By order of Diane Linn, chairwoman of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners (I decline to call her the "board chair" as she is clearly female and not a piece of furniture, nor does it appear that the other commissioners are wont to sit on her), the county will issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The county relies on an opinion from its county counsel, bolstered by an opinion from a prominent corporate attorney and civil-rights volunteer, that whether or not Oregon law permits same-sex marriage, the Oregon constitution does not permit the county to discriminate between same-sex and mixed-sex couples.
Well and good, I say (reluctantly, not knowing why the same thing should merit both an adjective and an adverb), not because I support same-sex marriage, with which I'm still uneasy (the Able Assistant told me politely on Friday that if I were only X, or maybe XXIV, years younger then I would not be so uneasy with the concept), but because of how happy some of my co-workers and friends have been to be able to get a government certificate of their relationships with the people they have chosen to share their lives with.
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself." Whoever said that was followed by Emerson's useful line, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." So I cheerfully allow that I'm inconsistent: I'm not thrilled by allowing same-sex marriage, but I am delighted to see gay couples getting married.
But why stop there? Oregon law clearly contemplates the plural: Marriage (it says) is a contract entered into by males 17 years or older and by females 17 years or older. I have no desire to marry males 17 years or older (or in fact of any age), but (over the certain objection of Mrs. Laquedem and her attorney) I'm prepared to admit the possibility that the law allows me to marry some more females 17 years and older. And if my sexual orientation is not just additive but downright multiplicative, what sort of Dickensian ass is the law to say that I can't? The logic of the county's opinion says that the county's refusal to issue me a few more licenses is arrant discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Polygamists, unite unite unite, I say. And I'll save a slice of cake for Commissioner Linn.