The Long Beach Press Telegram reports that the closet is still alive.
OK, that's not the headline, but clearly, as Mickey Kaus says, it's the undernews. If you're a married same-sex couple, the 2010 Census will put its hands over its face and pretend you're not there. To be fair, we've made a little progress since 1950; you can at least tell the world you're partners, though you'll have to check the "unmarried partners" box.
But there is still this one wall of the closet that hasn't yet toppled. We kicked down the closet door in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and then public support helped dismantle most of what was left.
I suppose that remaining wall gives some people comfort. While the rest of us are living our lives out in the world, there are still those who cower behind that standing panel, pretending there's a closet on the other side. I'm tempted to say, Mr. Bush, tear down this wall. Mr. Benedict, too, and Mr. Perkins and - come to think of it, an awful lot of Misters, including the inventor of the modern rule the Census is relying on, Mr. Clinton.
But there's really no need to say anything. There's no closet left for us to go back into. The recent California Field Poll shows that only about 19% of Californians would vote for same-sex couples to have no rights under the law - a number that's fallen from its previous low of 27% back in 2006. The 48% who say they would vote to give us full marriage rights isn't a majority, but full marriage is now within reach. Homosexuality is an issue lesbians and gay men stopped pretending about a long time ago, and the majority of heterosexuals now realize the pretending was getting tiresome. The federal government can continue its fictionalizing, but isn't that the sort of thing we wanted to abandon when we elected Obama president?