Monday, December 05, 2005
Four Poofs & a Piano
Some years ago I got to chatting with a British poet about seaside resorts & boardwalks & he said I absolutely must go to Brighton. I knew Brighton was an old town with Regency buildings & a broken down Victorian pier, & I'd heard stories about how a randy, spendthrift Prince of Wales made the place popular by keeping his mistresses & horses there 200 years ago (his horses had the better accomodations). It didn't occur to me at the time that this poet being gay had anything to do with his recommendation. I later discovered Brighton is a very gay place. & now it's gearing up to become Britain's Niagara Falls for gay & lesbian couples. It has the most Civil Partnership pre-registrations of any U.K. city in advance of the new law going into effect on Dec. 21. A wedding planners show held there on Sunday featured the entertainers Four Poofs & a Piano.
The U.K.'s law isn't "marriage," requires a two week wait & the signing of some legal documents, but there will be plenty of wedding ceremonies anyway. The law gives homosexual couples the same property and inheritance rights as married heterosexual couples and entitles them to the same pension, immigration and tax benefits. England used to have some of the most cruelly repressive "sodomy" laws in the western world. Now that enlightened nation makes parts of the United States of Texas look like Iran. An English news commentator on NBC suggested last night that Britain was ready for such a change because gay activists had been lobbying discreetly for it, unlike the United States (where gays are too out & pushy, he implied). I prefer to believe Brits are just better than us in this matter, if not quite as far along as the Netherlands & other EU nations. After all, Sir Elton John has been a knight for 7 years but a queen for over 35.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
The U.K.'s law isn't "marriage," requires a two week wait & the signing of some legal documents, but there will be plenty of wedding ceremonies anyway. The law gives homosexual couples the same property and inheritance rights as married heterosexual couples and entitles them to the same pension, immigration and tax benefits. England used to have some of the most cruelly repressive "sodomy" laws in the western world. Now that enlightened nation makes parts of the United States of Texas look like Iran. An English news commentator on NBC suggested last night that Britain was ready for such a change because gay activists had been lobbying discreetly for it, unlike the United States (where gays are too out & pushy, he implied). I prefer to believe Brits are just better than us in this matter, if not quite as far along as the Netherlands & other EU nations. After all, Sir Elton John has been a knight for 7 years but a queen for over 35.
