(via Kevin Drum) California is lumbering towards equity for same-sex couples:
Businesses that provide discounts, special services or other privileges to married couples must extend the same rights and benefits to same-sex couples registered as state domestic partners, the California Supreme Court decided 6-0 on Monday.
The ruling was based on a case involving a lesbian couple’s use of country club facilities. Spouses were allowed to play for free, as well as “the live-in girlfriends and boyfriends, and grandchildren, of heterosexual members from the extra fees, while denying the same benefits to same-sex couples.” It seems pretty clear that the club didn’t have a leg to stand on, given those kinds of standards, since the only pragmatic reason they could give was “that extending membership benefits to unrelated friends might lead to overuse of the facilities and discourage the friends from purchasing their own memberships.”
Because, you know, I’d be totally willing to enter into a domestic partnership with someone solely for the perks of free golf at their country club.
But in any case, hooray for California, and let’s hope the marriage thing goes through as well.
An Ergodic Walk 
Well, my sister got married because after her move to a new town, the gym/health club there wouldn’t let her, her boyfriend, and her two sons have a family membership together. They had been together for years, and the health club in her old town considered them a family for membership purposes. The woman at the desk was actually rather bitchy about it. So to spite her and to get the membership, off they went to “get hitched” 🙂
Domestic partnership for some golf perks, a marriage for the health club… Romance, practicality, and the modern world, baby.