gaymarriage

Why gay people should be allowed to marry

A recent ruling by the Constitutional Court on the Department of Home Affairs refusal to allow foreign-born partners of gay men and women permanent residence in South Africa brings sharply into relief just how gay people in South Africa are still discriminated against, despite a constitution which prohibits such discrimination. Why can gay people not get legally married and thus enjoy the same rights as heterosexuals who are married to foreign nationals?

Many heterosexual people feel that allowing gay people to marry is unacceptable as "they are not able to maintain stable relationships". This is in spite of the fact there are many gay partnerships which are stable, some even lasting as long as 30 years or longer. However, the misconception still abounds that gay people are unsuitable for marriage because their relationships don’t last – as if all heterosexual relationships did!

Research published in the journal Demography in August 1992 states that "the possibility of cohabitation weakens commitment to marriage as an institution."

The study goes on to concede that living together before marriage may not strengthen the heterosexual marriage, when it occurs, but often produced "attitudes and values which increase the probability of divorce." There is no reason why the same should not apply to homosexual couples. So if "living in sin" is not conducive to stability in a heterosexual relationship, why is the same not true for homosexual couples? We have a system which legally denies same-sex couples the fundamental civic right to marry, and then the very people who support this law are the first to point fingers at gay people for being unable to sustain stable, long-lasting relationships. Sounds a bit hypocritical, doesn’t it?

A legal marriage encourages monogamy, as people are in a better position to establish stable and ordered personal lives, to form family units and to share their lives and property. Denying anyone the right to marry is to deny them the opportunities to do this.

Not all gay men and women want to marry, just as not all straight people do. However, there are a large number of gay people who do wish to get legally married. A recent opinion poll conducted via the internet by the Christian Science Monitor which asked whether same-sex marriages should be legal, elicited the following results at the time of writing: Yes: 15587 (91.8%), No: 1236 (7.3%), No opinion: 162 (1%). (see: http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/quickpoll-res.pl). I am the first to question the scientific validity of such an opinion poll. However, there appears to be a significant ground swell of support for gay marriages to be made legal in South Africa.

Why would gay people want to marry? Despite the fact that many in the antigay lobby feel that homosexuals are subhuman, and would deny them their basic human rights, gay people experience all the human needs, feelings and hurt which heterosexuals do. One of these needs is the human impulse to belong. Ostracised by family and society, gay people often have a greater need to feel wanted than members of mainstream society, whose place in that society is taken for granted. Because of these feelings of being outside the dominant group, it is only natural for them to seek relationships with people who feel as they do. This is after all how heterosexual society organises itself, but instead of along sexual orientation lines, they use linguistic, cultural, ethnic, religious or racial bases on which to organise their network. It is no secret that Jews tend to marry Jews, Portuguese marry Portuguese and Indians marry Indians. It should come as no surprise therefore that gays would wish to marry gays.

One of the main objections to gay marriage is based on the misconception by non-gay people that marriage as a religious rite, when it really is a civil contract. The vociferous Christian rightwing homophobes use the argument that on biblical grounds, gay marriage is unacceptable. There are two issues which arise from such a narrow-minded viewpoint. Firstly, people who use this argument are of the ilk who will quickly condemn homosexuality on the basis that the Bible says it is wrong, but are hard pressed to quote the exact passages which say this. They operate merely on bigoted hearsay, without taking the time to examine the passages for themselves. Secondly, they are completely out of touch with current exegesis of these passages, which show that it is a very dangerous thing to interpret anything, especially a translation of a translation, from your modern twentieth century perspective, thus taking the situation out of its historical and social setting. It is as illogical as condemning the ancient Egyptians as heathen as, because they worshipped a pantheon of idolatrous gods, they were not Christians, without taking into consideration that these Egyptians lived millennia before Jesus was even born! To those of this opinion, a marriage isn’t valid if it does not take place in a church. By this argument, anyone who has been married in a mosque, a synagogue or a court of law doesn’t have a real marriage. The flawed logic here is obvious. The fact is that marriage is a legal contract, regardless of where the customary ceremony is carried out. In terms of our constitution, it is a citizen’s right to get married if s/he is of consenting age to enter into an intimate and lasting bond with another person. It is not a privilege.

