Nowhere did gay marriage seem like a natural fit more than New York, where the Stonewall uprising of 1969 provided inspiration for the gay rights movement and where a history of spirited progressivism had led some gay couples to envision their own weddings someday.
Yesterday’s court ruling against gay marriage was more than a legal rebuke, then — it came as a shocking insult to gay rights groups. Leaders said they were stunned by both the rejection and the decision’s language, which they saw as expressing more concern for the children of heterosexual couples than for the children of gay couples. They also took exception to the ruling’s description of homosexuality as a preference rather than an orientation.
New York Disappoints
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What you can never accept
“First, the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. Heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not. Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and the Legislature could find that this will continue to be true. The Legislature could also find that such relationships are all too often casual or temporary. It could find that an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born. It thus could choose to offer an inducement — in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits — to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other.”
I’ve only skimmed the decision, and it looks to me like the whole thing turned on whether there was a rational basis for limiting marriage to one man and one woman, which they obviously found there was. The dissenting opinion casts it more strongly as an issue of equal protection.
Nevertheless, both Bloomberg and Spitzer are on board with a legislative solution, so if we can just get Bruno and Silver on board and get Spitzer in Albany, there could very well be at the very least a civil unions law, if not a full marriage law.
I will spare you the rant about how I believe that the state needs to get out of the “marriage” business and stick to civil unions for everyone.
Here’s a bit of the slippery slope in action. Gay marriage has spurred a lot of talk about abolishing marriage altogether as a legal status. This plan to abolish marriage is usually pitched as a “compromise” between proponents and opponents of gay marriage. (Compare Solomon’s proposed compromise between the competing claims of two mothers.) After Lawrence v. Texas, Michael Kinsley made the suggestion in “Abolish Marriage.” Recently, in USA Today, Jonathan Turley followed up his 2004 call for legalized polygamy with a call for the replacement of marriage itself with civil unions. (See “How to end the same-sex marriage debate.”) Presumably, given Turley’s earlier backing of polygamy, those civil contracts would allow for multi-partner unions. Kinsley is clear that his plan would equalize traditional marriage and multi-partner unions.
For all this talk about abolishing marriage, I’ve never actually seen a legislative proposal that would do it. Now we’ve got one. In the wake of New York’s highest court’s refusal to find a right to same-sex marriage in New York’s constitution, Barbara Lifton, a New York State Assemblywoman (D-125th District), is proposing to eliminate marriage as a legal status, in favor of “civil commitments” for all. No doubt, that would allow same-sex couples to have “civil commitments.” And as we’ve seen with Kinsley and Turley, if we’re no longer talking about “marriage,” multi-partner “civil commitments” will surely follow. In any case, it wouldn’t take multi-partner unions to make the abolition of civil marriage a disaster. Just removing public support for marriage as an institution would be damaging enough.
This proposal has no chance of passage right now. Yet it’s a clear sign that as same-sex marriage spreads, more and more people (including traditionally religious opponents of gay marriage), will begin to look to the abolition of civil marriage as a “solution.” This is the reality of what same-sex marriage has brought: not a strengthening of traditional marriage, but calls for its abolition.
Will it? Surely? What’s your basis for that, two articles written by guys with Dr. Strangelove fantasies about having 10 girls for every boy?
Same-sex marriage is a natural outgrowth of traditional marriage. Two partners, done. All it does is dispense with the gender requirements of the two partners.
In polls, people are far more supportive of “civil unions” for same-sex partners than they are for “marriage” of same. Why? I posit that it’s because “marriage” is so tied up with religious institutions, and there’s always a fear that one’s church will be forced to perform ceremonies of queers (even though they don’t have to perform ceremonies for just anyone off the street as it is). But there really isn’t any sound reason for religious institutions to be involved in state legal arrangements, or for religious ceremonies to change legal status. When I had my Confirmation at age 13, it made me an adult in the eyes of the church but it didn’t change my legal status. Why should one of the other sacraments change my legal status?
Why not go to the European model where, in order to get the legal benefits of marriage, one goes to the registry office and in order to have one’s union blessed by one’s religion, one goes to the appropriate house of worship? Sure, under that model, one could be religiously married, but without the trip to the registry office, one’s union isn’t legally recognized. Kind of like those second, third, and nth marriages of fundamentalist Mormons.
And now we’re back to polygamy. Like I said, same-sex marriage fits neatly into the existing system. Polygamy does not. There are a hell of a lot more complicated issues with regard to legal rights and obligations once you get more than two people involved. For instance, if Partner A is married to Partner B and then wants to marry Partner C, what is the relationship between Partner B and Partner C? How does this affect the marital property of Partners A and B and Partner B’s claim to it? Does Partner C’s claim to marital property diminish Partner B’s claim, or does Partner C have a claim to a smaller corpus?
Polygamy is always the next stop on the slippery slope as imagined by the anti-gay-marriage types when they can’t come up with any solid reasons why allowing queers to marry would destroy marriage.
Marriage to the beasties is, of course, next. So, Fitz, what is it — dogs, box turtles or horses?
Zuzu (said)
“I will spare you the rant about how I believe that the state needs to get out of the “marriage” business and stick to civil unions for everyone. “
So you do indeed support eliminating marriage.
And on what basis do you exclude other family forms?
The onus is on you, the one advocating the change. The Burden of proof is higher than “it fits into the existing structure”. This is a civil rights issue, one of fundamental fairness, No?
As far as “anti-gay-marriage types when they can’t come up with any solid reasons why allowing queers to marry would destroy marriage.”
See original post above. The NY Supreme Court did it nicely.
