Straight student tries to marry straight roommate to protest same-sex marriage
The faux couple were denied marriage and documented the event.
The student also called pro-traditional marriage legislators "Little Eichmanns."
A straight student at the University of Montana tried to marry his male roommate to protest the state's gay marriage.
A student journalist at the University of Montana attempted to marry his straight roommate to prove a point about gay marriage.
Hunter Pauli and his roommate Jacob, both straight males, were escorted to the Missoula County Courthouse by Pauli’s girlfriend, knowing they would be denied a marriage license. Pauli later documented the experience in an article titled, “I Tried to Illegally Get Gay Married.”
“As a state-described 'straight person,' I am incapable of feeling firsthand the emotional sting of being treated unequally by government for the people I prefer to have sex with,” wrote Pauli in his article. “I cannot feel that enormity, because the state will not let me. It says I am better than gays with the same rootless logic that says cats are better than dogs.”
After the faux couple arrived at the courthouse, their ID’s were checked by the secretary on sight and their marriage application was denied almost immediately. In an interview with USA Today, Pauli expressed his concerns about Montana’s growing “red” population.
“My ID said male, as did Jacob’s, so we could not get married. If your ID card said female in 1919 you could not vote,” said Pauli in the interview. “If it said black in 1963 you could not attend white schools. Public employees examine your ID to determine the extent of your civil liberty.”
Pauli told USA Today that Montana’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage was written by hateful people and that he pities the bureaucratic corps.
“When a marriage certificate application has one section for groom and one for bride, that’s discrimination,” said Pauli. “When the pdf autofills the sexes in those fields to male and female, that’s discrimination. Controlling the vocabulary of bureaucracy removes even the ability to protest. It makes an alternative to the normative physically impossible.”
Pauli blames his inability to marry his straight roommate on "bigots" who think they “have more rights than people different from them.” Pauli also accused legislators of being "Little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, an orchestrator of the Holocaust.
“Little Eichmanns at every level of Montana state bureaucracy enforce, against their better angels, prejudice made law by officials and spat out by unfeeling machines,” Pauli wrote in his article.
This is not the first time Pauli has made such an attention grabbing move.
Back in September, in light of the university’s decision to ban tobacco use on campus, Pauli wrote in an editorial that he intended to take a smoke break outside the journalism school. That same month, he also printed part of a gun on a 3-D printer in the campus library to show his disdain for society's “mad rush toward technology progress.” He bought marijuana off the Internet in October to show that cyber drug purchases are safer than engaging in street deals.
On Wednesday, a Montana judge ruled to lift the ban on same-sex marriage; however, the ban was still in the books when Pauli and his roommate arrived at the courthouse, because of anticipated appeals and political challenges.
Pauli did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for comment.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @MaggieLitCRO
