GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

If the goal of the sue-for-marriage strategy is to provide as many protections for American same-sex couples as possible, it has been a massive failure. The two already gay-friendly states with same-sex marriage provide lesbian and gay couples with few additional protections beyond those that already existed. In California, in fact, the only new right for same-sex couples is the word “marriage.”

However, an unintended result of the nationwide push for court-imposed marriage equality has been constitutional amendments barring not just marriage but any sort of relationship recognition for same-sex couples in 18 other states, including Texas, Ohio, and Georgia. This means the marriage-litigation approach has succeeded in offering benefits to same-sex couples in states representing 14.0 percent of the American population while preventing any sort of benefits for those in states making up 33.5 percent of the country. Also, the amendments aren’t limited to barring future recognition for same-sex couples. They have canceled hard-won protections for lesbians and gay men in places like Ann Arbor, Michigan. How can anyone think the lawsuit strategy is working?

And it’s not like the “freedom to marry” movement was unaware of a possible backlash. I personally attended a crowded town hall meeting in West Hollywood, California, in 1996 or so, at which Lambda Legal director Evan Wolfson urged the gays and lesbians present to get behind his group’s big lawsuit known as Baehr v. Miike, which demanded same-sex marriage in the state of Hawaii. At the time, marriage was barely on the gay community’s agenda, but most of the crowd seemed intrigued at the possibility same-sex couples in at least one state might soon start marrying.

I wasn’t so sure. Though at the time I was one of the top membership recruiters for the nation’s largest gay-rights group, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, and I was thus committed to protecting same-sex couples, the plan seemed quite rash to me. So during the question-and-answer period, I asked Wolfson if he was concerned about the risk of provoking anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendments that could very well mean the lawsuit strategy would do more harm than good. I remember his answer clearly (the following is not word-for-word, but it’s pretty close for a 12-year-old conversation):

“People can come up with all kinds of nightmare scenarios about constitutional amendments and other repercussions. Right now, it’s important to push for equality before the law, and we can worry about the ramifications later.”

Of course, Wolfson didn’t speak for every marriage activist since 1996. But it is unquestionable that he was one of the architects of the sue-for-marriage strategy that made it very hard for same-sex couples in more than a third of the country to ever achieve any sort of rights.

The results of the marriage litigation have been so overwhelmingly harmful for our community that I actually think the best way to provide the strongest protections for the greatest number of same-sex couples in the country would be for GLBT people and our sympathizers to switch sides in the debate over the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). Without passing that constitutional amendment, I see no way for fair-minded legislators in states like Michigan, Virginia, and Oklahoma to persuade their colleagues to extend same-sex couples basic rights like visiting each other in the hospital and inheriting each other’s property.

The gay community needs to get over its cheap slogans about “Don’t write discrimination into the Constitution” and realize that its leaders made a horrible strategic error that same-sex couples in moderate and hostile states are paying for every single day. Since gay organizations have already quashed at least one promising lawsuit seeking a federal right to same-sex marriage, I can’t come up with a more practical way to provide at least some protections to the same-sex couples who need them the most – while providing all or nearly all the benefits of marriage to gays and lesbians in the most welcoming states – than to pass the FMA. Surely a coalition of legislators who support the present definition of marriage allied with legislators looking for quick relief for gay partners in tough environments could shepherd the FMA through the process for amending the Constitution.

But alas, it’s highly unlikely to happen. The marriage-equality movement has never really been about helping as many same-sex couples in as many places as possible. Instead, it’s been focused on stroking LGBT egos, and reassuring people who have always felt like second-class citizens that their government considers them completely equal. It’s not a bad goal, but for gay and lesbian activists to prioritize technical equality in two already accepting states over the real distress and unfairness faced by same-sexers in places like Tulsa, El Paso, and Kalamazoo can only be described as horribly selfish and shortsighted.

LGBT people who think helping their brothers and sisters in distress is more important than feel-good lawsuits with few tangible advantages would be wise to start supporting the FMA – or at least putting a halt to the counterproductive lawsuit strategy.

Advocates for same-sex marriage have frequently argued that restricting marriage to man-woman couples violates the American Constitution.

For example, the largest gay-rights group in the country, the Human Rights Campaign, argues on its Web site that “the framers of our Constitution established – and we as a people have repeatedly reaffirmed – the principle of separation of church and state. That principle applies no less to the marriage issue than it does to any other.”

