GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

The Sacramento Bee reports:

Meanwhile, two heterosexual Southern California college students — Ali Shams and Kaelan Housewright — want to take the state out of the marriage business.

Their proposed measure calls for the term “marriage” to be removed from state laws and replaced with “domestic partnerships.”

Shams maintains the measure would provide equality to all couples, regardless of sexual orientation, while preserving marriage as a religious and social ceremony. “This is a compromise,” Shams said. “It says ‘Get rid of marriage as a state institution. Make it a religious institution, keep politics out of it and stop the fighting.’”

This idea, which is hardly new, is not a compromise. Good compromises give both sides a lot of what they want, and leave both sides annoyed that they didn’t get everything they want, but still happy that the compromise is better than the conflict.

How is this a compromise?

The traditionalist side of the argument is trying to preserve marriage, as a state institution. None of us have been talking (publicly) about preserving marriage in our churches and synagogues. And the other side is trying to undermine or destroy the traditional definition of marriage, as a public institution. In fact, I fail to see what “marriage equality” people would have to give up with this “compromise.”

Now, I have proposed a handful of real compromises on this blog. But the marriage-equality folks are never all that interested, because they are so sure of the righteousness of their cause, and their eventual victory, that de-fanging this issue as a matter of public controversy is utterly unappealing to them.

I’ve written on this blog about the Salt Lake City plan, which I think is the quickest way to help same-sex and other couples in our country gain hospital visitation, inheritance, and other rights. I have not gone into much detail, though. I wrote a piece about the plan, including an interview with Democratic SLC Mayor Ralph Becker, last summer but it didn’t find a home. Instead, I’m publishing it below, slightly updated.

While the nation has been debating same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California, we’ve paid far less attention to the constitutional amendments in 18 states including Texas, Utah, and Ohio that bar any special status whatsoever for same-sex couples. Except the most unlikely of communities - Salt Lake City - has found a creative way to constitutionally provide rights and protections to non-married couples. The Salt Lake City plan is called “mutual commitments,” and it’s a terrific model for the rest of the country.

The marriage amendments mean that same-sex couples in places like Milwaukee, New Orleans, Kalamazoo, and Louisville have pretty much zero hope for any rights for the foreseeable future. No legislative solution in Utah or Georgia specifically aimed at the distress of same-sex couples in areas like hospital visitation and inheritance could be constitutional. I remember the obstacles I faced in college when I was in a relationship with a man (before becoming religious), so I understand the problem’s dimensions.

But the leadership of Salt Lake City, led by Democratic Mayor Ralph Becker (who calls himself the “guide” of the mutual commitments program), actually avoided specifically helping same-sex couples. Instead they created a mutual commitments registry for all adult couples ineligible to marry - including roommates, parents with adult dependents, and best friends. That helps same-sex couples without violating the constitution, and helps other worthy relationships as well.

In an interview, Mayor Becker told me: “What I was looking for were ways to be able to treat people equally and give people the same basic ability to live well, together, and to acknowledge those intimate relationships. To me what became the mutual commitment registry was a core way to be able to allow two adults who are mutually dependent on each other to be able to support one another.”

Most importantly, the Salt Lake City plan can appeal to traditionalists, as it already has to the conservative Utah state legislature. Mayor Becker’s chief of staff told me their plan passed with broad consensus among Democrats and Republicans, “without anybody feeling like they got burned.”

If implemented nationally, mutual commitments could mean:

1) Relief for same-sex and other couples ineligible to marry in places like Waco and Omaha who aren’t guaranteed the right, say, to visit each other in the hospital or gain custody of children they raised together.

2) The government would continue to give no privileges or special recognition based on a couple’s having gay sex together - or any sex at all. In Salt Lake City, mutual commitment status is handed out to roommates, best friends, lesbian lovers, and others. Each time, the city doesn’t know which - and shouldn’t.

3) Opponents of same-sex marriage needn’t worry that endorsing the Salt Lake City plan could become a back door or slippery slope to same-sex marriage, since nobody has ever seriously advocated marriage rights for roommates and best friends.

