Category: Marriage Equality

In the various flurry of gay marriage/partnership laws that are fluttering about this election season, there tend to be three categories:

1. Proposals to allow gay marriage or some sort of civil union/domestic partnership.
2. Proposals to ban gay marriage per se.
3. Proposals to ban gay marriage and civil unions/domestic partnerships.

The first group is pretty straightforward.  The third group usually doesn’t do well because while I think most Americans are still uneasy about gay marriage, they recognize the fairness and even the benefits of rewarding and recognizing stable relationships between gay couples.

The second group, thus, tend to be a lot more attractive.  “We’re just protecting marriage,” the proponents say.  “This has nothing do to with any other sort of domestic benefits or civil partnerships.  We just feel that marriage, as a sacred institution, needs to be kept between a man and a woman.”  This argument resonates with a lot of people still coming to social and emotional grips with the huge change in recognition of civil rights for gays over the last three to four
decades.  The proponents of such measures are counting on that when they make their promises.

Don’t believe them.

A conservative group sued Wednesday to stop Michigan State University from offering health insurance to the partners of gay workers and said the school is violating a 2004 amendment to the state constitution.

The American Family Association of Michigan filed the lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court and hopes to get a ruling setting a precedent that would block domestic-partner benefits at other state universities.

The purpose of the suit is to ensure that courts rule on the constitutionality of domestic-partner benefits at public universities, said Patrick Gillen, an attorney for the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, which is representing the association.  By providing same-sex benefits, MSU is “recognizing same-sex marriage in substance, if not by label,” Gillen said.

As Les notes, he and many others warned that Michigan’s marriage protection amendment was a camel’s nose under the tent for further discrimination.  But, as elsewhere, its proponents trumpeted loudly that it was only meant to ban gay marriage, not other civilly recognized relationships. From one of their fliers during the amendment campaign:

Proposal 2 is Only about marriage. Marriage is a union between husband and wife. Proposal 2 will keep it that way. This is not about rights or benefits or how people choose to live their lives. This has to do with family, children and the way people are. It merely settles the question once and for all what marriage is-for families today and future generations.

Except, of course, some folks are now using it as the basis for arguing precisely against “benefits” and “how people choose to live their lives.”  And one of those folks, Patrick Gillen, was one of the folks who wrote Proposal 2.  His position has changed a bit:

Patrick T. Gillen, the Law Center’s attorney handling the case said that MSU’s policy is a transparent effort to circumvent the Marriage Amendment and state law. According to Gillen, “The constitution and laws of Michigan are designed to protect marriage and refuse recognition to same-sex unions, including same-sex domestic partnerships. Common sense and history demonstrate the enduring value of the traditional family, and its vital role in promoting the good of spouses and children, as well as the common good
of society. MSU is not free to disregard state law to promote its own definition of marriage and use state funds to promote its experiment with the family.”

Even leaving the hypocrisy aside, it’s another demonstration of how law can be used and interpreted in ways far different than what people think it will be when passed.  How many times have you heard a politician say, “Don’t worry — our intent on this is clear, and this law will only ever be used for Good Things, not the Bad Things you’re so worried about.”

One politician who knew how the law really works, and how it can be turned to one’s benefit, Lyndon Johnson, once said:

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

Or interpreted.

So as the November elections are coming closer, caveat elector.  There are lots of ballot propositions and amendments out there, not just regarding “marriage protection” and the like, but about all sorts of things.  And opponents of those items will point out loopholes, exceptions, interpretations, slippery slopes and the like.  And the proponents will pat you on the head and say, “Don’t worry — regardless of what it says in black and white, we promise only to ever use this the way we
say it will be use right now, during the campaign.”

Don’t believe them.  Even if they’re telling the truth, someone else is going to be looking at those loopholes, exceptions, interpretations, and slippery slopes, and licking their chops …

I’m not a huge fan of citizen-based legal initiatives. I think there’s a place for them, but they tend to be poorly written and too easily rushed through bits of demogoguery by special interests (while the latter can be said for legislative bills, at least those schmucks will have to face reelection at some point; nobody ever seems to get angsty over some ballot proposal they voted for six years ago).

Colorado, in particular, has a very low threshold for getting measures on the ballot — you only need as many signatories on a petition as there were 5% of the folk who last voted for Secretary of State (always a terribly popular office to vote for, of course), which means about 68,000 names right now, statewide.

All of which plays into this tale of Duelling Gay Marriage Initiatives, hurtling to a ballot box near you (or, at least, near me) this fall:

1. House Bill 1344, the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Responsibilities Act, passed by the state legislature for approval by the voters. It would create a domestic partnership law, allowing gay partners to handle each other’s medical decisions, adopt each other’s children, etc.
2. A grass-roots initiative to invalidate 1344 (whether it passes or not) by amending the state constitution to bar anything “similar to marriage” for gays.

