Gay Marriage... Good for the Country?

By Christina Paxton

 

Never have voters in any state approved same-sex marriage.

In 2004, voters in 11 states chose to cement the traditional definition of marriage into their constitution. Still, the gay marriage debate keeps raging as California is set to revisit the issue when they vote on Proposition 8 in November.

Gay rights advocates have been pushing strongly for societal approval of gay marriage ironically through judicial rulings and legislation for more than a decade in California. The last time California voters had a say in the matter was in 2000 when the people voted on Proposition 22 simply defining marriage as “between a man and woman.”  By this time, gays had already been given statewide legal domestic partnership rights through AB26 along with health and pension benefits for domestic partners of public employees through AB107.[1] 

Seeking to prevent a further onslaught on the civilization-long institution, voters passed Proposition 22, or the California Defense of Marriage Act, with a resounding 61 to 39 percent victory. Yet eight years later, a host of additional pro-gay California Assembly Bills and one hotly debated California Supreme Court ruling nullifying the will of the people and here we are.

Those in favor of gay marriage desperately bang the drum of fairness and equal rights erroneously yoking their fight to marry the same sex with the African-American struggle for equality. Anyone in disagreement is branded the equivalent of a racist with the hopes of shutting down debate. 

In the 2005 ruling overturning California’s ban on gay marriage, San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer did just this. He wrote in his decision that “marriage-like rights without marriage” is the same as saying “separate but equal.”[2]

Those in favor of traditional marriage often monotonously drone on, singularly camping themselves on the argument that you can’t simply change the definition marriage to make it mean what you desire at any time you desire it. However valid that argument may be, it is only a single brick in the foundation of the pro-traditional marriage argument. These supporters too often refuse to branch out with additional, concrete facts. 

Take for example the recent tempered exchange of words between Republican presidential hopeful John McCain and Ellen DeGeneres on her show in May of this year.

DeGeneres told McCain that her being able to marry her same-sex partner “is only fair and natural.”

She then took the predictable step off the deep end and likened opposing gay marriage to keeping African-Americans and women from voting.

“I think it is looked at… and some people are saying that blacks and women did not have the right to vote. I mean women just got the right to vote in 1920. Blacks didn’t have the right to vote ‘till 1870 and it just feels like there is this old way of thinking that we are not all the same. We are all the same people… our love is the same.”[3]

Just for the record, gays have the right to vote.

Rather than attacking DeGeneres’ comparison head-on, McCain gave an unimpassioned response.  “I just believe in the unique status of marriage between man and woman,” he said.

For years, gay rights advocates have hitched themselves to the civil rights movement rarely being challenged. Gays are not a race of people nor have they endured even remotely the same struggle as blacks in this country. It is reprehensible to view the two as equal. Yet again and again the same argument is put forth, and it is done so quite effectively.

The most unfortunate aspect of the gay marriage tug-o-war is the utter lack of rational debate. Americans are starved of any fact-based information on the issue robbing them from making a well-informed decision on whether or not gay marriage is good for California and America as a whole.

Absolute Judicial Rule

As states began to pass civil-union laws affording gay couples many if not all the rights married couples enjoy, many gay rights advocates began to see this as not enough. The idea gays only wanted access to health insurance, benefits, hospital visits and the like was thrown out the window as they began to file lawsuits in court demanding more. The civil-union honeymoon is over.

Massachusetts became the first state to have same sex marriage thrust upon them by justices. Calling the state’s civil-union laws unconstitutional, the court claimed gays have a constitutional right to marry. Opponents to the ruling asked the legislature to approve a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman and allow the people to vote. Representative Barney Frank, an openly gay Democrat Congressman in Massachusetts, believed that once the people in his state lived with gay marriage for a while, they’d have no problem voting to uphold the same-sex unions and vote down the amendment. “My prediction is that when we in Massachusetts vote on this -- and we almost certainly will in 2006 -- the reality will have overtaken the fears."[4]

Reality did overtake fears but it was Frank and other gay rights advocates who became fearful of a vote by the people. In 2007, the Massachusetts legislature, under extreme pressure from gay rights activists, blocked the amendment from being placed on the 2008 ballot. The people in Massachusetts were not given a chance to vote.  

California was next. Four justices on the California Supreme Court utterly ignored the will of the people when they overturned the 61 percent majority who wanted marriage defined as “between one man and one woman.” This prompted Proposition 8 which will now decide if Californians have the stomach to nullify the four rogue justices and enshrine that definition in the state constitution.

