Get Me to the Church on Time - Yesterday my partner picked me up from work quite agitated.

"Those fuckers!" she exclaimed, "Those fucking fuckers are at it again."

Not sure if she was talking about the raccoons that keep spreading our garbage over our lawn or what I asked her cautiously, "What fuckers, dear?"

"Harper and those fucking right-wingers are trying to put same-sex marriage up for a vote again. It's been settled. They can't just do that, give us rights and then take them away."

I grimaced and nodded solemnly. You see, as a queer American, I've been down this road before. You know, the one where others get to drive or walk on the pavement with shoes and you get to walk in the same direction but barefoot over stones.

I've certainly spent many a day in the state capital convincing "my legislator" that having a law to make it illegal to fire me, kick me out of housing or deny me access to public places because of being queer was called "equal rights," not "special rights." I've also been in the situation when a municipality passes some kind of domestic partner or civil union status and you and your partner have to decide quickly whether or not to do it because you're afraid that within a short time they'll rescind it and you'll have missed your window.

At any rate, all last night my partner alternated between fretting and being furious. I tried to be re-assuring but the only thing that I managed to say was, "Now you know what it's like to be a queer American, not knowing from one legislative session to the next how secure your rights really are." I don't think it was quite helpful but it was better than sharing with her some of my old war stories and sending her into full-blown panic.

So, between fits of emotion, we tried to also think practically. A million questions floated around for both of us. "What if they vote to re-open this? They said even if the law gets changed they wouldn’t declare those marriages already done invalid. Should we rush to city hall before they have a chance to vote it out? Or do we chance waiting until we think we're ready?" Let me tell you, it sucks to have to contemplate the timing such a life changing and deep commitment based on the agenda of the far right. Talk about a shotgun wedding. She's right, they are fuckers.

Neither one of us was feeling good about rushing off to get a marriage license under these conditions. One of the things I have loved about moving to Canada is that we have had options... to get married, to be listed as common law, to be considered single. But having marriage potentially yanked was sending us both into a bit of a tizzy because there are some legal perks to the whole business which we'd at least like the option of having (and no, at this point, I'm not going to get into the whole debate about whether or not marriage is good for the queers. I'll be the first to discuss in what ways "marriage" has the potential to lead the queer community to be co-opted by the androcentric heteropatriachy if we're not thoughtful and authentic. I'll save that for another day when I'm not worried about losing my rights... again).

Anyway, by the end of last night, we decided to table any further talk until we saw how things shook down today.

This morning, all the reports were predicting a healthy defeat. A number of key conservatives were complaining about this being a waste of time because they even felt it had been settled a year ago and everyone had moved on. And unlike most Americans in the last several major elections, Canadians saw it for the smoke screen it was.

By the end of the day, the predictions were proven right. The bill to re-open the debate was solidly voted down and my partner would be spared any further parallel experience to what queer Americans go through on a daily basis. God bless Canada!