What I'm about to forward may seem to be an unusual line of thinking, but bear with me a little.
I know many of us are sick of how the Anna Nicole Smith coverage has virtually hijacked coverage of more important news on the corporate news outlets (NPR and Democracy Now! have been relatively immune to the story).
But there is part of the story that is important, or, at least, it is to me.
More below the "fold".
What the nation is watching, writ extremely large here, is something that happens to queer families on a routine basis. One partner dies, and that partner's estranged family pops out of the woodwork, trying to take everything and shunt the surviving partner out, very frequently succeeding. Family the deceased partner hasn't seen nor spoken to in decades surfaces to make demands about burial arrangements, contesting the will, trying to gain custody of any children, and claiming the surviving partner is some kind of wicked Svengali with mind-controlling powers.
In most cases, there isn't $480 million at stake, but the actual amount of money isn't relevant.
The difference with this case is that Anna Nicole Smith and Howard K. Stern had a choice. They could have chosen to have gotten married, but they did not. That was their choice.
Same-sex couples are not afforded such a choice. The legal tangling between Howard K. Stern and Virgie Arthur that could have been prevented by marriage is an all-too-common reality in our lives, even if our lives aren't nearly as glamorous as Anna Nicole's.