Last week I spoke on Dan Savage and his
confrontational method for engaging opponents of GLBT rights overall, but this
time the issue that’s becoming more contentious across the nation is defense of
“traditional marriage” as various states continue to challenge rulings about
gay marriage laws’ constitutionality or reinforce their own ideas of marriage
in the form of discriminatory legislation, such as in North Carolina about two
weeks ago. There are a few particulars I think are especially important to
discuss when talking about this with anyone, such as whether the government
should be involved in marriage at all, whether civil unions are the same as
marriage by any stretch of definition, and defense of “traditional marriage”
laws on the grounds that the government has leeway to discriminate even with
the 14th amendment in place to limit such things as anti-miscegenation laws
which were repealed in Loving v. Virginia in 1967. All of these can create
large conflicts between otherwise reasonable people and it’s crucial to see why
the issues aren’t so cut and dry as we make them, especially when there’s so
much history and culture connected with a thing like marriage and sexuality.
On the more radical end of the political spectrum
are conservatives and liberals alike that say the government shouldn’t be
involved with marriage at all. The reasoning is that since marriage is a
personal matter, there shouldn’t be federal arrangements surrounding it, but
only state level at most; sometimes not even that. I wonder if the state should
even be involved if marriage is so personal. If there are limits or regulations
of the institution, then isn’t that excessive meddling by this very libertarian
sort of position? Common law marriage may be a solution that gets the
government out of more intrusive aspects of marriage law and the like and also
allow gays to be considered married the same as straight people and get
associated benefits by the same law. The problem is that this would have to be
extended to a federally mandated, country-wide law instead of state by state,
which many would oppose in saying that the government doesn’t have a compelling
interest. But the fact that we register for marriages and the like, even if the
primary source of the commitment is a religious ceremony, is a testament to how
important it is to the government, if only to manage shared property, create
structures of relation and kinship, and provide for children if the couple
should unexpectedly die. The government has a responsibility to be involved in
marriage, but there can be too much intervention, as well as giving the
impression that married people are getting privileges beyond what they may
deserve as a couple with shared property, taxes, etc. Striking a balance
between the federal government’s intervention, as was done with state laws
prohibiting interracial marriage, and states’ individual rights in terms of
managing marriages in the more technical senses, without restricting rights
based on irrelevant qualities, such as sexual orientation, will take
cooperation that many people entrenched in their political parties may not be willing
to do until marriage has become something unrecognizable even by traditional
standards of male/female couplings. Would it kill marriage to expand it ever so
slightly with the same regulations we have on straight marriage? Seems to me we
can’t go much further with divorce laws beyond just allowing couples to annul
their union without a lawyer at all, so marriage can only go up if it includes
a group of people willing to conform to the basic values of marriage, even if
they aren’t the majority.
Civil unions might have the same legal rights in
most cases compared to marriages, but this is usually only on a state level.
There is already inequality in that there are government benefits given to
straight and married couples that gay and “civil unioned” couples don’t get.
But even if this were not the case, there is still inequality in the same sense
that existed with blacks getting their own drinking fountains, but being
separate from the whites in that practice. Civil union does not give the same
sentiment or implication as marriage and therefore it serves only as legal
jargon to overcomplicate what could be a simple matter of marriage equality for
both straight and gay couples. One could distinguish in a nuanced sense between
categories of marriage, but not so simply between marriage and civil unions.
Secular/civil marriage is that officiated and legalized by the state, while
religious marriage is established and made sacred by religious doctrine and
communities, but does not automatically hold sway in secular society. Civil
unions might have a purpose for other partnerships, but not for something that
has cultural significance for reasons that go back thousands of years. Family
is one part of it, but so are fidelity, monogamy, commitment and many others.
Gay people can have families, they can be faithful to one another and they can
represent love in its many forms to a country that should not judge them
because they love differently, but only accept their sincere love as deserving
of the same title of opposite sex couples that love in the same way.
Preventing gays from getting married isn’t justified
for the reasons we prevent adults from marrying children or biological siblings
from marrying each other. The government has a vested interest in protecting
children either from being violated by sexual predators or being born with
preventable congenital birth defects, but not in denying the rights and title
of marriage to people that fit the standard of marriage as a whole: two
committed adults in a relationship willing to pledge their lives to each other
in front of a community and remain so through their lives. The equality of
marriage should exist with regard to gays and straights, because at its core,
marriage is the same for both of them. It makes little sense for states to
refuse a gay marriage performed in another state merely because they think
there is protection in the constitution for discrimination, which isn’t always
the case. You can’t just deny people equal protection for a fundamental right
like marriage without having a fair minded reason. And being in love and willing
to commit to the relationship through the bonds of marriage is enough by any
legal precedent. Gays not being able to naturally have children of their own is
not reason enough either, even if marriage is laterally connected to family as
a method to generate it. Opposite sex couples that are infertile or elderly
couples recently married for various reasons, such as one of them previously
losing their spouse, cannot naturally have children, and barring scientific
intervention or unexpected biological occurrences, cannot. They are still
considered married by any “traditional” definition, yet if we consider the
raising of children as integral to marriage, then even these male/female
couplings are insufficient and worth only as much as a male/male or female/female
coupling, since they cannot have shared biological children. While family and
childrearing are both important to marriage, they should not be considered so
essential as to disqualify or otherwise make couples feel like they are not
worthy to be called married. And strict gender roles are not absolutely
important in raising a child either. If a child understands that there is
variation within male and females in terms of behavior that is considered
masculine or feminine, then that should be enough. Children raised without
fathers or mothers respectively or without either are not more prone to
negative behavior solely or primarily because of the lack of those parents, but
likely because of other contributing factors, such as societal concern for them
to begin with. How often do people talk about single parent households or
orphaned children? Not enough to reflect a genuine concern for them alongside
children who have “normal” families. Far as I’m concerned, there is no “normal”
family. Every relationship, every group of people sharing kinship has their own
issues to work out, even if they have a mother and father. Having two mothers
or two fathers doesn’t dispose you to be less important to society, and anyone
suggesting it is missing the point of what family is at its core: love and
compassion, regardless of blood relation.
One can be straight and fully support the right of
gay people to get married, even if you’re not married yourself or don’t even
want to get married at all. Your friend and their partner don’t make you and
your significant other/wife or husband love each other less. If they do, you’re
taking marriage way too much at face value instead of the lifetime it takes to
make it work together. And arguing that the children need a mother and father
is bollocks on its face, since there’s little causative evidence to suggest
that a child without a mother or father respectively performs worse in society
at large, let alone a child who isn’t raised by any sort of normal binary
parental structure. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc: these are all
family and they can raise a child just as well if they are willing to commit to
nurturing and encouraging them in their pursuits. Gender roles aren’t
absolutely required to come from parents, though they are one of the most
common ways. One can see a grandparent, an uncle, an older brother or others as
good male role models and vice versa for female family members, etc. If it’s
proper support of a child’s growth, then you don’t need to focus on gender so
much as more instinctive factors, such as love and support from people that
care about you not because they’re obligated to, but because they regard you as
someone close to them that deserves your love because of innate compassion for
one reason or another. That’s what family is, and when you reduce that to a
pairing of two people, you get marriage at its core, history or otherwise.
Until next time, Namaste and aloha.
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