Just another man with a husband

 

   “His husband, who is also a medical assistant, drives for Lyft at night.”

   The story in the Los Angeles Times recently was about how public clinics, which provide health services to those who are poor and can’t afford health insurance, are having trouble hiring and keeping staff, because they are underfunded and can’t pay as much as bigger, better funded hospitals.  The medical assistant referred to in the quote here also works at a public clinic and also has a second job, teaching at a school for medical assistants.  Without adequate staffing, these clinics can’t provide the services that their clients rely on and desperately need. 

   This was an article about a pretty mundane, if urgent, even alarming, topic.  But there’s something here that isn’t so mundane.  Or, more to the point, is – happily - getting to be mundane.

   Note that the quote is about “his husband.”

   Yes, this is a gay man.  Not only that, but a gay man who is married to a man, who has a husband.

   But, not only is the article not only not about this man being gay and married to a man – far from it – it doesn’t make any mention of it.  Other than this “his husband.”

   I find this happening more and more.  I’ll be reading along, and suddenly “his husband” or “her wife” will pop up.  Just like I’m reading about “her husband” or “his wife.” This happens with the Los Angeles Times and also the small Claremont Courier, my hometown paper that I contribute to from time to time.  I imagine that it’s also the case in probably at least most big-city papers.  I wonder if is now in the AP Style Book. 

   This is a long way from seven years ago when, in the Obergefell v. Hodges case, the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage to be constitutional  in 2015, when a man marrying a man, a woman marrying a woman, was newsworthy, was noteworthy, something to loudly cheer or loudly condemn. Heck, I remember when a man being gay or a woman being a lesbian was news, if not big news. 

   Now “his husband” and “her wife” is no news, chopped liver.  No big whup.

   Mundane.  And happily so.