the announcement provoked the usual ambivalence in me about marriage rights, which makes me feel like a killjoy when the news starts playing interviews with adorable old couples (sorry about the ads, there). rather than rehearsing the problematics of restricting normative models of kinship to marriage and (certain shapes and flavors of) nuclear families--something that's probably been done better elsewhere, and i don't quite have the stamina to take it on this morning--i thought i'd share gawker's post interrogating the language of the announcement and this collection of twitter responses, which counters some of my ambivalence; clearly, some people are "overwhelmed," and who am i to pooh-pooh my ambivalence all over their day?

yesterday also occasioned a personal conversation on facebook with a friend who's been with his partner for over twenty years; the NC news came on the same day as an invitation to a relative's (straight) wedding. he mentioned the resources that go into attending someone's wedding; the travel, the money, the days off--all this for an experience that leaves him deeply conflicted and often feeling sad and bitter, when he already feels like "millions of people" have slapped him in the face with the various DOMA-like debates and votes (he gave the okay for sharing, by the way). the wedding invitation response card said "regrets only;" "regrets, indeed," he wrote. i wish i had the disposable income to send him a toaster oven or a hundred dollar bill in a pretty envelope; i know it's way more than presents--and maybe whimsy is a bad call in the midst of deep bad feelings--but of all the things he feels the lack of, some kind of dorky, belated wedding gift is probably the only one i could provide.