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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (497305)	11/23/2003 10:59:42 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769667

What had happened to move the marriage issue from Spear's "lunatic fringe" to congressional hearings? "Lawsuits," Sullivan said. But even before that, two important facts of gay life in the 1980s and early 1990s reshaped the political priorities of many gay Americans. AIDS was one. The killer disease had a catalytic effect on the movement, as hundreds of thousands of people came to see gay rights not just as a question of personal freedom or self-expression, but in terms of life and death. Even young homosexuals were forced to confront grim practicalities of illness -- health insurance, hospital visitation, disability benefits, funeral planning and settling estates. Matters that were fairly streamlined for married couples proved difficult, if not impossible, for same-sex couples, who found themselves barred from their partners' hospital rooms, unable to make medical decisions, forbidden to cover loved ones on their employee insurance plans. "HIV deepened our sense of how truly we are second-class citizens," said Evan Wolfson, a leading gay rights attorney and founder of Freedom to Marry. "And many non-gay Americans began to see gay people not just as individuals, but as people in relationships who love and care for one another and have needs and hurt." At the same time, in other hospital rooms, thousands of lesbians were giving birth. It was a seismic moment in the history of mating, when eternal limitations on fertility and conception were being smashed by science and microtechnology. Babies were being conceived in petri dishes, surrogates were gestating embryos for infertile women, young women were donating eggs to be carried by older mothers. On and on. The idea that procreation was the province of one man mating with one woman was refuted by squalling newborns in nurseries from coast to coast. "Death and birth," Sullivan mused. "Suddenly, you couldn't get into the intensive care room where your partner of 20 years was dying. There's nothing like that experience to make you realize how vulnerable you are. And then the baby boom, especially among lesbians, made them realize they didn't have any legal protections for their families." Gay people began circulating lists of all the laws, rights, protections and benefits that are triggered by marriage -- a list that now runs past 1,000.