worth waiting for (?)

Kathy and I are not engaged.  This does not stop me from thinking about getting married to her all the time.  Some of my friends are rather impatient for us to get married.  One threatened to show up at our house with my sister in matching dresses if we didn't get a move on in some reasonable amount of time.  Their impatience does not even come close to matching my own.  There are a bunch of reasons, which I won't go into here, why we are not engaged yet.  They are all annoying.  However, there is one thing that I think might actually be worth waiting for.

(On wedding cake toppers.  I don't think anyone actually uses them anymore, other than as an illustration in a post or article about same sex marriage.  For real.  Also, if you google image search for wedding cake toppers, there are an appalling number where a bride is dragging a groom off.  But that is another post entirely.  I found this picture here.)

The ability to get married right here in New York state, where we live.  We've discussed (informally of course, we refuse to actually "plan" until an official engagement takes place) getting married on the Cape.  If we were to get married in Mass, it would be recognized in New York, thanks to a proclamation signed by Governor Patterson in 2008.  I thought this would be fine with me.  Then, post-election, Kathy said something along the lines of, "Did you see that article?  With a Democratic senate, some people are saying New York could pass same-sex marriage."  No, I did not see the article.  I can't even find the article she's talking about.  But suddenly, with that one statement, the thought of getting married on the Cape did not seem nearly as romantic and fun.  It seemed like we had to leave our own state, where we were second-class citizens, and go to another state, where we aren't even citizens at all, in order to have our basic legal rights.  Blah. 

Now.  Depending on how the timing of everything shakes out, and whether our state senate actually makes any move toward legalizing same-sex marriage, we may or may not get married in upstate New York.  It may not be worth waiting for.  It may be that we decide that getting married when we want is more important than getting married where we want.  It will be legal here anyway, after the fact.  (For state purposes, not federal.  Don't even get me started.)  But now, with this kernel of hope that I might actually be able to get married where I live, waiting doesn't seem like quite the annoying burden it did before.

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An aside.  I know there are other issues that are important to the LGBT community other than marriage -- like bullying, and how you can still get fired from your job in a lot of states just because of your sexual orientation, and suicide, etc.  You know, life and death.  I would even grant you that lots of these issues are more important to the broader population, generally.  But ya know what?  It's my blog.  So I'm allowed to be a little self-centered here, and what is important to me, personally, at the moment, is how Kathy and I want to get married.  So that is what I am going to talk about.