Pacific Views

Another good reason to make same-sex marriage legal.

Buried near the bottom of the AP article about Rosie O'Donnell's marriage in San Francisco is what seems to us to be the most important point made by the story:

O'Donnell said she decided to marry [Kelli] Carpenter, a former dancer and marketing director at Nickelodeon, during her recent trial in New York over the now-defunct Rosie magazine. During the case, she referred to Carpenter as her wife.

"We applied for spousal privilege and were denied it by the state. As a result, everything that I said to Kelli, every letter that I wrote her, every e-mail, every correspondence and conversation was entered into the record," O'Donnell said. "After the trial, I am now and will forever be a total proponent of gay marriage."

It had never occurred to us before that same-sex partners could be made to testify against each other in court. Married couples can, of course, claim spousal privilege. How come nobody's making a bigger deal of this in the arguments about same-sex marriage?

It's interesting to see how O'Donnell's point on spousal privilege is being missed by other media. The NY Times story only said this:

In November, Ms. O'Donnell said that she and her partner, Kelli Carpenter, had "applied for spousal privilege and were denied it by the state." The couple have four children and have homes in New York and Florida.

Looks to us like either reporter Stephanie Rosenbloom had no idea what O'Donnell was talking about or, more likely, her story was the victim of a clueless editor. At least the Times mentioned 'spousal privilege.' Reuters didn't.