The California Senate has approved a bill to legalize gay marriage in the state. While I commend the members of the California Senate for their decision to take up this issue, to debate it, and to give it their approval, I can't help but wonder why California continues to be the great battleground for this cause, or why the legislature has opted to make this statement.
First, the State Assembly has previously rejected bills for gay marriage, meaning that this latest attempt may well go nowhere.
Second, there is presently a state court case moving to the California high court dealing with definitions placed into California law through voter-approved ballot measures.
Third, that ballot measure seems to stack the deck against the measure. In 2000, Californians, by a 61%-39% margin approved an initiative ballot measure that defined marriage as between members of the opposite sex. Under the California Constitution (as I read it), a measure raised and approved by initiative cannot be unilaterally amended by the Legislature - any law amending the initiative must be approved by the state's voters. A mere 5 years since the original vote, it seems unlikely that the electorate's opinion will have so greatly shifted as to give this amendment a chance to succeed.
***UPDATE - 9/18/2005: I'm glad Gov. Schwarzenegger has decided to veto this legislation and respect the will of the people in voting for the prior initiative. There is still too much going on in California on this topic for this to be a good idea. The courts have not completed their work as to the 2000 initiative and its meaning. Once that decision comes down it may be appropriate to put the issue on the ballot again and see what the voters think about the issue. With extensive Domestic Partnership benefits in California, it is not clear why "marriage" is so urgent.
It remains a mystery to me why marriage continues to be the great crusade of the gay Left. Many gay and lesbian Americans could care less about having the right to marry - they do not wish to get married, or are not in a position to get married (people without any significant relationship that could become a marriage). Yet in many places in the country, gays and lesbians still lack some much more basic rights - they live in the midst of extreme intolerance that makes it difficult for them to safely live an open existence in their workplaces and communities. Gays and lesbians remain anathema in the military services in this country. We have so many more important things to expend our energy on.
Even were this not the case - even if marriage were the only issue left to be addressed, the single-minded insistence on the term "marriage" is wholly pointless and counter-productive. Civil Unions, now the law in Connecticut and Vermont, provide all the same rights and responsibilities as a marriage - and have proven to be infinitely more acceptable to many members of the population - a population that has expressed its opposition to gay marriage in poll after poll. Yet, activists continue to insanely, and to my mind, unreasonably, scream "separate but equal" and other such garbage at the idea of accepting something that isn't called marriage. What this proves to me is that the gay Left is more interested in the issue than in truly helping the gay and lesbian families that they claim to be representing.
Read more below...........
In reality there is nothing wrong with Civil Unions. The idea of "separate but equal" in this context is actually just fine. The term is used to associate Civil Unions with the segregated schools that existed until a mere half century ago. Here are two reasons why the association is bogus. First, the whole reason for "separate but equal" being "wrong" was the Supreme Court's acceptance of dubious (and since discredited) sociological "studies" and "findings" that showed that segregation created in blacks a "mark of inferiority." That idea, that a school system (or a legal construct like marriage) could cause such a self-stigma was bunk in the 1950s and it is bunk today. A separate legal construct only creates in gays a feeling of inferiority if gays and lesbians allow it to create such an inferiority.
Second, even if the sociological "inferiority" complex was proven to be true, Marriage/Civil Unions are a different animal. They are not a physical existence - it is not the same as going to school each and every day. There is no physical reminder of the segregation. In common parlance, most people would little object to same-sex couples using terms like spouse or husband or wife even if the same sex couple had only a Civil Union. The distinction would be almost entirely a legal construct, existing only in words in a statute book. It would raise no walls, it would erect no fences, that would demark groups of "gays" and "straights."
The other argument made is that without marriage there is no way to ensure that a couple joined in a civil union in Connecticut would be able to move without abandoning their "marital status." Yet, this is also ill-informed. As current law stands (even if the Defense of Marriage Act were repealed tomorrow), no state is required, by the Constitution or any statute, to recognize a marriage performed in another state. Marriages, unlike divorces, are not legal judgments that invoke the protections of the full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution. Thus, securing the word marriage to describe a same-sex union provides no greater guarantee that the newlyweds will be able to move beyond the boundaries of the state in which they exchanged their vows. So why is the word so important?
On the other hand - civil unions would guarantee that children of same-sex couples would be assured child support from the non-biological parent in the vent of a breakup. It would ensure that a stay-at-home parent would not become a ward of the state when a wage-earning partner abandons the relationship (or suddenly dies without making adequate provision for a surviving partner and/or non-biological child). It would guarantee that non-biological parents would be able to enforce parental rights like visitation over children of the relationship. It would provide couples with a forum in which to have property, asset, and debt divided fairly and equitably should the couple decide to dissolve their relationship. And all this in the exact same manner as these rights and responsibilities are afforded to married heterosexual couples.
The gay Left seeks to radically alter and undermine the social and moral fabric of this country. And marriage is simply another tool in that fight. This is not about getting marriage rights, it is not about securing the protections of marriage (or its equivalent) for same-sex couples and their children. This is entirely about pushing marriage because it makes the large majority of Americans uncomfortable. It is entirely about being "in your face" - about forcing the majority to tolerate something that grates against their sense of order, thereby shifting the social fabric and mores of American society. It is time for the larger gay and lesbian community to wake up and realize that the activists who claim to "serve the community's interests" are really serving their own interests and selling the thousands of decent gay and lesbian families in this country a lemon. Until the gay and lesbian community at large calls these groups to task for their conduct, this debate will continue to resolve into marriage and anti-marriage camps - and that is a debate that the 2004 election amply proved is a loser for the gay community (13 states approved state constitutional amendments to preclude gay marriages, with some of those amendments also banning civil unions). The gay and lesbian community must insist that interest groups open a dialogue with political leaders and the public at large about civil unions as a middle ground - a third way - in this. If we can do that, I think we will be pleasantly surprised with the results that can be achieved, even in some of those "red states" where we might think we have no chance to secure these protections.
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