Eliot Spitzer to Arnold Schwarzenegger: Me First

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Legislation to bring marriage equality to California has reached Governor Schwarzenegger's desk once before and stands a good chance of making it again. Democrats in California really want to see marriage equality, and despite his self-serving election year scribble of the veto pen during the last go-around, most of us suspect that the governor secretly supports marriage equality too. We at CMR have done our part to get the governor on our side publicly, from appealing to the governor's desire to see California's economy prosper, to noting trends that make a vote against equality problematic into the future, to highlighting real life cases of anti-gay discrimination that impact thousands of LGBTIQ Californians every year, including prominent members of the governor's own staff. While we remain hopeful that the governor will embrace our message and do the right thing, we aren't holding our breath in anticipation.

So today, Governor Schwarzenegger, allow me the pleasure to introduce yet another reason to embrace gay marriage: you've got competition! We all know you like a challenge, and you don't like to lose. Now sure, it was easy to veto the first marriage equality bill in the country to reach a governor's desk, but that was back when California was the only game in town. Now that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer wants to give you a run for your money, you've got two options: embrace marriage equality and become a Newsweek poster child again (I doubt that gets old), or act like a girlie man and let New York get all the credit. But as luck would have it, there's no need to fret, because you've got a head start! Just sign the bill when it reaches your desk, and when Newsweek comes a-knockin', we'd even let you take all the credit. For that bold act of post-partisanship, you'd deserve it.