them to see homosexuality as a willful, or sinful choice. That's not, however, how it's normally presented to me. The impression I've been getting is that some people seem to believe that sexuality is a kind of buffet and people can pick and choose what they want.

Same-sex marriages contracted in 2004 in San Francisco were voided, as I recall.

Yep. Burn it to the ground.

Then replace it with a just, fair, inclusive version. Grandfather in all the people who are married already. And just to put the final nail in the coffin of TIOM™, we'll call this brand-new, upgraded-to-justice version...marriage.

That's it. Not "Marriage 2.0" or anything. Let the old institution find its place on the ash-heap of history...nay, let it be forgotten outside of classrooms and ponderous tomes that any such thing ever existed. Let high school students be astonished to learn that same-sex marriage was once against the law, as some are now that interracial marriage once was.

Death, death, DEATH I say a third time, to The Institution Of Marriage™!

Long live marriage, its just successor.

Actually, there have been quite a few younger ones also.

Serge @74: A lovely idea! Please consider yourselves invited, in theory if not yet in fact.

Ronit @ 81: Photos can be negotiated. ;-)

Wait, this is Making Light, so..well, yes, I would like more books, thank you. My partner might grumble about all the space occupied by books, but I have a sekret weapon.

;-)

The more common argument by far is that being straight is the default setting* for humans, installed by God (presumably at the same time as the installation of the soul), and that therefore anyone who is gay has made the deliberate choice to go against what God intended for him (they always use male pronouns) to be.

This at least makes a twisted sort of sense -- the reasoning itself is sound, it's the base postulate that's flawed. This is also why the "and when did you choose to be straight" counter-argument often doesn't work; straightness being assumed to be the default, no choice needs to be made in that direction.

* They don't generally actually use the phrase "default setting" because few of them are computer-oriented. But the wording they use makes the concept clear enough.

I like my husband's description: getting married is a public statement of a private committment.

It also happens to have various legal connetations regarding e.g. financial assets and, as you indicated, declaration of a Next of Kin.

Thanks!

"My eyes! My eyes!"

I have come across the 'heterosexuality as default setting' argument more often. But I find the idea of sexuality as choice so bizarre that I've had to wonder how people could come up with it. Most people I know have either not given much thought to the matter, or have had to spend a lot of time grappling with the fact that their desires and instincts are at variance from the norm. The idea that someone would choose a sexuality that could lead to them being despised and rejected by friends and family is beyond bizarre, it is simply insane.

I don't think I understood most of it. I came away with two main thoughts:

1. It looks like the sshls that say boys are gay because of their mothers are sort of, in a twisted and not-what-they-meant way, right. I'm amused by that, though I feel like maybe I shouldn't be.

2. The article has information pre-formatted for you to copy and paste for citations at the bottom! How cool is that?

Look at sickle cell anemia: homozygous people die young, but heterozygous people are relatively protected from malaria, which is the benefit that kept SCA in the human population.

Just because many homosexuals do not have children does not equate to all homosexuals are child-less, so that is not going to be a maladaptation from a population perspective. And human sexuality isn't a discrete clumping of types, but a fluid distribution across a spectrum of possibilities, and further complicated by the fact that we can -- in some cases -- change our minds about what we like or don't like.

But the bottom line is, as long as the mutation (or other change) is not immediately lethal, the population will contain it. If any benefit accrues to having that change, then population pressure will maintain it at a higher level within the population.

Wow..when I took population genetics in college, I never thought I'd use it again.

TomB @ 103

"extra uncles". Yes, I've often thought of that as a simple explanation for the continuing presence of homosexuals in humans. Human infants and children need so much care and attention, that having some extra adults around who are less likely to be procreating themselves, and therefore can assist more with other people's children, is beneficial.

And love is not a simple thing either. Some people want to regulate that, and demand that others love only as they see fit. I've had to endure being told that my father was a traitor, that I must hate myself and must hate all women of colour. That my mother and my wives* are whores, that they are part of a criminal conspiracy against black women, and that I must think myself too good for black women and should be brought down a peg or two. At the same time, the idea that interracial marriage is wrong is not in the same category as the idea that same-sex marriage is wrong, oh no, and how dare I suggest it!

* One at a time, not all at once.

And how can love ever be labeled as "wrong"? I just don't understand that. "That person is no good for you" -- that I can understand, although it can certainly be debatable.

"Revolting? They're disgusting!"

Ginger

We don't need invitations to be delighted you're getting married. Just let us know when the ceremony is and we'll raise a glass at the right time. Though I certainly wouldn't say no to a piece of wedding cake. :-)

dcb @ 104
Most laypeople seem to get stuck on the idea of differential reproduction meaning that the maximum number of offspring win. There are lots of examples of why this is a naive notion, from the tradeoffs between high-R and high-K reproductive strategies to the kin-selection that occurs in eusocial species.

Jumping on one of my favorite hobbyhorses and galloping off in all directions, I'll claim that one of the biggest sources of confusion is the insistence that there be a single "unit" that's selected. Dawkins says it's a single gene, Salthe used to say it was the species (IIRC he got that from Simpson, but then my study of evolution has been an equilibrium for decades punctuated by occasional binges of reading), but changed his mind, a lot of people claim it's the population, and I'm tempted to say it's the gene constellation, but I'm not really convinced. So until someone can convince me otherwise, I'll say that what's selected depends on what part of the elephant you're looking at just then. Unless there's recent work that addresses this issue, I'd prefer to treat it the way most physicists treat the question of the interpretation of quantum theory: "Who cares as long as the models are predictive?"

