Golden State Blesses Gay Marriage

Finally, some good news: Yesterday, the California legislature voted to legalize gay marriage, a move that goes beyond earlier endorsements of "civil unions" in Vermont and Massachusetts. The bill--approved last week in the state Senate--also places California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is already suffering from an anemic 36 percent approval rating, in a ticklish spot: Running as a social liberal in 2003, he spoke glowingly about gay rights in the abstract. And it seems that some of his fellow Republicans debating the measure feel a bit differently:

"Marriage should be between a man and a woman, end of story. Next issue," insisted Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy (R-Monrovia). "It's not about civil rights or personal rights, it's about acceptance. They want to be accepted as normal. They are not normal."

We know just what he means. Here, for example, is the account of the young governor's healthy, man-woman view of intimacy, courtesy of Arnold: Education of a Bodybuilder:

I used to feel that women were here for one reason. Sex was simply another kind of exercise, another body function. I was convinced a girl and I couldn't communicate on equal footing because she wouldn't understand what I was doing. I didn't have time to take one girl out regularly and go through a normal high-school romance with all its phone calls and notes and squabbles. That took too much time. I needed to be in the gym. For me it was a simple matter of picking them up at the lake, and then never seeing them again.

It's simple, really: straight sex is the way God intended us to have anonymous, dismissive, soulless--yet calisthenic--unions. Anything else is just not normal.-- HOLLY MARTINS

California Legislature Approves Gay Marriage [Washington Post]

 Arnold Schwarzenegger [Rotten.com]