The XX Factor: What women really think.

... The Swedes do it!

And an update to my earlier post on Vermont teetering on the brink of opening the m-word to same-sex pairs: The Swedes have just done it. Sweden has had an all-but-marriage regime much like civil unions, called registered partnerships, for about 15 years. Today the country passed a law gender-neutralizing marriage entirely, 261-22, joining the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, and Norway in going all the way—beyond partial recognition to full equality.

Watch for the rest of Scandinavia next. Which may or may not include Vermont.

Same-Sex Marriage in Vermont?

Speaking of another kind of freedom, last week, the Vermont Senate has passed a bill that would enable same-sex couples to marry, and not just get civilly unionized (civilly united? civilized?).The Vermont House is expected to pass the bill this week. The governor says he'll veto it—despite a survey showing that 55 percent of Vermonters are in favor, a few percentage points more than last year. No one knows whether there will be enough votes to override his veto. If the bill passes, Vermont would be the third American state with full marriage rights for same-sex pairs—and the first to have successfully done it via the legislature. (The California legislature passed marriage bills twice, but everything in California ends up in the initiative process and in the courts ... more details here.)

I am sure that some of you thought that civil unions and marriage were functionally equivalent. Not really. Vermont public radio interviewed me yesterday about the difference between civil unions and marriage, the hilarious history of marriage, the hard-fought and incremental gender-neutralization of marriage law over the past 150 years, and why same-sex couples belong today. Listen here, if you have a couple of extra minutes to kill. 

Don't Go to Florida: On Not Getting To See Your Dying Beloved in the Hospital

I hate these stories. My head is full of scores of them. I heard my first one nearly 20 years ago, when my friends Matt and Mark (names changed—it was a long time ago!) told me that when Mark was shot while on a business trip, the Dallas hospital that was treating him refused to tell Matt (technically a stranger) whether Mark was dead or alive. Matt called for six hours before he got the news. After being terrified by that hair-raising story, my then-beloved and I got our documents written and notarized within the week. (She's now my beloved ex, after 19 years together, but that's another story entirely.) During those 20 years, I wrote a book about the history of marriage and why same-sex couples belong. A marriage movement took shape, including some now-famous lawsuits. We won in Massachusetts, my home state, and Connecticut; we won partial partnership recognition (called things like "civil unions" or "domestic partnership" and so on) in another 10 states; we won the dubious privilege of celesbians getting full-color and front-page photo coverage in People while dating and getting married (cf: Ellen and Portia's big fat white wedding). Meanwhile, most of the United States came to agree that same-sex partners ought to, at a minimum, be able to hold hands in the hospital, for God's sake.

And still, because Lisa Marie Pond—who was on a cruise ship with her beloved and their three children—had the misfortune of having a heart attack while off the coast of Miami, she had to die alone, without the woman she loved.

It breaks my heart.