Ironically, the biggest obstacle to implementing statewide mutual commitment laws - and maybe a federal one - is the screwed-up priorities of the gay community’s leadership. Right now, gays and lesbians are spending millions of dollars on a purely semantic and symbolic fight in the gay-friendly state of California over whether the exact same rights are called a “marriage” or a “domestic partnership.” I have repeatedly proposed that as little as 10 percent of that money go to securing mutual commitments in places like Virginia and the Dakotas, and gays and lesbians have rejected my idea, complaining I was insulting them by comparing a same-sex couple to two roommates or best friends. Well, I’m sorry, but in my eyes, and those of my religious tradition (Orthodox Judaism), that’s preciesely what they are, and they deserve the same recognition, which is not nothing, but not that of marriage either.

If you listen to the gay complaints about man-woman marriage, they fall into two categories: first, look at all the benefits and protections we don’t get; and second, it makes us feel bad that we can’t get married. I have sympathy for the first complaint, which can mostly be addressed with the Salt Lake City plan. The second set of concerns (”treat us equally” and “we feel like second-class citizens”) is not compelling given that same-sex marriage causes very real harms - to religious freedom, the welfare of children, and the monogamy ideal, for example. If gays and lesbians feel their self-esteem is harmed by not being allowed to marry, I’d be all for support groups and classes on gay history and culture - but I’m not about to change my policy positions.

At the very least, it’s time we spread the Salt Lake City plan to the 18 states covering one-third of the population where more traditional recognition of same-sex couples is banned by the constitution. Even if the gay community refuses to cooperate while we help them, fair-minded members of both political parties can work together to implement mutual commitments wherever we can. 

I received this E-mail today:

As a gay man, people often ask me how I can oppose gay marriage. The great irony is that no one should be a more strident supporter of gay marriage than me. My partner is from Eastern Europe and we met online. I invited him to the States in 2002 and we have been together ever since though we have lived under a great fear of deportation. We have taken steps to ensure that he could stay here legally; however the process has been long, expensive, and mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausting.

How much easier life would be if we could simply legalize his status through marriage, as all straight couples can! Yet our faith and principles are more important to us than our desires and self-interests (one of the key things that attracted me to him). Regardless of what’s convenient, we won’t sacrifice our beliefs on the altar of self aggrandizement.

So the question is, am I a gay man or a man? Am I a gay Christian or a Christian? A gay American or an American? How should I define myself – how should you?

Yes, being gay is a fundamental aspect of my nature but it is hardly the whole story. Why should my sexual proclivities dictate the way I view philosophy, theology and politics? Should I vote for McCain only because he is Irish and white like I am? Or should I vote for McCain because I believe he is right on the issues and will better lead this nation? I hope all would say the latter. Yet too many appear to be arguing the former – that all issues regarding societal norms, laws and customs should be construed through the prism of gay-think.

Instead of fighting to redefine the meaning of marriage, which I need not mention are still mostly performed in churches, we should remember what it means to be something other than gay for a few minutes of the day. We should be willing to put other’s interests before our own and do what is best for the whole of society so that future generations may actually be able to live in a better world than the one we are now creating.

If civil unions grant me the basic legal protections that we are all claiming to seek then why not fight for that cause instead of instigating a religious and cultural war? Sadly it appears that too many in the gay movement desire the war and seek to divide the people of this nation whatever the cost. Being the small minority we truly are, have they considered what that future cost may be?

C. M. Lofton, Washington DC

Today there’s more evidence the gay community’s self-destructive obsession with the word “marriage” has nothing to do with actual marriage, civil rights, or protections for same-sex couples. The expected rush of bookings for gay weddings in California has simply not materialized. The Wall Street Journal says wedding venues across the state “report a surprisingly small number of gay-wedding reservations.”

Canada experienced a similar lack of any rush to the altar when it legalized same-sex marriage earlier in the decade.

This lack of interest in actually getting married comports with the the fact that many, many gays who have absolutely no interest in ever getting married are working hard to change the nation’s marriage laws. For example, a lesbian who calls herself gaylicious, when asked about gay marriage, said “Don’t know if I’d personally get married..but I do believe in some sort of union that is equal to all people, regardless of sexual orientation.”

Lesbian city councilmember Rosie Mendez wrote in Gay City News how she feels marriage is not about achieving benefits, but about feeling equal:

To deny to us what “society” deems is the greatest form to express one’s love - marriage- goes to the core of our basic rights…. You cannot tell us you are going to give us the same rights as married folks, but we will call it something else…. any separate statutory construction creating anything short of marriage in New York will ultimately be seen as a loss. While it would be a victory in addressing the political and legal inequities, in order to achieve social equality, the statute would need to label it a marriage.

