Mayor of N.Y. Town Marries Gay Couples

Up to a dozen gay couples began exchanging wedding vows on the steps of village hall Friday in a spirited ceremony that opened another front on the growing national debate over gay marriage.

Officiating was Jason West, the 26-year-old Green Party mayor in this village 75 miles north of New York City, who joined Gavin Newsom of San Francisco as the country's only mayors to marry same-sex couples.

[...]

Billiam van Roestenberg, 38, and Jeffrey McGowan, 39, were the first to wed to the cheers of the crowd. Wearing suits, they held hands and carried flowers.

"I feel happy and joyful and peaceful," van Roestenberg said. "A little bit of peace has finally come in. I feel proud to be an American."

"Now I'm normal and equal like every one else," he said.

I want everyone who reads this to pay attention to that last part. This is what's wrong and missing from the typical gay marriage discussion going on around this country, this adamant insistence on having the state validate and legitimize a relationship. It's utterly repugnant to me to see people acting like this.

I can say I am firmly set against what the religious right and other sympathizers of "protecting" marriage want to do...as if you could or should use the power of government to protect the definition of anything. But that doesn't mean that I'm actually for what these civil disobedients are ultimately trying to accomplish: the further extension of government into private matters.

So when I hear about instances where local government officials decide to marry same-sex couples, I feel mixed about it. I enjoy hearing about government power getting the finger and I enjoy watching the overwhelming emotion homosexuals exhibit when they ge married. But I feel despair when I think about the nature of the system to begin with and how it's motivating people to justify it's continued existence.

Human relationships should be governed by individuals freely associating with one another and not by the US Constitution, the Federal Register, Texas, Travis County, or your city's mayor.