The benefits, too, which accrue to one because of one’s married status are secular, and not religious. What benefits, you may ask? By being married, one automatically becomes eligible for spousal benefits, immigration/emigration opportunities, property rights on divorce, preferential taxation treatment, intestate succession, adoption rights and reduced family rates on a host of things from your gym membership to life insurance, inter alia. By refusing same-sex marriage, the law automatically denies gay people all of these. Let us not forget that many of the financial benefits which married people enjoy, are in fact paid for by tax-paying gay people.

Simply because it is customary that a marriage takes place between a man and a woman is no argument for the exclusion of same-sex partners to enter into this contract. Customs change. Not even a decade ago it was customary that marriage could only take place between people of the same race in this country. In using the Old Testament to justify disallowing marriages between two men or two women, one selectively ignores that in biblical times polygamy was the norm. In ancient Greece and Rome same sex marriages among the upper classes were acceptable, and were recognised and blessed.

By objecting to same-sex marriage on the basis of what is acceptable to one individual or a certain group of individuals at a particular time in history is nothing more than an attempt to deny homosexual citizens their inalienable right of citizenship. To make certain people second class citizens on whatever basis is unacceptable. South Africa has only recently thrown off the yoke of first and second class citizenship, based on an arbitrary viewpoint of a particular group. We cannot afford to allow this situation to be reintroduced by changing the qualifying criteria from race to sexual orientation.

The next objection is that a preferred gay lifestyle is unnatural and abnormal. The problem is that most people who use these words do not know the difference between natural and normal. Normal refers to the practices of the majority of the population. Just what is normal is another question. Heterosexual people base their perception of normal on what they do themselves. Gay people are abnormal because of their sexual practices, which are in the main oral. By this token, Bill Clinton is decidedly abnormal. Normal also therefore seems to be cheating on one’s spouse, as this appears to be the national past time of South Africans. Up until recently, the majority of NGK church goers in South Africa found interracial marriage abnormal. Normalcy is only dictated by the (often ignorant) prevalent attitudes of the time. What is abnormal today may not be so tomorrow.

Natural on the other hand, refers to things which are natural to the individual. Psychiatrists have often stated that there is no such thing as unnatural human behaviour, especially in the area of sexual gratification. It’s a case of what’s right for the individual’s happiness, as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else, is all right. Simply because you don’t eat your Jungle Oats together with a fried egg and jam, and I do, does not mean that my taste in food is unnatural or that yours is natural. It’s just different. In the same way as you do not have the right to impose your eating regimen on me, so to do you not have the right to impose your values on someone whose personal life and proclivities are not the same as yours.

The next objection which follows this is that it is unnatural because same-sex marriages are non-procreative. Once again, if one is using nature as one's point of departure for what is natural and what isn't, then bees and ants are unnatural, as only a small percentage of these populations procreate, while the rest get on with the work of the colony/society. In human society, surely we have enough breeders? Let the non-procreative segment of the population (viz. the gay people) get on with the important creative and artistic work of society.

Gay people want to get married as it is the preferred way in the twentieth century for consenting adults to connect their lives, and it makes things easier and better for people who wish to form permanent relationships. Marriage is not conditional on the intention or capacity to have children. If this were so, many heterosexual couples who choose not to reproduce, or are biologically incapable of doing so, would be ineligible for marriage. Marriage confers the right on individuals to form family units. Once again, the homophobes scream about traditional family values being subverted. What are these values which gay families would be subverting? Almost every person I know comes either from a broken family, or a severely dysfunctional one. And the break up of the family unit is very rarely caused by homosexuality. It is far more likely to be caused by a philandering heterosexual spouse. The perfect family unit of a happy mother-father-and-two-children as the norm is ridiculous. Certainly some of these families do exist, but the vast majority of families in South Africa do not conform to this description, being either one parent families or parents who have remarried after a divorce, causing more damage to their children than any gay person could ever do.

However, the most important aspect of allowing same-sex marriages is probably its symbolic function. By allowing gay people to marry, the law will legitimise not only being gay, but our relationships as well. It will put homosexuality on a par with heterosexuality. Last year's Gay Pride theme was "Recognise our Relationships". Surely there is no better way to achieve this than to recognise our right to marry whom we please?

In the light of this, should gay people not be allowed to form their own family units in the security of legal marriage, which would then form part of a network of extended family and friends? After all, when last did you read a story in the newspaper about domestic violence which was perpetrated by a gay member of the family?

Same-sex marriage is the constitutional right of every gay man and woman in South Africa. Our constitution prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. So why do we still have an unconstitutional law on our statute books, which prohibits this type of marriage?