Now, here's a fun bit of synchronicity: Dan Savage, gay columnist, agony uncle, defender of queer kids and scourge of the religious right, has his birthday, October 7th, on the feast of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, Roman soldiers, lovers, martyrs for their Christian faith - and easily the best-known of all the queer saints honoured by the Christian church.
The value of (heterosexual) marriage? $54.
This anecdote neatly encapsulates the simple, neat strategies Savage is able to adopt to demonstrate the hypocrisy and idiocy of discriminatory marriage laws - supposedly to protect "traditional, Christian" marriage, but which in fact have nothing at all to do with either religion, nor with any authentic tradition in marriage.
Savage's home state of Washington allows same-sex couples to adopt children and enter civil unions, but does not legally recognize same-sex marriage. In March 2004, Savage wrote about an action that he took to highlight what he saw as being indicative of same-sex couples' lack of legal right to marry. After his co-worker Amy Jenniges was denied a license to marry her girlfriend Sonia, Jenniges and Savage obtained a license to marry one another. He wrote at the time, "We emphasized to the clerk and her manager that Amy and I don't live together, we don't love each other, we don't plan to have kids together, and we're going to go on living and sleeping with our same-sex partners after we get married. So could we still get a marriage license?" According to Savage, the license-department manager replied, "Sure. If you've got $54, you can have a marriage license."
Having confirmed that he could in fact obtain the required heterosexual marriage licence for no more than $54 (love and commitent not required), he passed on the opportunity. The following year he travelled to Canada, to enter a genuine marriage with his partner and now husband Terry. The couple are raising an adopted son.
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