Connecticut is the third and most recent state to be forced to accept gay marriage by judicial ruling. On October 10 of this year, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled the legislature’s recent granting of sweeping civil-union rights to gays was not enough. The court ruled in a 4-3 decision that civil unions actually discriminated against homosexuals by “segregating” them. In a blistering dissent, Justice Peter T. Zarella wrote, “…the ancient definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman has its basis in biology, not bigotry. If the state no longer has an interest in the regulation of procreation,” he said, “then that is a decision for the legislature or the people of the state and not this court.”

If they Can… Why Can’t We?

While gay rights activists and justices are pushing their view of marriage into American culture, quietly observing on the sidelines are other non-traditional sexual groups like polygamists and polyamorists who definitely have stake in the marriage outcome. Affording other groups the right to marry seems to be the natural second step following gay marriage. Although proponents of same-sex marriage fervently argue this would not be the case, in the same breath they defend the idea that allowing marriage to be susceptible to infiltration by other such groups wouldn’t necessarily be harmful. 

“If gay marriage opponents wish to argue that [gay marriage] could lead to polygamy, they also have to explain why polygamy is undesirable,” said Paul Varnell writing for the Independent Gay Forum. He claims polygamy has survived all over the world and even “lingers in most Muslim countries today.” Varnell goes on to assert that “Gay marriage does not lead to polygamy.  Polygamy, however indirectly, led to gay marriage.”[5]

I’m not sure which came first in what culture and where it still lingers, nor do I really care. The fact that they have such a cozy relationship says it all. In fact, in the California Voter Registration Guide, those in opposition to Proposition 8 believe, “…government has no business telling people who can and cannot get married.”[6]

Polyamory includes many different combinations of sexual partners. “There are triads of one woman and two men; heterosexual group marriages; groups in which some or all members are bisexual; lesbian groups, and so forth,” wrote Stanley Kurtz in “Beyond Marriage.” Kurtz calls polyamory “America’s new, souped-up version of polygamy… Polyamorists trace their descent from the anti-monogamy movements of the sixties and seventies”[7] he writes. 

Charles Krauthammer poses an interesting question in his Washington Post article on this subject.  “Posit a union of, say, three gay women all deeply devoted to each other,” Krauthammer wrote. “On what grounds would gay activists dismiss their union as mere activity rather than authentic love and self-expression? On what grounds do they insist upon the traditional, arbitrary and exclusionary number of two?”[8]

Using DeGeneres’ own argument during her discussion with McCain, there is no reason why a polygamist shouldn’t have the right to marry his ten wives or a polyamorists to marry as many of any sex they choose. To them, their feelings are “only fair and natural.” 

Once we decide that what we feel like the definition of marriage should be, it can become anything at all. And once marriage becomes anything we want it to be, it is rendered meaningless with disastrous consequences for family stability and thereby the nation. 

Eroding Marriage

Gay marriage advocates will argue heterosexuals have undermined the institution of marriage all by themselves. They’re right on that point. But do we want to make marriage even weaker? 

The Netherlands is a prime example of the erosion that occurs by changing the traditional laws of marriage. 

According to Stanley Kurtz writing for the Weekly Standard, after gays were given the right to marry in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, the rate of babies born out of wedlock rose dramatically because men and women viewed the institution of marriage as “outdated.” Parental cohabitation increased making separation that much easier.

“About 60 percent of first born children in Denmark now have unmarried parents,” says Kurtz. He rightly adds that gay marriage hasn’t undermined the institution of marriage as much as “it has further undermined” it.[9] 

Target: Your Kids

After the Massachusetts Supreme Court demanded the legislature legalize gay marriage, public schools took the lead role in making homosexuality an integral part of public education. 

A kindergarten class at Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington was given a “diversity bag” in which a book called “Who’s in a Family?” depicts two gay couples. One concerned parent demanded the school notify him when gay subjects were going to be taught. School officials refused his “notification” request and then had him arrested when he refused to leave the campus until the matter was resolved.[10]  School officials claim that allowing parents to remove their children would “stigmatize” those students with same-sex parents. 

In the same district, seven and eight-year-olds in second grade were read the pro-gay children’s book “King and King” by their teacher. In the story, when a young king searches for a princess to marry, he decides a prince is more his speed. The perfect boy is found once he meets one of the brothers of a princess. They marry and share love’s first kiss. When outraged parents demanded to be notified before the subject of homosexuality was going to be taught, school officials scoffed at the idea. 

The Superintendent in Lexington, Paul Ash, supported the second grade teacher and any other educator wanting to broach the subject of homosexuality without informing parents. “…we need to teach about gay marriage because it's more of a reality for our kids," he said. "The children see married, gay couples."  For Ash, not notifying parents boils down to a matter of semantics. Massachusetts law requires parents be notified when the school teaches sex education. He told the Globe that sex education doesn’t start until fifth grade so he’s under no obligation to notify.[11]

After exhausting every other avenue, the frustrated parents brought suit against the district for not abiding by the state’s sex education parental notification policy. The case was dismissed by a judge emboldening school officials.

