Dave's Thoughts on Gay Marriage Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Above a water fountain in a southern town the words “White Only” have never been removed, they have only been covered with a single coat of paint. The paint is now cracking around the edges of the raised letters that spell that terrible phrase, making an obvious statement that the words and the reasons they were first placed there still exist. I saw this with my own eyes just a few years ago. Decades after those words should have been removed they are still there, chaining everyone to a past that only some are not ready to let go. But progress has been made. There are new horizons in the struggle for civil rights. Blacks, women and other minorities have made tremendous advances, and so have gays. Gay marriage (or civil unions), an issue that just a decade ago seemed like a distant notion, is something that may soon become reality. For that to happen, though, it is important to accept that there are some compromises to make and for change to become permanent it must happen slowly. The words “gay marriage” must, for now, be given up. The focus of efforts towards equality must be on “civil unions”. The difference in a legal sense is semantic; “marriage” and “civil unions” are just phrases meaning the same thing but apply to different people based on their sexual preference. This will in effect create a new “separate but equal” institution that will be inherently unequal simply because it exists, but these are the steps that must be taken. The Supreme Court’s ruling in 2003 on “Lawrence V. Texas” which declared laws against sodomy are unconstitutional was a defining moment like “Brown V. Board of Education” which ruled against segregated schools. However, there isn’t yet a sexual orientation equivalent of the 14th or 15th amendments, which were early attempts at civil rights for racial minorities, and they came nearly a century before desegregation. There are still many decades to come of “your water fountain is over there, homo”. The state does have an interest in giving legal recognition to partnerships. When two people commit to love and protect each other, some of the states burden of care is relieved. Historically, marriage has served this purpose. Therefore it makes sense for the state to use the concept of marriage, which has been around longer than any government, as a basis for law. However, to fully realize the idea the church and the state are separate, the state must not base their qualifications for such partnerships on the same qualifications that are used by the church. Many churches will likely never fully include gays, and that is their constitutional right. The word “marriage” was created by the church and it is theirs to define, even though the concept was likely practiced long before any organized religion existed. A battle with the Church, while probably unavoidable, would be futile. Focus must be maintained on legal recognition of civil unions by the state. The best the gay community can reasonably hope for is to assure the Church that religious organizations won’t be forced to change even if the government and the rest of the world around them does change. Heterosexuals generally seem to have a hard time accepting that the main component of marriage, a commitment to love and care for each other through all of the trials and triumphs of life, works the same way for homosexuals too. Allowing heterosexuals the exclusive use of the word “marriage” while gay “civil unions” provide a living example of how similar everyone really is would cushion the transition to an ideal America where the word “marriage” would not be used by the state to define any union, heterosexual or homosexual. Marriage is a word and an institution of the church and that is where marriage should remain, not in the court rooms and laws that everyone shares. That basic principle will not be easily adopted, no matter how obvious it might seem from the very first freedom granted to all Americans which declares “congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion”. As the struggle for civil rights continues, remember that other minorities have battled the same intolerances and eventually won. This can be used as insight to know that if the struggle is taken one step at a time, someday everyone will be recognized as equals in the eyes of the law. Someday a new millennium Abraham Lincoln will emancipate gays. Someday there will be a gay Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, Jr. Someday someone will finally scrape away the words “White Only”, and the “Marriage License” and “Civil Union” offices in courthouses of the future will combine into one. Until then, remember that marriage is just a word. Let the church have it, let the state continue to misuse it for now, and petition the state for equal standing. Let the dust settle, and then regroup and push forward. It’s not right, it’s not fair, but history has shown that it is the only way.
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