...Washington’s high court rejected same-sex marriage for much the same reason the New York Court of Appeals did earlier this month. The speeches in Seattle would no doubt be similar to those made in New York, and I didn’t need to hear them again.
Basically, both courts found that marriage is like a box of Trix: It’s for kids. [...] What the New York and Washington opinions share — besides a willful disregard for equal protection clauses in both state Constitutions — is a heartless lack of concern for the rights of the hundreds of thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples.
Even if gay couples who adopt are more stable, as New York found, don’t their children need the security and protections that the court believes marriage affords children? And even if heterosexual sex is essential to the survival of the human race (a point I’m willing to concede), it’s hard to see how preventing gay couples from marrying increases heterosexual activity. (“Keep breeding, heterosexuals,” the Washington State Supreme Court in effect shouted, “To bed! To bed! To bed!”) Both courts have found that my son’s parents have no right to marry, but what of my son’s right to have married parents?
A perverse cruelty characterizes both decisions. The courts ruled, essentially, that making my child’s life less secure somehow makes the life of a child with straight parents more secure. Both courts found that making heterosexual couples stable requires keeping homosexual couples vulnerable. And the courts seemed to agree that heterosexuals can hardly be bothered to have children at all — or once they’ve had them, can hardly be bothered to care for them — unless marriage rights are reserved exclusively for heterosexuals. And the religious right accuses gays and lesbians of seeking “special rights.”
Even if you believe that marriage plays a special role in the lives of heterosexuals with children (another point I’m happy to concede), can it not play a similar role in the lives of homosexual couples, whether they’re parents or not? Marriage, after all, is not reserved for couples with children. (Perhaps it will be soon, if courts keep heading in this direction.)
When my widowed grandfather remarried in his 60’s, he wasn’t seeking to further the well-being of his children, who were grown and out of the house. He was seeking the security, companionship and legal rights that marriage provides. The survival of humankind was the furthest thing from his mind.
These defeats have demoralized supporters of gay marriage, but I see a silver lining. If heterosexual instability and the link between heterosexual sex and human reproduction are the best arguments opponents of same-sex marriage can muster, I can’t help but feel that our side must be winning. Insulting heterosexuals and discriminating against children with same-sex parents may score the other side a few runs, but these strategies won’t win the game....
Well.
Save us from many more such victories, then. Many more such, and any rights we hope to gain will be lost entire for at least a generation.
I don't see how those strategies don't win the game, frankly, when the people mapping those strategies also make the rules and control the outcome. Massachusetts stands as a very clear, singular example of a court saying, "You're making the rules, and they aren't fair, so we're changing the rules." And now that it appears that Massachusetts will be voting on these issues in 2008 -- and why does nobody official point out the blinding conflict of interest in having the majority vote on granting rights to minorities? -- their singular status is clearly going to end soon. There is less than no chance that Massachusetts will vote differently than the rest of the country on this issue. People who think otherwise are well-intentioned, but seriously deluded to the extent to which their fellow citizen regards marriage as a mark not only of heterosexual privilege (and we're all hierarchical primates, so that privilege matters in ways that people can't quite think about or articulate) but of state sanction of their religious rites. After all, the state is expressly forbidden from telling you that your religion is a good and wondrous thing in any way, shape or form except this one, so people in this more theocratic day would understandably like to keep that.
Note that I'm not saying that it's not worth the fight. If nothing else, it's a good idea to keep the issue awake, so to speak. This is not, to be sure, the particular hill I would have chosen to die on. My own desire would have been to go for civil unions for all, and once those were secure, to get government to stop recognizing religious marriage as the equivalent of civil marriage. Yes, separate is inherently unequal ... but on the whole, it's a good idea to get where you can make that argument, rather than skewering yourself on the "all or nothing at all" sword.
In any event, it's better to go clear-eyed into this sort of fight, rather than thinking that somehow your fellow citizens will suddenly and miraculously decide that yes, you are just as good as them and are entitled to everything they're entitled to.
And you never know, I suppose. People may astonish.
Posted by iain at July 31, 2006 12:49 PM