When Brookline High School passed out a “sexually explicit” pamphlet on how gay men could prevent sexually transmitted diseases during a conference on gay and lesbian issues, parents were incensed. According to the Associated Press, school officials claimed “the booklet was mistakenly displayed.”[12] 

Despite these and other cases of students being taught about gays and marriage, the executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, Glenn Koocher, claims these are “just isolated cases exaggerated by anti-gay marriage activists.” She believes the parents of children who want to opt their children out of such teaching “suffer from narcissistic activist personality disorder.”[13]

Enter California. In a recent political advertisement in support of California’s Proposition 8, claims are made that California’s education code requires teachers to teach about marriage as young as kindergarten under the comprehensive health education program. That would include instruction on gay marriages and by extension, homosexuality. Gay rights advocates scoffed… much like their counterparts in Massachusetts.

“This is pure fabrication,” said Shannon Minter from the National Center for Lesbian Rights. "They are trying to inflame people by making up these falsehoods about kids."[14] Other opponents of Proposition 8 called these accusations “a smokescreen, a scare tactic and a fabrication.”[15]

Except earlier this month, a public school in San Francisco bussed 18 kids from one of their first grade classes for a field trip to the gay wedding of their teacher. A spokesperson for the school called the field trip “academically justifiable” and a “teaching moment.”[16] 

Gay rights advocates are well aware that with access to private schools becoming increasingly out of reach for low and middle income families, parents often have no option as to where their children attend school. Whether or not gay marriage and other gay issues will be taught in public schools to young children is no longer the question. It already is.  

Trumping the First Amendment

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of legalizing gay marriage is the trampling of First Amendment rights by what the courts have recently defined as “sexual orientation rights.”

In September 2006, photographer Elaine Huguenin refused to photograph a lesbian couple’s commitment ceremony in New Mexico citing religious reasons for her refusal. One of the women in the same-sex union then filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission. Huguenin was found guilty of “sexual orientation discrimination” and fined $6,600.[17] 

In another case, a lesbian woman, Guadalupe Benitez, filed suit against her medical group and two of the group’s doctors because they would not artificially inseminate her. The doctors claimed religious reasons held them to a certain standard when aiding in the creation of human life. They referred her to an outside fertility specialist and offered to pay for any cost incurred. 

The woman became pregnant, gave birth to twin girls and subsequently sued for sexual orientation discrimination based on California’s civil rights laws.[18]

Benitez’s lawyer typically trotted out the race card comparing the decision not to inseminate with denying medical treatment to African Americans. “I don’t treat black patients,” said Lambda lawyer Jennifer Pizer, but I will refer you to someone who will.”  

Both cases are but a snapshot of conflicts arising between First Amendment rights and ever-encroaching sexual orientation rights.

Using the template from these and other sexual orientation discrimination cases, it’s not difficult to see the writing on the wall. Consequences for pastors, priests and other religious figures who refuse to marry gay couples could be severe. Those who simply speak out against gay marriage or even discuss the health effects of homosexuality in general are likely to face serious repercussions for their beliefs.    

First Amendment scholars gathered at the behest of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty at a conference in 2005 to discuss the foreseeable extent of First Amendment clashes with gay rights. The nonprofit, nonpartisan, interfaith group argued that “expanding legal marriage to include same-sex couples will trigger myriad government prohibitions and penalties against religious institutions that, as a matter of religious conscience, believe that marriage is limited to different-sex couples, and therefore cannot treat same-sex unions as morally equivalent.”[19] A firestorm of lawsuits is waiting to be unleashed on churches that refuse to conform to the court’s new definition of marriage. 

Coming to a State Near You

Cassandra Ormiston may have thought she married the love of her life when she wed her same-sex partner but now she wants out. The problem is, Ormiston was married in Massachusetts but now resides in Rhode Island. Since Rhode Island doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages as valid, how can they issue a divorce? Ormiston, of course, is crying discrimination. But the challenge raises a host of problems.

Come November 4, Californians will decide whether gay marriage and all the baggage that comes along with opening up Pandora’s marriage box is a good thing.  It seems impossible for a small handful of states to be forced to allow gay marriage while the others uplift the traditional family unit. If the will of Americans is to strengthen traditional marriage, legislators will need a nudge. A Federal Marriage Amendment is needed, unless we want to be ruled by unelected men in black robes.