The Wockner Wire
by Rex Wockner

Bitter, Party Of One

There are few things as tedious as a sore loser.

Nobody wants to be around a sore loser. It's a pity somebody hasn't explained this to Mormon Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Good old Mitt tried every trick in his Republican bag -- and then some -- to stop Massachusetts from becoming the first state to let gays get married. He failed. Miserably. Hundreds of happy homos now have tied the knot. And the planet has not stopped spinning. God hasn't even smote Provincetown.

But Mitt is still agitated. There's a very old law in Massachusetts, from 1913. It says you can't travel to Massachusetts and get married if the marriage would not be permitted in your home state.

The law reportedly was written to keep blacks and whites from marrying each other in Massachusetts and then going back to the South and causing a ruckus.

Massachusetts hasn't enforced this law for a very long time. But, of course, Mitt dusted it off and is using it to refuse to register the marriages of out-of-state same-sex couples who have tied the knot in Massachusetts since May 17.

This is not playing well in the media. It's not playing well with the clerks who have handed out the licenses. It makes Mitt, who has national political aspirations, look petty, stamp-your-feet childish, and like a sore, bitter loser.

Oh well, at least we won't have to worry about him getting elected to higher office, and that's a swell thing.

Speaking Of That Old Law

In the process of re-reading that old law a few minutes ago, I was struck by the use of the word "intermarrying."

The law states: "No marriage shall be contracted in this Commonwealth by a party residing and intending to continue to reside in another jurisdiction if such marriage would be void if contracted in such other jurisdiction, and every marriage contracted in this Commonwealth in violation hereof shall be null and void. ... Before issuing a license to marry a person who resides and intends to continue to reside in another state, the officer having authority to issue the license shall satisfy himself, by requiring affidavits or otherwise, that such person is not prohibited from intermarrying by the laws of the jurisdiction where he or she resides."

"Intermarry" refers to the mixing of races, tribes or religions via marriage. At least the second half of this dinosaur of a law has no application to same-sex marriage at all.

Well, in any case, gay legal eagles and outraged same-sex couples have announced court challenges to Mitt's racist old law. And the Massachusetts Senate tacked a repeal of it onto the new budget it passed, and sent that on to the House.

You're gonna lose again, Mitt. And like I told you before, you're going to end up in the history books in the same paragraph with former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the dingbat who fought tooth and nail against equality for black people, which was the civil-rights issue of his day.

It's too bad you can't step into a time machine, head 15 years into the future, and see both how you're going to be remembered and what a full-stop you're orchestrating to your political career.

All by being such an AMAZINGLY SORE LOSER.

The Heartland

A few days ago, I was sitting in a Quizno's on Monument Circle, the epicenter of Indiana and Indianapolis, eating a toasted tuna and cheese sub sandwich with double tuna.

I looked out the window and saw one of those city-operated newspaper boxes designed to make the distribution of newspapers more orderly. This particular tidy box had five offerings: The Indianapolis Star daily newspaper, the Nuvo alternative weekly, a black-community newspaper, some kind of chamber-of-commerce-ish thing, and The Word, Indianapolis' nicely done, full-color gay newspaper.

I said to myself, if the city of Indianapolis (which is about as Heartland, USA, as you can get) is distributing the city's gay newspaper across from the State Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Monument Circle, the spiritual center of the state, how is it possible to argue that the gay cause has not been won?

When I finished my tasty toasted sandwich, I grabbed a copy of The Word and flipped through it. Its 68 pages were so stuffed with advertisements that there almost was no room for the articles.

This tells us that gay papers that don't have enough advertisements apparently lack the business acumen of the publishers of The Word. If a gay paper can make it in Indy, a gay paper should be able to make it in any U.S. city. I don't think homophobia is the culprit anymore.

That evening, I checked out a couple of Indy's gay bars which my Web searches and The Word led me to believe do not offer drag shows or attract foofy twinks.

Both the 501 Eagle and Gregs (no apostrophe) were very pleasant spaces. The owners obviously take pride in creating a nice environment.

I wouldn't want to live in Indiana. I hate humidity. I hate cold. I hate flat topography. Corn and soybean fields do not inspire me. And I fear that many of the most interesting people who were born in Indiana aren't there anymore.

However, if I had no choice but to live in Indianapolis, I'd survive just fine. Because the gay thing has been won and even The Heartland is surprisingly up-to-speed. The final legal hurdles are simply a matter of time.

Somebody should tell Mitt Romney that Resistance Is Futile.