By BOB KEEFE / Cox News Service
SAN FRANCISCO -- Like refugees seeking a new world, hundreds of same-sex couples from across the country lined up in the rain for hours on Monday to try to exchange vows before a judge considers banning city-sanctioned gay marriages at a hearing Tuesday.
Meanwhile, halfway across the continent in Chicago, a similar phenomenon is drawing less media scrutiny, but it could just as epochal as gay marriage.
The halls outside the office of the Cook County Clerk are jammed, and the crowds, although polite, strike a visitor as somehow, well, different. Although almost uniformly well-dressed, they seem a bit …off. And then it becomes clear. They smell of the grave. The City of Chicago has finally decided to permit dead couples to marry, breaking one of the last and greatest cultural taboos in America.
"Gay, Shmay," said Genovese Talliafero (1902-1957). "I was straight as an arrow, but I just never met the right girl. Now I have, and who are the living to criticize our desire to be married?"
His bride to be, Littlefeather Alewife (??1372??-??1405??) agreed. "We've been denied so much. We can't get jobs, they won't let us into their fancy live-people stores, and they constructed a bridge abutment over my unmarked resting place. The least they can do is to let us be together like any other couple."
Commentators are not surprised that Chicago should be the epicenter of this phenomenon. Just as San Francisco has been a focal point for gay culture in the United States, Chicago has been the city that offered the greatest opportunities for the dead, allowing them to vote in city elections, employing many of them on city and county payrolls, and encouraging various gangland figures to conduct active recruiting drives for the dead community, the St. Valentine's day massacre to many more recent outbursts of gunfire.
Nonetheless, spokespersons for the "post-mortal community" assert that this is only the beginning of the struggle for civil rights for their community. "Where should I begin?" asked Mr. Talliafero, a spokesman for his fellows. "Rampant unemployment - no jobs except a few city patronage spots. Health care - none! We're not allowed on public transportation. They kick you out of school as soon as you die, as if education weren't important to us. Of course, they take away all our money, so we couldn't afford education anyway. If we try to hold a public meeting people bring out the pitchforks and torches faster than you can say Jack Robinson. And don't get me started on housing conditions."
The movement is not without its opponents, of course. Republicans in the Illinois State House recently introduced a "defense of life" act, defining marriage as "a union between one live, adult, mentally sound male and one live, adult, mentally sound female. Human? Did we say Human? They have to be humans, too, no matter what the Poodle liberation front says."
Even the most ardent supporters of dead marriage rights aren't ready for the concept of mixed marriages between the dead and the living. "That's … no, that's just disgusting." Said one Kenilworth socialite who had agreed to hold a fundraiser for the "Dead to Rights," the post-mortal organization."
Talliafero doesn't mind. "One thing about us," he chuckled, "We're patient."
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