GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

The debate on same-sex marriage needs to be understood in the context of the role of both freedom and equality in the American gay and lesbian past.

Since sexual minorities began to organize in the United States the 1950s, gays and lesbians have experienced alternating periods – some emphasizing freedom, and some emphasizing equality. For example, during the McCarthy era, gays emphasized equality – not losing security clearances because of your sexuality, and not having the government stigmatize and even arrest you because of the way you have sex.

In the 1970s, however, freedom was more important. After all, the most visible gay organization right after the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion was the Gay Liberation Front. Liberation, of course, means freedom. And the lesbian separatist movement that promoted books like Jill Johnston’s Lesbian Nation and events like the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (founded in 1976), by definition didn’t want to integrate into American society, but to have the freedom to build self-contained lesbian-feminist communities.

Today’s same-sex marriage movement has all the hallmarks of a return to equality. Most “marriage equality” activists are so focused on the current emphasis of the gay community that they fail to remember that the pioneers who started the gay liberation movement believed in freedom for everyone. Thus, many gay and lesbian activists I have spoken with say that once gay marriage passes, they want the government to force traditionally religious people to use the gay definition of marriage in their jobs and businesses or face punishment. And in both Massachusetts where adoption agencies cannot give even a slight tiebreaker preference to families with both a mother and a father, and in California where the Supreme Court appears set to force religious fertility doctors to violate their consciences and inseminate lesbians, few if any voices in the gay community have stood up and asked, “Wait, isn’t our movement about freedom?”

It’s time for everyone to accept that sometimes, gay people just aren’t equal. That’s not an insult, it’s a fact. Other groups seem to understand this. Women know they’re not equally qualified to be major league baseball players. Asian-American actors know they’re not equally qualified to play Othello or Lena Younger. Similarly, while lesbians may be terrifically qualified to be mothers, they are not equally qualified to be fathers.

Who knows how long the current gay emphasis on equality over freedom will last? If history is any guide, it won’t last forever – but then it will be back. In the meantime, is it really a good idea to make a radical social change that expands gay equality but limits everyone else’s freedom just because that matches the present priorities of the gay and lesbian community?