marriage

Will the Spotlight Shine on Social Issues after Court Ruling?

Friday, October 10th, 2008

The Connecticut Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision Friday to legalize same-sex marriage reinserts a topic that brought conservatives to the polls in 2004 back into the political spotlight. The news from the Connecticut court comes on the heels of new polls that show support for California’s ballot measure to oppose same-sex marriage is growing.

The presidential campaign has been focused almost exclusively on the economy over the past month. How will the marriage issue play out come November 4?

In Friday’s marriage ruling, the court overturned a lower court’s decision that civil unions provided the same benefits and rights as marriage. Connecticut joins California and Massachusetts as states that allow same-sex marriage.

But gay Californians may not be allowed to marry much longer. Proposition 8, which if passed would amend the California Constitution to only allow marriage between a man and a woman, is the highest profile ballot initiative in California this election season. The opposing sides have raised more than $41 million total, more than all previous marriage initiatives combined. Prop 8 proponents have approximately $10 million more to spend, and a new television advertising campaign appears to be working. In the most recent poll released by SurveyUSA, 47 percent of respondents supported the measure, while 42 percent opposed it. The previous poll, conducted before the advertising campaign began, showed 49 percent of those surveyed planned to oppose the measure, with 44 percent supporting it.

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Mixed Praise for Tyler Perry’s “The Family that Preys” Movie

Friday, September 19th, 2008


Tyler Perry, the one-man writer-producer-director of Meet the Browns and Why Did I Get Married has scored another box office hit with The Family that Preys. The self-proclaimed King of Drama’s new flick with a strong cast brought in more than $18 million in the opening weekend.

Preys is an entertaining and funny film with an easy-to-follow, though sometimes too- predictable storyline that is true to Perry’s form: No matter whether the tale turns sad or sweet, humor is present at every step.

The Family that Preys
is about two southern families that are tied together by the interracial friendship between the matriarchs, Alice Pratt (Alfre Woodard) and Charlotte Cartwright (Kathy Bates). The issues of race, class, adultery and interracial relationships are played out mostly through the lives of their children.

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Mr. Not So Bad

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

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Lori Gottlieb’s article “Marry Him!” in the March issue of the Atlantic Monthly has been causing quite the stir among late 20 and 30-something women. Gottlieb, who never married and is now raising a child on her own, makes the argument that women should stop being so damn picky while looking for Mr. Right and just settle for Mr. Not So Bad.

She writes: “My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.”

The argument goes like this: when it comes to taking out the trash, changing diapers and paying half the rent, any man is better than no man. So if women keep trying to find that man of their dreams (who Gottlieb says doesn’t exist “precisely because you dreamed him up“), they will end up alone and depressed.

Not sure if Gottlieb is right that being with Mr. Not So Bad is better than being alone. I’ve seen my fair share of divorces, and they are pretty damn ugly. Making dinner with Mr. Not So Bad is one thing. Marrying, having kids, getting divorced and then putting your children through misery is quite another.

That said, when my own husband left his dirty socks by the front door for the umpteenth time last night, I bit my lip.

Pushing off: a love affair with Homeland Security

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

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I learned in my undergrad psych class that the pledge system in frats is about cognitive dissonance. The theory is if you destroy your body and soul to pledge a fraternity, you will forever be convinced it was worth it. In order to not regret going through the agony of pledging, you convince yourself that you really, really love—like super love—your new frat.

I have often wondered if immigration lawmakers have modeled their policies on those of fraternities. I have a sneaking suspicion that the people high up in the immigration ladder want to make sure that all those foreigners really, really want to come to America, so they make it ridiculously hard to get here.

My Burmese husband, Morning, and I have been battling with immigration for almost two years. Our struggle has been so long and exhausting, I was staring to think even our immigration lawyer—who was supposed to be on our side yet managed to make dreadful mistake after dreadful mistake—was trying to make sure Morning really wanted to be here.

Now, fingerprints, dozens of passport-sized photos, HIV tests, vaccinations, visa runs, thousands of dollars in legal fees, and two marriage certificates later, Morning has won the prize: a Greencard.

Yes, it’s even better than a keg stand.

In order to get the Greencard—which is beige but does have a green line across the back—Morning and I had to be interviewed by an immigration official. Passing the interview was no small feat, for either of us.

Morning was getting the conditional permanent residency card through his spouse—me—so I had to go with him to the interview. I wasn’t sure what my role would be. I wondered if US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) wanted primarily to verify that I exist.

I assumed they also wanted to ensure Morning and I are actually married. Luckily, they didn’t make us run around campus naked or consummate our marriage on the floor of the USCIS office. With all the heat around immigration these days, I figured you have to be prepared for anything.

