GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

Am I the only one who is confused by Bill Clinton’s and Dick Cheney’s language when they each came out in favor of gay marriage, Clinton just this last week? Here are the quotes:

Cheney: “I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish.”

Clinton: “I personally support people doing what they want to do. I think it’s wrong for someone to stop someone else from doing that.”

It’s as if the traditional-marriage crowd was trying to pass laws stopping gay weddings, not to keep the government from recognizing same-sex marriages. The latter is the issue we’re debating.

I’ve expressed in the past my opposition to the “get the government out of marriage” so-called compromise to the SSM controversy. I have said that it’s not a compromise because one side gets nothing. But I’m starting to rethink that.

If the government gets out of the marriage business, and every person and organization gets to decide for themselves what marriage is or isn’t, maybe that’s a compromise that would accommodate my religious-freedom concerns. Why can’t, for example, a caterer only accommodate those weddings she believes are actually weddings? The government has no stance on what marriage is.

If the government has no stance on what marriage is, it seems to me that a lesbian teacher could teach that marriage can be between two women, and an Orthodox Jewish teacher can teach that marriage cannot. Curriculum on marriage and the family can be written by each school district with the guidance of the elected or appointed school board.

I’m not saying I’d support such a compromise. But I would acknowledge that it is, indeed, a compromise.

The anti-gay-marriage folks in Washington state are using the most unfortunate phrase I’ve written in 10 months of op-ed writing. In my second op-ed during that time, which appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I wrote:

Openly gay Washington state Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, and a representative of the largest Michigan gay-rights group, the Triangle Foundation, have both told me that people who continue to act as if marriage is a union between a man and a woman should face being fined, fired and even jailed until they relent.

While Murray and the Triangle Foundation rep did say that people continuing to behave as if marriage is between a man and a woman should face being fined, fired, and even jailed, they did not say “until they relent.” Murray did refer to Martin Luther King and Gandhi, who were jailed until they relented, but that’s no excuse for the sloppy paraphrase. (Note: it’s not a misquote because I didn’t quote them. It’s a poor paraphrase.)

As soon as this was called to my attention I apologized.

Anyway, the phrase has now made it into a campaign commercial against a gay-marriage bill in Washington state.

I of course like being quoted, but not in this case.

I recently returned from my vacation in Maui (thanks for your patience, everyone!), where I had a chance to observe the debate over the civil unions bill currently under consideration in Hawaii. I was particularly interested in the letters to the editor in various Hawaii newspapers, especially the small ones targeting Maui or even West Maui.

The pro-civil unions side (including representatives of churches) made the point that civil unions are not marriage and will not lead to marriage.

Ah, would that it were so. I’ve demonstrated on this blog and elsewhere that a pro-gay promise that “this will not lead to marriage” is completely valueless if later the measure can possibly be used for marriage. For example:

In Massachusetts, the Goodridge decision was based in part on a law that specifically said could not be used to support gay marriage.

In New York, Gov. Paterson used the SONDA law to recognize gay marriage, despite a clause in the law saying that was not to be done, and a legislative history of promising that the SONDA job-protections bill had nothing to do with marriage.

In California, the gay-marriage Supreme Court decision declared that the gay-marriage side had a lower burden of proof because of the domestic partnership law. This despite the fact that the domestic partnership law was sold to legislators and the public as not being marriage and not leading to marriage.

Thus, in three states, passing gay-rights measures that were sold as “not leading to marriage” led to marriage. And the appalling part is, not a single gay-rights leader (except me) has objected or apologized. Anything that leads to gay marriage is fair game, even if one has to lie, cheat, or steal to get it.

I’m increasingly thinking that with such wily opponents, it does not make sense for defense-of marriage people to give a single inch when it comes to “special rights” for gay individuals or same-sex couples. The Salt Lake City plan, yes, but that’s not special rights. But civil unions in Hawaii and elsewhere, no, because when we’re promised a measure won’t lead to gay marriage – and then it does – nobody says, “Whoops, that’s not the result we had promised.” and certainly not “We’ll try to overturn gay marriage, for now, and fight fair another day.”