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle that the federal Constitution authorized him to “marry” thousands of same-sex couples beginning Valentine’s Day 2004: “I hope every elected official in the United States takes a look at that Constitution that they swore to uphold…. there’s nothing in the Constitution that allows me to discriminate against people.”

There is even some evidence that the Supreme Court is sympathetic to a federal right to same-sex marriage. In the celebrated Lawrence v. Texas sodomy case in 2003, Judge Anthony Kennedy wrote for the 6-3 majority: “Our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education…. Persons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual persons do.”

It so happens many people like me who oppose same-sex marriage see nothing in the U.S. Constitution that invalidates the man-woman definition of marriage. Obviously much of the LGBT community disagrees. When there’s a society-wide dispute over the meaning of the Constitution, the proper arbiter is the nine experts in robes whose very job is to determine precisely what the federal Constitution does and does not mean.

But “marriage equality” advocates don’t want that. They’re afraid their ideas about the supposed federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage won’t be convincing enough. So they have done everything possible to stop well-qualified jurists like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Roberts from ever being able to referee this dispute. They’ve chosen instead to go the state-by-state route, so that when they finally impose their definition of marriage on the whole nation, we’ll be so used to it we’ll barely notice.

When Christopher Hammer and Arthur Smelt, a gay couple from Orange County, California, filed a federal lawsuit to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act and declare a federal constitutional right to marry, several LGBT groups including Equality California and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund asked the liberal Ninth Circuit to throw out the gay couple’s case.

Jennifer C. Pizer, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, was candid about her group’s reasoning: “Our carefully considered view is that it’s important to be taking steps in the jurisdictions where we can succeed and have a series of successes … before calling the ultimate question for the entire country.”

Who elected Jennifer Pizer queen lesbian? The LGBT movement is profoundly undemocratic. Many groups focused on equality like NOW and the NAACP elect their leaders. But overwhelmingly gay and lesbian groups appoint their leaders, and those appointments generally go to two types of people: major donors, and “affirmative action” slots for categories like transgender people and people of color. When I belonged to the Human Rights Campaign Fund in the early 1990s, every member did get to vote for the board of directors – but there was usually exactly one candidate for each board position! If Pizer’s group wants to pursue state cases, that’s fine. But blocking the federal claim of a loving gay couple is unacceptable.

Hammer has his own theory why organizations supposedly there to help him would stab him in the back instead: “If we win, that sinks all their fundraising – and that destroys all their cases because we’d all be equal in the law across the United States…. they don’t want us to win.”

The couple’s attorney, Richard C. Gilbert, said “Our case can’t hurt state cases because state cases are decided under state constitutions…. What other group has said don’t fight, we’ll lose? Even if you lose you can make progress with an issue. Would Lambda Legal had said to Dred Scott, ‘Mr. Scott, you’re a slave, so don’t sue because you’re going to lose?’”

Rather than fight state-by-state battles over marriage for the next 20 years, we should get a definitive ruling on the subject from the Supreme Court that we’ll all be bound to accept – or to amend the Constitution if we don’t like it. I know the court may not rule my way, but I’m still willing to give it a shot. Why won’t the “marriage equality” crowd?

During its first week, GaysDefendMarriage.com has unfortunately explored only LGBT reasons from the right to oppose the gay community’s marriage obsession. So I’ve added the perspective of the “Beyond Marriage” supporters to the “Other Voices” page on this site. This list of left-of-center LGBT activists concerned about the misplaced emphasis on marriage as a solution to our community’s problems reads like a who’s who of important, famous, and influential LGBT people, especially women and people of color. To name a few: Dorothy Allison, Joan E. Biren (JEB), Michael Bronski, Mandy Carter, John D’Emilio, Martin Duberman, Leslie Feinberg, Chai Feldblum, Amber Hollibaugh, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Jonathan Ned Katz, Kerry Lobel, Craig Lucas, Armistead Maupin, Terrence McNally, Holly Near, Joan Nestle, Judith Plaskow, Ruthann Robson, Nadine Smith, Paula Vogel, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Rebecca Alpert. The last quarter century of gay and lesbian history and culture would have been significantly impoverished without the contributions of these major figures. Yet the media never expresses how a major subset of LGBT leaders don’t agree that marriage should be at the top of the community’s agenda.

