Race to the Altar

The new season of television’s most under-appreciated reality series, The Amazing Race, premieres May 29th.

Each year, the producers of TAR have included one gay couple of one kind or another:

– Season One’s sniveling Joe and Bill , “life partners” who came across as snobby, scheming queens

– Season Two’s elegant Oswald and Danny , gay best friends who shopped their way around the planet in air-conditioned limos, drinks in hand

– Season Three’s Ken and Gerrard, brothers, one of whom was gay in a non-threatening, yuk-it-up, Harvey Feirstein sort of way

This season, the show features preppy-looking Reichen and Chip, whose bio says they are married.

Not in America, they’re not.

Gay people claiming to be married really tick me off. They may feel married (heck, I do!). They may see their relationship as being equal to marriage (heck, I do!). They may want to be married (heck, I do!).

But they’re not married — not in any useful, legal sense of the term.

– When a married person dies without a will, the married survivor inherits his or her share by default. If one gay partner dies without a will, because the two men aren’t married, the gay parnter is just out of luck: the legal next of kin will control the disbursement of the deceased person’s estate.

– When a married person gets a job, his or her partner may frequently have access to medical benefits at low cost. If one gay partner gets a job offering spousal benefits, they likely don’t include benefits for same-sex partners. Even when a progressive company (like AT&T) does grant same-sex partners access to benefits, because the two men aren’t married, those benefits are taxed as extra income.

– When someone is critically injured, the legal next of kin is often the only individual allowed in the ICU. When two people are married, that’s automatically the spouse. Because they aren’t married, a gay partner may be denied the right to see or care for his mate.

– In Mississippi, married people enjoy joint ownership of property without giving up their homestead exemptions. Because they aren’t married, two men who want to own a home together must do so as a corporation … and give up their homestead exemption!

Not long ago, a liberal-minded and intelligent friend said to me: “So then why don’t you guys go get married? They’re doing it in Hawaii and Vermont, aren’t they?”

The comment stunned me. For the record: gay people can’t get married in Hawaii. They can’t get married in Vermont. They can’t get married anywhere in the USA. To make matters worse, states like the Great State of Mississippi are so nervous about gay marriage, they’ve adopted bizarre laws saying our state doesn’t have to recognize gay marriages conducted in other states … if those marriages ever become possible!

(Here in Mississippi, our lawmakers can’t scrape up a nickel for higher teacher pay, but they can invest weeks drafting and passing an angry resolution to show the world our opposition to something that can’t even happen yet!)

*Sigh*

Listen: I don’t care if I ever get to stand in a church and have some local pontiff marry me “in the eyes of God.” Frankly? Me and God have handled things just fine between the two of us. I don’t put much stock in getting a pastor or priest’s blessing of my intent to make a life with Clyde.

I do, however, want Clyde, as my chosen life partner, to have the same privileged legal status that John and Mary down the street enjoy. I’d jump at the opportunity for legal marriage to the person I love most — not because I want the opportunity to parade down the aisle in white silk, but because I want Clyde to enjoy the rights and protections any life partner should have.

On the Amazing Race site, Reichen and Chip’s bio says that, in addition to seeing themselves as Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis, they want to show America “a new type of gay relationship.”

Unfortunately, by claiming to be married, they’re just adding to America’s confusion about the most important issue facing same-sex couples today.