3. A grass-roots initiative to get around the other grass-roots initiative to declare by constitutional fiat that, no, 1344 isn’t really similar to marriage. So even if both the previous bills passed, if this one passed then 1344 would be okay. Maybe.

4. Yet another grass-roots initiative to put a gay marriage ban into the constitution.

*sigh* Expect plenty of spleen-venting here viz #2 and #4 (and the anti-#1 folks), depending on who gets gets things on the ballot. For the moment, I only have so much spleen to go around, so I only want to use it on issues that come to pass …

Social conservative groups, having evidently already solved the persistent problems of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, comforting the afflicted, and other actually-spelled-out in the Bible Christian imperatives, now have plenty of free time on their hands. Which means, all those actual problems now out of they way, they can focus on the Number One Social Ill Gripping the Nation:

The Menace of Gay Adoption.

Steps to pass laws or secure November ballot initiatives are underway in at least 16 states, adoption, gay rights and conservative groups say. Some — such as Ohio, Georgia and Kentucky — approved constitutional amendments in 2004 banning gay marriage.

“Now that we’ve defined what marriage is, we need to take that further and say children deserve to be in that relationship,” says Greg Quinlan of Ohio’s Pro-Family Network, a conservative Christian group.

Right. We don’t allow gays to marry, and if we assert that kids should only be adopted by married couples, then obviously gays can’t adopt. And gays shouldn’t marry because, well, look, we don’t trust them to adopt our kids, do we?

Florida has banned all gays and lesbians from adopting since 1977, although they can be foster parents. State court challenges and a campaign by entertainer Rosie O’Donnell to overturn the law have failed. A pending bill would allow judges to grant exceptions.

Mississippi bans adoption by gay couples, but gay singles can adopt. Utah prohibits all unmarried couples from adoption.

Not, of course, that this is politically motivated or anything.

Republicans battered by questions over ethics and Iraq “might well” use the adoption issue to deflect attention and draw out conservatives in close Senate and governor races in states such as Missouri and Ohio, says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, University of Southern California political scientist.

The aim is to replicate 2004, says Julie Brueggemann of the gay rights group PROMO: Personal Rights of Missourians. She says marriage initiatives mobilized conservative voters in 2004 and helped President Bush win in closely contested states such as Ohio. Republicans “see this as a get-out-the-vote tactic.”

Feh.

… our neighbors in the Great White North on their parliamentary passage of a bill to allow gay marriages.

Well done, people. Would that we Down South were as enlightened.

Marn sums up my feelings on the matter quite nicely. Not unexpectedly.

I tend to be of two minds on a lot of subjects, so it’s not surprising that I can see the merits on both sides in this article on where the gay rights struggle goes now:

The leadership of the Human Rights Campaign, at a meeting last weekend in Las Vegas, concluded that the group must bow to political reality and moderate its message and its goals. One official said the group would consider supporting President Bush’s efforts to privatize Social Security partly in exchange for the right of gay partners to receive benefits under the program.

“The feeling this weekend in Las Vegas was that we had to get beyond the political and return to the personal,” said Michael Berman, a Democratic lobbyist and consultant who was elected the first non-gay co-chairman of the Human Rights Campaign’s board last week. “We need to reintroduce ourselves to America with the stories of our lives.”

But others involved in the drive for gay and lesbian equality say the Human Rights Campaign’s approach smacks of pre-emptive surrender and wrong-headed political calculation.

“For a certain segment of the movement, for which I would certainly elect the H.R.C. as poster child, it means that the error was that we were wanting too much too fast,” said Jonathan D. Katz, executive coordinator of the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale. “It is entirely characteristic for them to believe that what is required is a sort of retrenchment and a return to a more moderate message. They are, of course, completely wrong.”

I tend to be moderate in my activist nature. I think you win more battles, particularly in a democracy, by quiet, civil persuasion, and by building broad, deep support — so that you ultimately end up winning without a fight.

On the other hand, I’m something of an idealist. I think unequal treatment of gays in our country is a deep and bitter wrong, and will one day be looked back on the way we look back on Jim Crow laws. To compromise or slow down the fight toward equality (which would seem to be centered on the issue of gay marriage) is, in that way, a abhorrent.

The debate also assumes that we’re not seeing (or going to see) a pendulum effect, an actual roll-back of gay rights. That would be a horrible tragedy (and travesty), and it would be even worse if it were triggered by a societal backlash at gays for reaching too far, too fast, even if (IMO) justly.

I do believe the increasingly visible presence of gays in our society has done more to change hearts and mind (and laws) than all the in-your-face we’re-here-we’re-queer-get-used-to-it activism, parades, and stunts. Those have their place, too, in terms of promoting solidarity and in terms of at least some legal victories. And certainly, looking back on the black civil rights struggle of the 60s, it was both moral suasion and loud protest and legal challenges that led to successes there.

But, ultimately, in a democracy, and in a society, you can only push so hard for acceptance, before society starts to push back. And that’s when everyone loses.

(Posted by CronDave)