Now, I certainly don’t think any Beyond Marriage supporter agrees with me that society benefits from supporting male-female marriage. But I think we agree on more than we disagree on. For example, the Beyond Marriage people and I agree that:

• It is wrong to extend rights to same-sex couples in conjugal relationships that we deny to same-sex pairs in non-conjugal relationships.

• The issues facing LGBT people who are poor, immigrants, and people of color should receive much more attention than they currently do. The wealthy funders of the LGBT movement should stop insisting that the issues that benefit them the most take priority over what’s important to people who contribute in non-financial ways.

• Support for flexible domestic partnership laws (like the one in Salt Lake City) which provide “material support for the widest possible range of household formations” is vastly preferable to narrow advocacy for same-sex marriage.

• The LGBT community ought to drop its marriage obsession and explore a broader set of issues that affect gays and lesbians all over the country, especially those who are poor, sick, of color, and not in conventional families.

I have invited some Beyond Marriage people to post on our blog, which I want to be a comfortable home for everyone who disagrees with the LGBT leadership’s marriage fixation, whether because they don’t want to privilege any one kind of relationship over any other kind, or whether they don’t want to undermine man-woman marriage.

A frequent trope in the attack on traditional marriage defenders by same-sex marriage advocates is to the claim that referring to religiously based truths is a violation of the separation of church and state. If we want to oppose same-sex marriage, we must use purely secular arguments.

Some examples:

• African-American columnist Sheryl McCarthy wrote in the USA Today, “I see marriage as a civil right, and no group’s religious beliefs should be allowed to deny the rights of others. And because blacks have suffered from bigotry and injustice that were cloaked by religion and morality, we should avoid doing the same thing to others.”

• An “Open Letter to the U.S. Senate from America’s Clergy” told the senators: “we respect the right of each religious group to decide, based on its own religious teachings, whether or not to sanction marriage of same-sex couples. It is surely not the federal government’s role to prefer one religious definition of marriage over another.”

• Early gay-marriage pioneer Andrew Sullivan wrote in the New Republic, “the religious content of marriage is irrelevant in this case. No one is proposing that faith communities be required to change their definitions of marriage…. The question at hand is civil marriage and only civil marriage. In a country where church and state are separate, this is no small distinction…. Many citizens adhere to no church at all. Should they be required to adhere to a religious teaching in order to be legally married?”

Now, these points of view are certainly legitimate. It’s just that they represent a tiny minority of the attitudes toward faith and politics in American history. Many outspoken Americans – from abolitionists to civil-rights practitioners of civil disobedience to conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War – have justified their activism in religious terms. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King even quoted the Book of Isaiah during his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

The most prominent and persuasive articulator of my attitude that religious arguments are perfectly proper in civil discourse happens to be running for president. And it’s not Bob Barr or even John McCain.

In an outstanding speech to a Christian social-justice group in Washington, DC, two years ago, Obama articulated how using religious arguments to achieve social change is not only legitimate, it is quintessentially American. Some excerpts:

If we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice. Imagine Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address without reference to “the judgments of the Lord,” or King’s I Have a Dream speech without reference to “all of God’s children.” Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible and move the nation to embrace a common destiny….

I think we should put more of our tax dollars into educating poor girls and boys, and give them the information about contraception that can prevent unwanted pregnancies, lower abortion rates, and help assure that that every child is loved and cherished. But my Bible tells me that if we train a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not turn from it….

Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King – indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

McCarthy has written of Obama’s “extraordinary gifts.” The conservative Sullivan practically drools over the liberal Obama in his blog, calling him “the right candidate for right now.” I wonder how such public intellectuals justify their enthusiasm for someone who clearly agrees with me on the legitimacy not only of speaking in religious terms about civic issues, but of codifying religious values into law.

Let me be clear: anyone who thinks I mustn’t cite the Torah or the Talmud in justifying my support for man-woman marriage will get no flak from me for voting against the California Marriage Protection Act, as long as they also vote against the likely Democratic nominee.

Positions on same-sex parenting tend to be extreme. Either “children need parents who love them, no matter the number or gender” or “children must be raised by heterosexual married parents.” But I disagree with both those approaches and have a stance on gay parenting that is much more nuanced. I believe:

1. Whenever possible, a child should be raised with both a mother and a father. Sometimes that can’t happen, which is always a tragedy.

