GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

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?

The news that New York Gov. David Paterson plans to order his state’s agencies to recognize out-of-town same-sex marriages is troubling.

The majority of Americans support gay civil rights and domestic partnership but oppose same-sex marriage. Now in three states (Massachusetts, California, and New York), gay-rights laws and domestic partnership laws have been cited by the judicial or executive branches as a reason to impose gay marriage in states that repeatedly failed to redefine marriage through legislative means. The Human Rights Law Gov. Paterson says requires state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages only covers sexual orientation because of New York’s 2002 Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA).

But according to law professor Jay Weiser, a member of a gay law association, writing in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, “SONDA’s legislative history, however, specifically disclaimed any intent to affect the right to marry under New York law.” I could not find the text of SONDA anywhere, but according to New York Judge Doris Ling-Cohan’s pro-same-sex marriage ruling in Hernandez v. Robles, “the SONDA law states explicitly that it is not to be construed to require or prohibit marriage rights for same-sex couples.”

Gov. Paterson was the Democratic leader of the State Senate at the time of SONDA’s passage.

Given what has happened in state after state, could someone please give me a good reason why a person with the majority opinion toward gay issues should ever support non-discrimination laws or domestic partnerships? It seems to me that the only way to help gay and lesbian couples in distress but preserve the definition of marriage is to withdraw support for anything the gay community asks for until we can pass the Federal Marriage Amendment.

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.