One of the smartest GaysDefendMarriage.com readers, a supporter of same-sex marriage named Dan Dirksen, has shared how in his view gay marriage is not about benefits but about dignity and equality:

For many (and perhaps most) gay couples, the primary stress associated with not being able to get married is not about financial burdens and legal rights. It’s about dignity and equality. Look at the initial take-up rates for marriage versus civil unions and other alternatives. A much higher % of gay couples avail themselves of marraige than of civil unions and domestic partnerships when initially offered. That’s because people know that marriage is different and gets you something no alternative gets you–respect and dignity. And many gay people are willing to wait for that rather than to avail themselves of these second-class statuses, which they see as demeaning.

What’s going on is that LGBT people are not motivated by unfairness or the lack of equal benefits. If that were the problem, I’m sure I could work out a compromise with someone like Dan that would address nearly all the concerns about unfairness and equal benefits. The same-sex marriage movement, as Dan admits, is about the intangibles - a sense of dignity and equality. And as someone who grew up gay myself, I fully understand the pain and frustration of being called names, and being discriminated against, and feeling like a second-class citizen. Unfortunately, most gays and lesbians have so blindly attached themselves to the word “marriage” as a quick fix to achieve dignity and a sense of full citizenship in American society that they cannot see the harms they are causing - to orphans who want both a mother and a father; to traditionally religious people who don’t want to have to start to behave as if a definition of marriage they abhor is actually true or face the loss of their assets, employment, and even freedom; and most sadly of all, to same-sex couples in many other states who now have no rights at all because same-sex couples in two states that already had many, many rights insisted on the word “marriage.”

So I would like to propose a solution, that I believe would address the true concerns of people on both sides of this issue.

1. We pass the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA).

2. All Defense of Marriage amendments to state constitutions, including the 18 amendments that ban civil unions, are repealed as they are now made unnecessary by the FMA.

3. We pass a nationwide mutual beneficiary law based on the Salt Lake City model, that provides important protections for non-married couples of any gender, relation, or sexual orientation.

4. Congress passes an annual appropriation of at least $25 million to be parceled out in community grants to deal with the important problem of LGBT self-esteem. These grants cannot be used to promote or disparage gay sex, nor to promote or disparage same-sex relationships. They simply focus on helping people with same-sex attractions and LGBT identities feel good about themselves and overcome the stigma and shame that has been associated with having a minority sexual identity in America. The programs can employ psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, counselors, clergy, and teachers to reach out to LGBT people who don’t feel like full citizens in American society, and help them achieve self-worth in healthy, positive ways that don’t involve harming key societal building blocks like marriage.

I think the above plan would help everyone. Gays and lesbians can get direct aid from the government in feeling good about themselves, but marriage will remain intact in all 50 states, plus same-sex couples in every single state can have protections currently available to less than a quarter of all Americans.

Any takers?

An important recent study in the journal Developmental Psychology found that same-sex couples are more satisfied in their relationships than opposite-sex couples - and gay and lesbian couples are generally happy no matter what the legal status of their relationships. From the Washington Post:

The three-year study found that same-sex couples were similar to heterosexual couples in most relationship areas and that legal status didn’t seem to be the overriding factor affecting same-sex relationships.

Regardless of civil union status, same-sex couples were more satisfied with their relationships, reported more positive feelings toward their partners, and reported less conflict than married heterosexual couples.

This study pretty much destroys the frequent argument that gays need marriage because marriage makes people happy. According to American Sexuality Magazine, leading same-sex marriage proponent Jonathan Rauch argued in the New York Times “that gay men and lesbians should be allowed to marry because social science research shows that marriage makes people happier.” Well, the latest social science research shows that marriage is not necessary for same-sex couples to be happier than married couples. In fact, you might predict that marriage will make same-sex couples less happy, since all the married people in the study were less happy in their relationships than same-sex couples, whether or not they were in civil unions.

So, can we now expect Jonathan Rauch to back away from same-sex marriage, now that the rationale he gave in the New York Times no longer works? Of course not. Because the marriage equality movement is not about getting happiness, or hospital visitation rights, or property inheritance rights, or any of the other “benefits” LGBT people are always talking about. If it were, we could probably work out a compromise that respects marriage while relieving the distress of same-sex couples. But the marriage equality movement is about boosting the self-esteem of gay men and lesbians, many of whom had a tough time growing up. And I’d be happy to stroke LGBT egos if the route under discussion wasn’t doing tremendous harm to a central institution in our society.