2. There is no evidence that a person’s sexual orientation is correlated with his or her parenting ability.

3. It is better for a child to have two parents of the same sex than no parents at all.

Those three principles lead me to the following conclusions:

A. Laws like Florida’s ban on lesbian and gay adoption are offensive. The fact the gay movement is putting so many more resources into retaining a semantic difference on marriage in California when Florida continues to irrationally stigmatize and reject would-be parents because of their sexual orientation befuddles me.

B. For a same-sex couple to engineer a baby instead of adopting is a selfish act of cruelty to their own offspring – prioritizing passing on their genes over allowing their own child to grow up with both a father’s guidance and a mother’s touch. It’s manufacturing a tragedy. It shouldn’t be illegal, but it makes me sick.

C. Adoption agencies should be allowed to give preference to families with both a mother and a father (of any sexual orientation) when all else is equal. If that means same-sex couples end up with more children of color and special-needs children, I know from experience that LGBT people have the love, the patience, and the perseverence to welcome all kinds of little ones into their homes. But laws like the one in Massachusetts that forbids adoption agencies from preferring families with both a mother and a father may help gay people but they hurt children and they should be repealed.

D. Creative same-sex family structures like that of the smart, affable Jewish lesbian academic Caryn Aviv are particularly admirable. Although I would never form a family like that, she actually has an argument that her daughter gets more love than if she were part of a traditional nuclear family – because she has both a Mom and two Dads to care for her. Caryn’s family is oriented around what’s best for her daughter, as opposed to proving to the world that gays are equal and a selfish notion like “a child doesn’t need a father to be happy.”

So am I homophobic or too accommodating of unfit parents? I’m sure some of you will have each opinion. I think I split this baby just right.

LGBT people who have applauded last week’s California Supreme Court decision implementing same-sex marriage should think very carefully about the following sentence from the decision:

Because the California Legislature already has enacted a comprehensive
domestic partnership law which broadly grants to same-sex couples virtually all of
the substantive legal rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex married couples,
plaintiffs have been relieved of the burden of successfully prosecuting a
constitutional challenge to obtain those substantive rights and benefits.

In other words, the “marriage equality” side had a much lower burden of proof because of California’s domestic partnership law. What message does that send to Americans in every other state who want to relieve the distress of same-sex couples but who also believe marriage is a male-female union (I’m thinking people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, for example)? It seems to me that many such people will now be forced to reluctantly oppose domestic partnerships, civil unions, and all other non-marriage measures to ease the burdens faced by LGBT couples.

The California Supreme Court could have easily reasoned that the fact domestic partnerships were signed into law while same-sex marriage was not shows that Californians want to treat same-sex couples fairly while keeping the longstanding definition of marriage. Instead, in the name of nothing but giving California gays their first-choice moniker (“marriage”), it took a step that will probably make it harder for less progressive states to give same-sex couples any protection at all.

Nice going, guys.

The likely long-term effects of In Re Marriage Cases will be to restrict the progress of the LGBT people who face the most homophobia already in exchange for nothing more than a pat on the head for the gays and lesbians who are already the most free.

You see the “comments” button. Please, please, explain to me why this decision on balance does more good for our community than harm.

I will be a guest Friday morning, May 23 at 7:05 a.m. on Seattle’s conservative talk station, AM 570 KVI. (This is a reschedule from Tuesday.) I will be discussing this Web site and my thoughts about why LGBT people should stop devoting so many resources to the marriage issue.

The Web site also got a plug in a column I wrote in last Sunday’s LA Daily News. It’s called Same-sex ruling good for no one. From the column:

CHAMPAGNE corks are popping wherever gays and lesbians gather throughout the Golden State after the California Supreme Court’s ruling in In Re Marriage Cases, which opens the way for same-sex couples to legally wed beginning next month. But my fellow members of the LGBT community shouldn’t be celebrating. This decision does next to nothing for California gays and lesbians, and causes real harm to people who believe in the “old” definition of marriage. It’s nothing to be proud of.

A slightly different version of the piece is in the 9th largest-circulation local newspaper in the country, the Philadelphia Inquirer. They headlined it “For better or worse, a bad ruling.”