Morning and I spent days gathering all the necessary materials to bring to the interview. We had to bring the original and a copy of every document USCIS has ever sent to us. We started this process in February 2006, so there’s plenty of paperwork. We had to also bring letters from our employers and tax returns from the last three years, showing that Morning isn’t a burden on the country.

I didn’t use to earn enough to be his sponsor, so my mother filled that role. We had to bring her tax returns, proof of salary, sponsor forms and copies of her birth certificate and passport.

We also had to prove that we got married and the union is legit. We gathered our marriage certificate from last November in Los Angeles, the one from last January in New York and a Ketuba, the Jewish marriage certificate, from the rabbi in New York. We weren’t taking any chances—we’re very married.

As if that weren’t enough, we also had to show we’re still married. Some couples have an unfair advantage in the proof department: children. We don’t have those yet, but we added to our pile of papers the following: our lease with both our names on it, joint bank account statements, DWP statements, copies of the articles I’ve written about our relationship and immigration battle, photographs from our wedding and a printed copy of our Crate and Barrel gift registry, illustrating that our marriage is so legit people gave salad bowls to celebrate it.

We showed up at the USCIS office in downtown Los Angeles with our bags of documents and oversized wedding album. The officer welcomed us into his office. A stack of files for the day’s interviewees sat on a chair next to us. The officer said he has eight-to-ten interviews a day. Some of the cases are good and some are clearly bad, like the adoption case in which the grandparents first lied and said they were the parents. Now they’ve committed fraud and the whole thing is a mess, he said.

He made us stand to swear to tell the truth under God. Morning is Buddhist, but it wasn’t the time to question protocol. The officer then began asking questions.

He started with an easy one – asking Morning to recite his date of birth.

“1978 October 1,” Morning said, clearly nervous.

As if he had never spoken to someone who speaks English as a second language, the official raised his eyebrows and said: “Year, month, day? Huh.”

Then he asked Morning his address, parents’ names and how he met me.

Morning and I assumed the officer was observing our level of affection, so we sat close to each other. We are hand-holders anyway, but during the interview we made sure to be extra cute.

Then the officer moved to the tougher questions, asking us why we married each other. Morning replied, “Because I love her.”

“What do you mean you love her?” the officer asked, his tone flat and dry. “What’s love?”

I sat quietly, amused that we were discussing the definition of love with a Homeland Security officer, but eager to hear Morning’s response. It was pretty good – something along the lines of “We understand each other. I want to spend my life with her.” He passed, in my book anyway.

The officer wasn’t yet convinced. He went on to question why I—a Jewish woman—and Morning—a Buddhist man—would get married. “How do you feel about this?” he asked each of us. I thought back to my Pop and Politics column on inter-faith marriages. “Our children will be Jew-Bus,” I said with a smile, and left it at that.

“And your family?” the officer drilled me. “How do they feel about this?”

After about an hour, the questions slowly got easier. The officer was convinced our love is legit.

But then the interview turned into a diatribe about all the Israeli Jews who try to defraud the system by faking marriages to non-Jewish American women. The fraud cases, the officer told us, are usually the Israeli Jews marrying a non-Jew. It is something about their culture, he said, that they must marry Jews. But they want to escape the war in their country and get here so badly that they lie to immigration. It’s a shame, he said. If they want to come here, they should just “marry nice Jewish girls” and then there’d be no problem.

I did not debate or question the comments about Israeli Jews. The man still had control of Morning’s Greencard.

The officer then switched ethnic groups and started in on Mexicans. He said they often come to these interviews and want to be permanent residents, but they “insist” on not learning English.

Again, I bit my tongue. I couldn’t help but wonder why a representative of USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security, the face of our government to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of immigrants, seems to have a thing against foreigners.

In the end, the officer granted Morning the Greencard. With his conditional permanent residency card, Morning can work, travel and get financial aid at college.

There is only one condition—that we stay married for two years. Once the two years are up, we will have another interview and prove that we are still married. I have heard they will ask things like “What color is his toothbrush?” and “Which side of the bed does he sleep on?” Blue and left. I am prepared, as long as he keeps the same toothbrush.

So did the frat technique work? Does Morning really love—like super love—America? I don’t think so. But he does super love me. Maybe I should thank Homeland Security.

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Hanna Ingber Win is a staff writer and editor at P+P. Pushing Off is a column of her dispatches from twentysomething land. Image: film still, The Trial, Orson Welles, 1962.

A jew-bu marriage

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

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Multiculturalism sounds magical and exciting, an example of the best part of globalization.

My husband is Burmese Buddhist. He worships idols. I’m an American Jew. I spent my childhood attending weekly Hebrew school classes and saying the Sh’ma every night: “Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

I haven’t told him about the bris yet. I’m not sure how to bring it up. “Um, honey, all our family and friends are going to gather around and watch as a strange Jewish man chops off a piece of our future son’s penis.”

No, I don’t think that’ll go over well.

Read more of this week’s Pushing Off here.