“The Marrying Kind” by Bruce Bawer, The Advocate, September 19, 1995 and The New York Times, March 8, 1996.
“Get Married?” by Alisa Solomon, Village Voice, January 9, 1996.
“Why We Should Fight for the Freedom to Marry” by Evan Wolfson and “Tying the Knot of the Hangman’s Noose” by Victoria A. Brownsworth, Journal of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Identity, January 1996.
“Gay Marriages, an Oxymoron” by Lisa Schiffren, The New York Times, March 23, 1996.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Since the Hawaii Supreme Court will likely extend marriage rights to same-gender couples later this year and the Constitution might then require that other states recognize these marriages, the Religious Right is pushing state legislatures to pass laws to void such marriages. Many gay/lesbian leaders are endorsing same-gender marriage, but other gay/lesbian voices say that no homosexual should want rights to a “heterosexual” institution. Clearly, once again and contrary to what the Religious Right contends, there is no monolithic “gay agenda.”
In spite of heterosexuals’ poor track record on marriage – premarital sex, illegitimacy, abortion, child abuse and abandonment, domestic violence, extramarital affairs, sexless marriages, separation, divorce – the heterosexually-dominated Christian Coalition and other Religious Right groups literally demonized homosexuals during the Iowa caucus campaign by sponsoring a rally against same-gender marriage “to send this evil lifestyle back to Satan where it comes from!” Bawer asks: “Isn’t it wrong for the same right-wing activists who have decried gay promiscuity to now deny gay love and commitment?” The rally, carried on C-Span, featured a videotape that, as Bawer describes, “cut back and forth between idealized Hallmark card images of wholesome looking brides and grooms – who truth to tell, bore little resemblance to the mostly dour people in attendance – and Gay Pride day shots of screaming, bare-chested leathermen – who bore little resemblance to most gay men (and no resemblance to lesbians).” Bawer says “the video was crude and grotesquely dishonest, but looking into the faces of the audience one could see its effectiveness.” From what this captive audience was shown, it could not have been guessed that, for example, in Denmark, where same-gender marriage has been legal since 1989, same-gender divorce is about a third the rate of heterosexual divorce. In a recent People special issue on “The Greatest Love Stories of the Century”, none but the Reagans’ and Ruth and Billy Graham’s marriages came close to the monogamous partnership of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (four decades until Stein’s death in 1946).
But not to be outdone by Christian Coalition, Brownsworth, from the Far Left, insists that all marriage is “anathema”, that “marriage is an unnatural state … predicated on the most repressive, oppressive, and dangerous aspects of society.” She claims that a right to marry “is the antithesis of what our [queer] movement is based on.” And Solomon, in agreement, concludes: “The question isn’t whether the state should marry gays but whether it should marry anyone.” Crushing the individuality of gay men and lesbians into some sort of mass “queerdom” apart from all heterosexuals, she declares that “all queer lovers must constantly invent the terms of their relationships.” She complains that “to countenance monogamy … is to hang the promiscuous, the nonmonogamous … out to dry” – as if promiscuity’s not punishment enough.
Wolfson, co-counsel in the Hawaii case and director of the lesbian/gay Lambda Legal Defense group’s Marriage Project, explains: “Gay and lesbian people want the right to choose whether and whom to marry for the same reasons that nongay people do.” A Lambda pamphlet points out that lesbians and gay men really do need the right to marry because, for example, “lesbians and gay men who have been their partner’s primary caregiver are often denied visitation at hospitals, refused ‘family’ health coverage, taxation, and inheritance rights … their legal status is, at best, that of a roommate.” Bawer understands that “The effectiveness of the Right’s rhetoric against gay marriage rests on the fact that all of us, in discussing marriage, routinely confuse at least two distinct things. One … is a religious covenant … [The other is] a legal contract.” Only the latter matters to the state.
Noting analogies between the new preemptive bills and the former laws against interracial marriage, Wolfson cites a Virginia law that the U. S. Supreme Court struck down only 27 years ago: “All marriages between a white person and a colored person shall be absolutely void without any decree of divorce or other legal process.” Here’s what a new South Dakota law says: “Any marriage between persons of the same gender is null and void from the beginning.” The trial judge, whose ruling lost out in the landmark miscegenation case, had asserted: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red and he placed them on separate continents. … The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
Schiffren, Dan Quayle’s speechwriter, says welfare of gay couples and childless marriages (e.g., the Doles, Buchanans, Gingrichs?) should be “of little concern to society”. Marriage, she says, is about children. Echoing anti-interracial rhetoric, she claims that extending marriage to homosexuals is “incompatible with our [majority] culture’s understanding.” Following segregationists, she wants the question put to a popular vote.
Of course, homosexuals already have the right to marry – just so long as they marry someone of the other gender. That’s done all the time.