That piece also appeared in:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer as “Why California gays shouldn’t celebrate state court ruling”

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel as “No ego boost is worth trading away fundamental liberties.”

We’ve also recently received plugs at National Review Online’s “The Corner” and of course, at MarriageDebate.com’s blog. And thank you to timesandseasons.org, which calls us “an awesomely contrarian website.”

Something bothered me about the Los Angeles Jewish Journal’s April 11 feature story on Jews for Marriage Equality’s close working relationship with two of the main plaintiffs in California’s big Supreme Court case on same-sex marriage. While the story identified one of the women, Robin Tyler, as Jewish, the reporter, Julie Gruenbaum Fax, was silent on the religion of the other woman.

Curious, I wrote Steve Krantz, the group’s president, and Tyler herself, with whom I used to work, to inquire on Diane’s religion. No answer. I wrote each again. Still no answer. Finally, I E-mailed the pair’s smart, outspoken feminist lawyer, Gloria Allred, and twelve minutes later I had my answer: Olson is not in fact Jewish, though she wants to marry in a Jewish ceremony. (Fax says she knew Olson wasn’t Jewish but did not consider that fact “relevant.”)

One problem: none of the three major Jewish religious movements approves of a Jewish ceremony to “marry” Olson and Tyler. Orthodox and Conservative Judaism do not believe in interfaith marriages of any gender combination, and even Reform Judaism, in its famous “Greenboro resolution” supported same-sex religious ceremonies only for all-Jewish relationships.

Even some supporters of Jews for Marriage Equality say the group’s promotion of Tyler and Olson as the group’s poster-child couple is a step too far. For example, Rabbi Marvin Goodman, executive director of the Northern California Board of Rabbis, and a Conservative rabbi who has endorsed Jews for Marriage Equality said that any union between Olson and Tyler is “not a Jewish marriage….a Jewish marriage needs to be between two Jews. Whatever gender they are is a whole other issue.” Goodman said he does not regret endorsing the group, but would have preferred if he had been given a chance to “opt out” of the group’s promotion of Olson and Tyler’s quest for marriage.

Of course, many rabbis may think Olson and Tyler can never have a Jewish marriage without conversion, but still support civil marriage equality for them. And that’s fine. My point is just that this more evidence that many, many supporters of redefining marriage have no idea what marriage is – in this case no idea what a Jewish marriage is. That smart Conservative rabbis like Elliot Dorff, Ed Feinstein, and Menachem Creditor can enthusiastically support a Jewish group that spotlights a couple that even they no doubt would refuse to “marry” is quite troubling.

There certainly is a coherent, consistent attitude toward marriage that suggests we should throw out all the rules and let anybody marry anybody. But I happen to reject that attitude, and anyone else who rejects it would be smart to insist that any changes to marriage in our society happen slowly and carefully, if at all.

When confronted about the real religious-freedom dangers posed by “marriage equality,” proponents of same-sex marriage have frequently spouted a very specific kind of nonsense.

“Comments” sections all over the Web are full of examples, but people who should know better have made the same argument. For example, Democratic Pennsylvania Representative Daylin Leach said in a press release about same-sex marriage, “no church or synagogue will be forced to perform or recognize a marriage that goes against their beliefs.” Religioustolerance.org promises that under marriage equality, “churches will continue to be able to discriminate, on any basis that they feel justified, against couples who seek a same-sex marriage or civil union.”

Even California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George reassured people in his decision that “no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.”

How stupid do these people think we are?

No intelligent defender of the traditional definition of marriage is going around scaring people into believing that churches will be forced to marry same-sex couples. Anyone with even a tiny bit of knowledge of the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment knows such a move would be grossly unconstitutional. Even the Human Rights Campaign’s top attorney, Lara Schwartz, told me “the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses would prevent the government from requiring a congregation to solemnize a marriage that did not meet with the congregation’s requirements.”

So why have the marriage-redefining legislators in Maryland and California named their bills the “Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act”? Even Illinois’s civil unions bill is called the “Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act.”

All these bills – plus the New York, Vermont, and Rhode Island same-sex marriage bills and the New Mexico domestic-partners bill – contain “religious freedom” provisions that prohibit nothing that isn’t already clearly unconstitutional. Clearly, the religious-freedom language and the misleading titles of these bills are meant to fool people into thinking redefining marriage poses no threat to traditionally religious people.

