Some Country for Old Men

Thanks, secretly gay Matt Drudge, for giving us the idea to write totally incendiary headlines in an effort to boost traffic. And thanks, Rhode Island governor Donald Carcieri, for being the kind of dick who inspires a headline like that.

We know what you’re thinking. “Dave,” you muse. “Why would you write about someone as inconsequential as Donald Carcieri, the anti-gay bigot scumbag who thinks homosexuality is evil?”

I’d write about him for that very reason! See, in Rogue’s Island, it’s not good enough to be Catholic and deny gays basic civil rights. The governor thinks civil rights shouldn’t even extend to the gays in death. Sadly, I’m not kidding. From the Providence Journal:

An opponent of same-sex marriage, Governor Carcieri has vetoed [a] bill that would have added “domestic partners” to the list of people authorized by law to make funeral arrangements for each other.

In his veto message, Republican Carcieri said: “This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.["]

You know what IS the preferred way to approach the issue? Letting the homos bury their partners when they die! The bill’s language is pretty straightforward, after all. Check it:

The legislation defines a domestic partner as someone who was in an “exclusive, intimate and committed relationship” with the deceased and had lived with him or her for at least a year prior to the death; is at least 18, not married to anyone else, not related by blood and who was financially “interdependent” with the deceased as evidenced, for example, by a joint mortgage, shared credit card or domestic partnership contract.

To Carcieri, that’s not good enough.

As written, he said the bill would allow the decisions of a “partner” of a year to take precedence over “traditional family members,” and he believes a “one year time period is not a sufficient duration to establish a serious bond between two individuals…[relative to] sensitive personal traditions and issues regarding funeral arrangements, burial rights and disposal of human remains.”

Carcieri said he was also uncertain “how it would be ascertained in many circumstances whether [a couple] had been in a relationship for year” since there is “no official or recognized form” of domestic partnership agreement in Rhode Island. He called this proviso “vague and ill-defined.”

So let’s see if we have this straight (pun): Based on Carcieri’s reasoning, some totally hetero guy from Providence meets a totes hetero girl at a straight wedding, and they decide three months later to get married in Rhode Island, which they do, but then she dies in a car accident six months after that. Now he can’t make funeral decisions for her because he’s only known her nine months, which is not enough time to form a bond between two people! Or does their marriage license from the great state (sarcasm) of Rhode Island mean that a marriage between two straights is bond enough that maybe they don’t have to know each other a year to bury the other if one of them dies?

Again, I know what you’re thinking. The logic in the above paragraph is totally twisted and makes no sense. EXACTLY.

Ugh, Carcieri’s veto is vague and ill-defined, as all blind hatred is. Good news: Carcieri can’t run for reelection in 2010 because of term limits. Of course, Rhode Island is just Catholic enough to keep the mo’s from getting basic civil rights passed by a Democrat. But who knows? Stranger things have happened.