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.

In discussing my opposition to same-sex marriage in the comments section of a previous post, GDM participant Mark Barton wrote,

We get it that it’s your sincere religious belief, and we’re sorry, but we don’t think that excuses it any more than it would excuse racism, and we don’t accept your apology. In 2009, we expect you to have had a “can that be right?” moment, and if you haven’t, or if you haven’t come to the answer “no”, then it’s personal.

Frankly, I’m sick of having my principled opposition to redefining marriage (based on both religious and secular principles) compared to racism. Anyone who does so must either be woefully uneducated about the history of prejudice and discrimination in this country, or deeply deluded as to the relative lack of pain, which is really little more than discomfort, faced by same-sex couples in America.

It’s probably both. I remember debating at ExGayWatch with several LGBT people over the notion of whether gays in America were being “treated” like Jews in fascist Europe. That ludicrous and offensive proposition was actually defended by several gay people, who seemed to hang their politics on the hook of believing they are far, far more persecuted than they are.

I don’t want to condescend to recount for the readers of this blog the horrors of racism in the last century in the United States, much less the century before that. By contrast, having to call one’s relationship a “domestic partnership” or “mutual beneficiary” instead of a marriage, even with most or all the rights is pathetically petty.

Yes, I know, in some cases screw-ups at hospitals have created tragedies for couples without a formal partnership. And there are sad situations regarding custody and inheritance, too. But it’s not like racism. Not at all. And it can be fixed without meddling with the central family institution in our society.

So stop suggesting my beliefs are akin to racism. To do so insults to very real history of persecution against African-Americans in this country and is incredibly presumptuous and arrogant. And moreso, it insults me. It suggests that I hold views akin to those I despise, and it’s way out of line. One could even say it’s personal.

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. 

Many gays and lesbians have assumed that gay marriage is inevitable by projecting past trends in public opinion into the future. This is a mistake, because history does not just move in one direction. The idea that previous generations always have fewer rights and freedoms than subsequent generations is demonstrably historically false.

For example, in 1977, it seemed like the Equal Rights Amendment was inevitable, but determined opposition by conservative groups, including vigorous participation by traditionalist women, doomed that proposal. Similarly, in the 1920s a lot of Americans – and Europeans – expected greater rights for women, Jews, and other minorities to be an inevitable consequence of the forward march of history. But the 1930s brought a retrenchment and a setback for civil rights of all kinds. In gay and lesbian history, setbacks have been related to anything from an orange juice spokeswoman (Anita Bryant) to a devastating plague (AIDS).

It is impossible to predict public opinion a decade from now based on public opinion today. It’s not like predicting how many amoebas will result after two hours if an amoeba splits in half every 10 seconds. Public opinion can be affected by unforeseeable events, by persuasive leadership, and by the Zeitgeist of the times.

The Newsweek cover story described itself as a “religious case” for gay marriage, but it certainly was not a Jewish case. The argument was almost wholly based on the Bible, and while some Protestants take the Bible literally word for word, 99.9 percent of Jews do not (see my Leviticus Traps). A Jewish case for gay marriage, if such a thing was thinkable, would have to deal not only with Biblical texts (they shall be as one flesh, anyone?) but the Talmud (which forbids same-sex civil and religious marriage to Jews and to gentiles), the codes of Jewish law, and modern responsa. There are a tiny number of Bible-only Jews, known as Karaites, and they number maybe 25,000 in the world, to be generous. The cover story was “A liberal Christian case for gay marriage” – which is hardly shocking, since liberal Christianity has been moving in that direction for a long time anyway! Harumph.

1. You obviously feel that gender matters, or else lesbians could be attracted to men and gay men could be attracted to women; both genders have hands and faces and hearts and can kiss and hug and be aroused and love. If gender didn’t matter, we’d all be bisexual, right? So if gender matters in selecting a partner, shouldn’t it matter in parenting, too?

2. If a child’s parents died, all else being equal, would you rather she was raised by an aunt and an uncle or two aunts (sisters)? Would it matter? Why or why not?