Greg Laden's Blog

I think one of the first things that will happen is that health insurance companies won't recognize Texas marriages as sufficient to grant health insurance to spouses. Probably not in Texas because there are too many and there would be too much of a stink, but in states other than Texas.

This is just another excuse to deny coverage. It is money in the bank for health insurance companies so of course they will use it. Even if it only delays things, the delay is money in the bank too. They already have a zillion lawyers on staff, it costs the insurance companies nothing to delay stuff this way.

I think that states other than Texas will be sympathetic to these arguments, because Texas use this in an attempt to not recognize legal marriages performed in other states.

Posted by: daedalus2u | November 20, 2009 11:15 AM

That's priceless.

Posted by: Joshua Zelinsky | November 20, 2009 11:47 AM

What? You have a problem with that? ;-)

Posted by: Russell | November 20, 2009 11:59 AM

All those illegitimate Texas children. Deport them to Mexico!

Posted by: MikeMa | November 20, 2009 12:27 PM

Maybe we meant do do that.
Quick, look over there: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/20/utah-senator-shove-throat/
Ha ha, those Utah-ites shore are dumbasses, huh?

Posted by: noel | November 20, 2009 2:19 PM

Now imagine that due to being a minority in a state where you have consistently voted against the bigoted theocrats, your marriage is declared null and void, and you and your spouse face federal tax penalties, loss of health benefits, legal rights, etc.

Through no fault of your own.

Is it really such a laughing matter?

Posted by: Bob | November 20, 2009 4:37 PM

Bob, laughing doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

Posted by: Stephanie Z | November 20, 2009 6:48 PM

Bob, laughing doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

Greg's misplaced schadenfreude makes him seem like a giant asshole. I'll reiterate: if some gay Texan had the shit beat out of him just for being gay and in Texas, would it be appropriate to laugh and call the guy a dumbass for living in Texas? What response would "Sucks to be you." get?

In the 1950s and 1960s when the lynchings and beatings and shootings and church-burnings were going on in the South, was the reaction to laugh at blacks and their supporters for being so stupid as to live under a conservative racist regime, shrug, and say "Sucks to be you?"

Seriously, when Greg flippantly calls out his readership as racists, or frets about that ambulatory mass of Final Net called Norm Coleman or that third-runner-up in the Eva Braun lookalike contest at the Minnesota State Fair called Michele Bachmann, I have to ask why I should give two shits about good government, progress, and justice in his neck of the woods when he and many others are so willing to throw under a bus millions of people fucked over in Texas, people that in all likelihood share the same core values, but by reasons of job, friends, family, or sheer accident are in Texas.

Why is this acceptable? If people outside Texas spent as much time and effort helping those in Texas oust the miserable ignorant hateful and obscenely well-funded and well-organized right-wing psychopaths that run the place as they do giving their countrymen the "Sucks to be you" treatment, maybe we wouldn't see so many stories like this.

Stephanie, I'd hope you could talk a little sense into Greg. I'm tired of expecting any humanity or compassion or action out of the complacent northern secular community. If this was the first cheap laugh and overgeneralization at others' expense Greg's posted, I wouldn't have wasted the time writing this. But this bullshit has been going on for a while. And really, it's got to stop.

Posted by: Bob | November 20, 2009 10:40 PM