Tuesday, December 23, 2003

In Support of Gay Marriage

I’ve been reading just about everything I can find on the gay marriage issue, brought into the fore by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in November, 2003.  I’ve read conservatives and liberals pontificating on the issue, each trying to get on the bigger soapbox.  I’ve seen pollsters trying to gauge public support for the Defense of Marriage Constitutional amendment, politicians trying to avoid the issue lest they anger various special interests, and analysts trying to determine how it will affect the 2004 elections.  And I’ve concluded one thing:  no-one has any clue how this is going to affect the country.

Republicans think it’ll be a wedge issue between moderate and liberal Democratic constituencies.  Democrats think it’ll drive apart moderate and religious conservatives in the Republican party.  Libertarians see it as a clarion call to get government out of marriage all-together while authoritarians see it as an opportunity to legislate morality on a national level.  And so gay marriage may become the wedge issue that drives apart the political parties and remakes the political landscape – or not.

The only common thread I’ve seen through the whole debate thus far is that people generally agree that gay marriage is a moral issue.

Below are a few examples of the moral dimension to this debate.

While I don’t agree with the conservative attitudes expressed above, I do agree that this is ultimately a moral issue.  Even the civil rights legal appeal to equality is a moral appeal – it is not right to treat one human being as any better or worse than any other human being, regardless of gender, race, etc.  This moral belief is the entire point of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the various laws against discrimination in housing, employment, etc.

In my case, generally Christian religious moral arguments made against gay marriage fall on deaf ears.  Seeing as I’m not Christian, I don’t accept the Bible as a divine work (it is decent literature, however) and am thus not constrained by its statements against homosexuality.  But even if I was Christian, the Bible isn’t as morally clear on this issue as most Christians seem to believe, specifically in relation to equality.

I Corinthians 12 talks about equality in the church: “25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” While this specifically applies to the Christian church, it can certainly be generalized to include all humanity in general.  (I Corinthians is one of the bases of the idea that all people are all equal before God) If I Corinthians is to be believed, the suffering of homosexuals should cause suffering among Christians due to the homosexual’s lack of equality, and so good Christians should rejoice in the possibility of new equality for homosexuals in the holy covenant of marriage.

Applying the United States moral tradition, aka “American values,” also falls flat on the morality test.  U.S. Representative Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), who said at CNSNews.com (November 19, 2003) that the ruling was yet another attack on traditional American values, illustrates my point.  The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence remain the ultimate guidelines of what is and is not an “American value.” Last I checked, the Declaration of Independence still says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” [My emphasis] And the 14th Amendment to the Constitution says “No state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Can anyone truly and honestly say that denying homosexuals the right to pursue happiness and equality in marriage, and of equal protection of the laws, is an “American value?”

Other moral arguments are inherently religious in nature, even if the religion is concealed somehow.  Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel wrote a commentary on November 23, 2003 about gay marriage and she attempted to remove God from the equation.  Unfortunately, she simply replaced one religious argument with another.
“…It is irrefutable that Nature had a well-ordered design. Male + female = offspring. It is a certainty that male/male and female/female unions don’t meet Nature’s standard. They may occur ‘naturally’ in that one does not consciously elect to Be Gay, but such unions fall short of any design that matches Nature’s intentions.”
Ignoring the fact that her information on the natural world is incorrect, all we have to do is replace “Nature” with “God” and we have a blatantly religious argument.  (This is not a rip on Ms. Parker, as her column ultimately advocates very careful consideration of this issue, not the dismissal of gay marriage out-of-hand.)

Appeals to so-called “tradition” also have serious problems.  As an example, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) was quoted in Salon.com (November 19, 2003) as saying “every civilization since the beginning of man has recognized the need to protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman.” This is an amazing statement, and totally wrong.  Not only have many civilizations and cultures practiced polygyny or polyandry (like the Ottoman Turks, ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt, and several sub-Saharan African cultures), many religions support the idea as well (Muslims, Mormons, even Christianity and Judaism had period where plural marriages were permitted).

According to James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, “The homosexual activist movement, which has achieved virtually every goal and objective it set out to accomplish more than 50 years ago, is now closer than it has ever been to administering a devastating and potentially fatal blow to the traditional family.” (CNSNews.com, November 19, 2003).  If marriage can survive divorce rates that are near 50%, teen pregnancy, parental abandonment, spousal abuse, and all the other horrible things done within the institution of marriage, it can incorporate homosexual unions just fine.

Another argument against gay marriage is that it opens the door to incest as an accepted relationship.  Unfortunately for people using this argument, there is a demonstrated public health reason to prohibit incest (namely genetic defects), but there have been no credible studies that show a demonstrated public health risk to a child having two Dads or two Moms.  In fact, most studies have shown that two loving parents of the same gender is preferable to a single-parent household or to a household where the parents don’t love each other or their children.

But for me, the moral reasons to support gay marriage are best illustrated by what some of the dissenting Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices said in their opinions:  “Homosexuals are free to marry just like anyone else, they said, so long as they marry someone of the opposite sex.” (Salon.com, November 19, 2003).  This argument is a reversion back to the days of “You’re free to marry just like anyone else, so long as they’re white (or Christian, or Jewish).” And if we replace the word “gay” with “black” in Theresa Eaton’s quote from the New York Times above, we have “If I knew that we had a neighbor who was black, I would not let my nieces and nephews go close by there.” And if we change a few words in another portion of Mr. Water’s quote from the New York Times, we end up with “I just don’t think it’s right for an interracial couple to go parading around in public…” (NOTE:  Italics indicate the replaced words.  The original words in Mr. Water’s quote were “two men.")

Laws against homosexual marriage are the modern equivalent of Jim Crow laws and refusing to allow gays to marry is blatant bigotry.  Anti-gay bigotry different from racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and discrimination against the disabled only in the fact that bigotry against gays is socially “acceptable.”

Denying homosexuals the right of marriage is outright immoral.  The 14th Amendment to the Constitution says so.  The Declaration of Independence says so.  Even the Bible says so.

We must all support gay marriage through whatever means we have available.  It’s the only moral thing to do.

Editor’s Note:  I suggest everyone contact your Congresscritters on this, and I’ve provided a link to the State of Colorado reps and Senators for those of you residing in Colorado.  Maybe together we can stand for fairness and morality.