The anti-gay crusade has gone too far in Rhode Island

Those of you who are not quite as obsessed with American politics as myself may not be aware of an event that occurred in the States last month. Indeed, it doesn’t seem to have been the major news it should have been.
It was yet another skirmish in the ongoing battle for gay rights in America, which has been tit-for-tat recently; in the elections on November 3rd, Chapel Hill in North Carolina (a state not historically known as a bastion of liberal thought- it was in the Confederacy) elected an openly gay mayor, Washington state passed a sweeping gay rights ordinance, but Maine voted against gay marriage.
Meanwhile, in Rhode Island- a tiny state best known for being home to Family Guy- a bill allowing gay couples to arrange each other’s funerals was passed with just a single opposing vote in both chambers of the state legislature. Rhode Island doesn’t allow gay marriage, so the bill only allowed unmarried gay couples to perform this basic human service for one another.
What happened when it reached Republican Governor Don Carcieri’s desk? He vetoed it, on the grounds that it constituted further erosion of ‘traditional marriage’. A bill that just one person had voted against in the legislature, a bill that simply allowed gay couples a fundamental right that there is no- absolutely no- logical reason to deny them.
In some cases- a member of the Rhode Island legislature recounted the story of a friend of his who had this very experience- one partner may have no next of kin. Rather than allow his or her loving partner to arrange a funeral, Gov. Carcieri’s despicable action means that the sort of faceless bureaucrat with which Republicans are usually scaring everyone will continue to arrange the funeral or, in less tragic cases, a family member who may be much less close to the deceased.
This is not gay marriage (which, of course, Carcieri opposes, including civil unions); this is simply asking for some humanity. It is, in my view, revolting that some people continue to regard homosexuality as ‘wrong’, a ’sin’ and a ‘lifestyle choice’, and I have no sympathy whatsoever with opponents of gay marriage, but when such people cannot even bring themselves to recognise that homosexuals are at least human enough to be allowed to arrange one another’s funerals there is something deeply, deeply awry with parts of American society (and, yes, many other countries).
Fortunately, Gov. Carcieri is term-limited next year and cannot stand for re-election. All his potential successors support gay marriage. America is- slowly- getting there.