That made me so happy.

Bruce Cohen @52: Having spent several years in fundamentalist churches, I think there's a great deal of truth in this. There's a verse in Hebrews, much quoted by fundamentalists, that (essentially) equates faith with certainty. Lack of certainty is therefore lack of faith, and a grievous sin to be avoided at all cost. Add in the fact that they think gay sex is icky, and you have a gut-level response that they'll twist themselves into all sorts of rhetorical and logical knots trying to justify, as all y'all have so ably explored upthread.

I bounced in my chair. It's like hearing the news all over again. That's *wonderful*.

It made me think: Now the jewelers have even more people to sell wedding, engagement, anniversary gifts to. And the bridal companies! And the bakers, baking wedding cakes! And, and, and... heck, I think if you get together all the wedding industries in California, they could have a powerful effect in the amendment referendum fight coming up. Surely they'd oppose having their suddenly inflated potential consumer base be diminished again?

Corporate lobbying! For good and righteousness! Huzzah!

You might get this result from group selection, which was probably important for early humans--I don't feel like I have much intuition for how that would work out.

One of the most likely, but least "satisfying", explanations would be along the lines of "why men have nipples" -- that is, the "circuits" for both "mate targeting" and social bonding with either gender, are "commonly available" to development. Yes, there's a "usual rule" about which one gets emphasized in the developing brain, but that rule can be overridden not only by some "evolutionary purpose", but by "mere" developmental disruption. Of course, "sports of nature" in general are easily co-opted for whatever purpose, by evolution and/or society. (Q.v. the autistic spectrum and other "diversities".)

In any case, if men were more likely to die off in hunting accidents or war, then having extra males around who weren't specifically attached to one female and one set of children could be very helpful to the survival of the overall group.

So under pre-modern conditions, the math is more like: Under hazardous overall conditions (not enough food, dangerous environment, etc.), you could easily 50% or less odds to "replace yourself" (that is, two kids survive to adulthood, bearing 3/4 of your genome). By helping out with the rest of the family "full-time" (because you're not busy looking after your own kids), you might well enable the survival of two to four "quarterlings" who would otherwise have fallen by the wayside. That's breaking even, which is the whole point of the "kin-selection" argument....

You're assuming that you have an unlimited amount of time, so that you'd be able to do a top-notch job for both your children and your nieces and nephews. But time and energy are limited, so you're apt to give less attention to your sibling's offspring while focusing on your own.

Say there is a recessive gene that leads to homosexuality, and being a "good aunt or uncle." Their heterosexual siblings are likely to be carriers for that gene. And those sibling's children would have the benefit of having a caring aunt or uncle, more likely to survive, and more likely to pass that recessive trait on.

The occasional double-recessive, who is homosexual, is less like to reproduce, but more likely to help preserve that gene through carrier-siblings.

Plus, at least for men, you could not, traditionally, be certain of your own offspring. (And trying to be sure led to a lot of oppression of women in the process.) But you can be certain of the offspring of your sister being related to you. Without restricting the activities of their mother (and her ability to care for them) in order to ensure certainty.

For women, you can't be sure you, or your children, will survive childbirth. And if you die, your children are less likely to be well cared for, and are more likely to die. But you can be sure you are related to your sister's children, you know you'll survive the pregnancy, and if your sister doesn't survive, you know you'll care for children who are related to you.

In either case, you're more likely to be alive and caring for children who are related to you genetically if you are caring for your sibling's children, than if you have your own. A lower return on investment, but a greater chance of success (with three adults focused on the survival of one woman's children, instead of two), and less chance of personally loosing all.

I think you need to apply that 50% mortality rate to my nieces and nephews, too.

The math here isn't too complicated. Ignoring sex chromosomes, any gene I have has a 1/2 probability of being in each of my kids, and a 1/4 probability of being in each of my nephews. The only situation in which the no-kids gene should win in kin-selection terms is when the cost of getting one of my kids to adulthood is that two of my nephews don't make it to adulthood. That is, I have to be about twice as effective at taking care of my nephews as I'd have been taking care of my own kids. This could happen in some lifeboaty situations, but it's hard to imagine it being at all common.

If homosexuality evolved partly as a way to get more adults watching related kids, I think it must have happened at the group level. Tribes which had more adults not making kids (maybe using gay romance/sex as a way to establish alliances within or between tribes) did better, and since those tribes tended to share a lot of genetic material and to survive or fail as a group, the tribes that succeeded tended to be ones in which a certain fraction of people were gay, or could turn gay in certain environmental conditions. (A natural question is what these would be. Is being raised in overcrowded conditions, or being short on food as a baby/child/preteen, correlated to being gay? Being a later-born male is correlated with homosexuality, which kind-of supports this idea.)

I rather suspect that there's something else going on. The human mind is complicated as hell, and all kinds of our insticts are twisted and turned in odd ways that may be functional or just random. And evolution isn't a human engineer, designing with a plan in mind--in practice, if a gene for homosexuality exists, that's not "for" some reason, but rather because that's the way the gene frequencies worked out, under the influence of various levels of selection and a nice dolop of randomness.

That's exactly what I was saying, earlier. The existence of a gene in a population tells us nothing about the "meaning" of such a gene. It tells us only that the gene is not lethal to enough members of that population. No gene has to be obviously beneficial. It's good enough as long as it isn't the opposite of beneficial in some very small way (i.e., SCA versus malaria).

But the main thing is I'm really happy because some friends of mine are getting married tonight, officially.