Whereas the real dangers to the freedom of traditionally religious people if we redefine marriage are ignored. For example, HRC’s Schwartz has repeatedly refused to say whether “marriage equality” means a traditionally religious public school teacher should fear being fired for telling her students that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. She also won’t say whether a business owner should be able to use G-d’s definition of marriage instead of the gay community’s definition in deciding who gets a “marital discount.”

If the other side can get away with this “bad faith” approach, I propose we rename the California Marriage Protection Act the “California Wedding Diversity and Marriage Protection Act.” We can add a line about how no person’s wedding will be prevented, postponed, canceled, or shut down by the government on the basis of the number and gender of the celebrants. Then, when gay-marriage defenders accuse us of trying to discriminate on the basis of gender in who can marry, we can say “Under this act, no person’s wedding is ever in danger. People will have the right to have wedding ceremonies for people in any combination they desire.” Who cares that no gay-marriage advocate has been warning that the act would ban gay weddings, and that such a ban would be unconstitutional? What matters is scoring rhetorical points, right?

One problem with the “marriage equality” movement is that too many of its leaders have no idea what marriage is. For example, one of the most prominent rabbis defending same-sex marriage in California is in an open relationship with her husband in which each has the other’s permission to commit adultery.

(I have held my tongue on telling this story for more than a decade, but now that this woman’s agenda has come to fruition, I think it’s important for people to understand the vision of “marriage” supported by some adherents of this movement. On the advice of an Orthodox rabbi I’m friends with, I’m not disclosing this rabbi’s name or congregation.)

A dozen years ago, when I first began to wonder whether my commitment to my Jewish faith necessitated an end to my pursuit of gay sex and a transition toward opposite-sex dating and even marriage. I approached a thoughtful rabbi who had done much work with LGBT people, and we shared a meal in which we discussed my feelings. What follows is a greatly condensed version of the key exchange in our conversation:

Rabbi “Angelina”: I think you need to have sex with a woman, and see how it feels.

Me: What do you expect me to do – hire a prostitute? Start frequenting pick-up bars until I get lucky?

Rabbi Angelina: Well, why don’t you have sex with me?

Pause.

Me: But you’re married. You have a kid.

Rabbi Angelina: My husband and I have an arrangement. He’d be OK with it.

Me: Thanks, but I’ll pass.

Rabbi Angelina: Well, why not? I find you attractive. I like how smart you are.

Me: Um, you’re 15 years older than I am. I’m just not interested.

Rabbi Angelina: Now you’ve hurt my feelings. I’ve put myself out there for you and you shot me down.

Me: Well, I’m sorry…

Rabbi Angelina: After all, you came on to me first.

Me: Excuse me?

Rabbi Angelina: You came on to me, with all that talk about sex. Everybody knows that when a man makes explicit sex talk to a woman, he’s interested in sleeping with her.

The whole conversation disturbed me, and helped convince me that those pushing to abandon Judaism’s preference for opposite-sex relationships were not making much moral sense. A few years later, I approached Rabbi Angelina, and suggested she seek counseling, with or without my assistance, to explore the possibility her behavior may have been inappropriate for a rabbi. Her response? “Never contact me again.”

For the past few years, Rabbi Angelina has refused to sign marriage licenses for brides and grooms in protest of the fact same-sex couples couldn’t marry. Of course, she never admitted to anyone that her vision of acceptable marriages is not limited to ignoring the sex of the the prospective spouses, but to making fidelity optional as well.

I am certainly not saying that all supporters of same-sex marriage are adulterous abusers of the power of the clergy. Most are not. But a surprising number are very confused about what marriage is. I know one gay man who sees no reason for the government to prevent a father and his teenage son from tying the knot. And as far as I can tell I am the only member of the LGBT community who has expressed concern about the extension of marriages to relationships based in part on the eroticization of incest (Daddy-boy relationships) and of chattel slavery (master-slave relationships). Not all members of these subcultures of the gay community keep their kinks in their bedrooms. Some of these couples live out their role playing in their daily lives. Extending matrimony to such relationships would so dilute the meaning of marriage that the institution would become unrecognizable.

So the next time someone proposes changing the definition of marriage, ask a lot of questions about what they think marriage is all about. You may be surprised that they, like Rabbi Angelina, are very confused about the purpose of marriage in our society.