Your reading comprehension needs a tuneup.
I never said I advocate “eliminating” marriage. That’s your paranoid interpretation.
I said I want the state to get out of the business of “marriage,” scare quotes deliberate. For all the talk about how sacred marriage is as an institution, at bottom it’s a legal status with an overlay of religious hoo-ha. I say, get back to basics. Let the state take care of the legal status part and let churches deal with the religious hoo-ha. Let “marriage” as a sacrament have all the legal effect of a bar mitzvah and let “civil unions” have all the legal effect of marriage now.
But I’m a separation of church and state kind of gal. I like my politics free of religion and my religion free of politics.
No, they didn’t. They said that the Legislature had a rational basis, based on tradition, for limiting marriage to a man and a woman. They didn’t predict that queers getting married was going to destroy marriage.
Civil Unions ok. Marriage, HE** NO. The people have spoken on this and so have the courts. Marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Civil unions is ok or any other word for that matter. They shouldn’t be denied rights as a couple but the voters have spoken loud and clear in NY Alabama and the good ol’ Peach State on marriage.
What’s the difference between the two, Brandcn?
The government that is by the people for the people says that the word “marriage” constitutes the union between a man and a woman. We are not trying to deny rights just find another word.
Why?
Yes, but why is that definition so important? Why is “two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together,” not as good or even better?
Plus, gay people and lesbians have been using the word marriage to refer to their partnerships for generations. We use that word, too.
I’m just the messenger it’s 80% of our population that agrees that the traditional definition of marriage should stand. The courts also agree that this isn’t unconstitutional in NY and GA.
We have a bill of rights that protects our civil rights from the tyranny of the majority. It’s not traditional to ask the public if x oppressed group should be given equality. That wasn’t just when Loving v. Virginia was decided, and it isn’t just now. Gay and lesbian marriages deserve parity.
I’m with piny that the definition shouldn’t matter. Just because 80% of the population supports the traditional definition doesn’t mean that definition is morally/ethically correct. A lot of people supported slavery and a lot of people were against a woman’s right to vote, but ultimately the course of history followed the just path.
Not nearly so many New Yorkers.
You love to quote the courts so much it seems like you would respect their decisions. Because if there was the slightest bit of tyranny the courts would have shot it down. So the thing that the pro-gay marriage movement should do is to send money to their interest groups that should try to find another word that give the same rights as possible as married couples. This can be done by simply using another word and not stepping on the 80%;s toes, which would only incite more hatred.
Zuzu,
I’m still sore at NY anyways….Ya’ll made fun of me for trying to order grits and sweet tea and all the hillbilly jokes. I actually had fun in NY even though it’s a completely different place than my beloved Peach State. And the ladies kinda liked that southern twang in my accent.
I do. Note that I said that the good news is that there’s wide support for, and prominent politicians backing, a legislative solution. The Court of Appeals said that that would be the appropriate course of action.
And you keep throwing out that 80% figure. That’s not at all the case in New York.
Moreover, you still haven’t explained why the word “marriage” is so important to preserve from the homos if you’re willing to grant them all the substantive rights of married people.
And rightly so. Don’t you know that that’s a southern thing?
Not at the time zuzu i was 15 years old and hardly a scholar.
And not to mention I had never left the south until then. So I can say that I didn’t know that but i found out. And i wasn’t ridiculed not to mention the waitress’ response was just as dumb. She asked me, “how do you make sweet tea?”. I just said my guess would be add sugar that stuff’s kinda sweet.
Why would the waitress’s response be dumb, when you’re the one who asked for something not on the menu and not made here?
Because it’s not our bigotry of “homos” that drives this issue. It’s the preservation of a tradition that is the issue.
Because common sense says that sugar makes something sweet and not to mention that I was a CHILD!!!
That tradition is homophobic: it defines marriage such that gay marriages are not included. A calculus that holds that tradition to be more important for its own sake than its effects on gay people is a homophobic one; it rests on the belief that gay people deserve less than straight people.
No tradition is tradition. You people that keep painting us as bigots only makes people resent it that much more.
Laws against miscegnation are traditional. Social condemnation of interfaith marriages is traditional. Marital rape is traditional. Homophobia is traditional. Chattel slavery is traditional. Tradition in and of itself is meaningless. It is bigoted to cling to a tradition rooted in bigotry, and to insist that its worth as part of the nebulous category of “tradition” is more important than the damage it does to a group of human beings.
Slavery was a tradition, too. As was coverture. And yet we don’t have those anymore.
You were 15, sugarbutt. And were you unsupervised?
Culture warriors constantly pretend that traditional marriage is “under attack”, but there is nothing about gay marriage that has any impact whatsoever on the vailidty (or sanctity) of heterosexual marriage.
That’s why such resolutions reek of bigotry to many of us.
What does slavery have to do with this? Less than one percent of the population is gay. For the last time no one is oppressing those individuals. If you guys used all off your time that you use trying to paint me as a bigot to actually find another word or keep the legal battle brewing. The rights that gays should be afforded would happen quicker. But all you seem to be worried about talking trash to people you disagree with that has good reasons for believing what we do. Channel that negative energy into actually getting results. But painting someone as a bigot because they believe different is just as bigoted.
I didn’t require supervision….and where is you sense of humor you are making a debate out of a joke…peaches taste better than apples anyways
Funny that Canada has had same-sex civil marriage on the same footing as oppose-sex civil marriage for a couple of years now, and yet somehow the sky hasn’t fallen.
If same-sex marriage were going to destroy a society, how long is it supposed to take before we start to see the ill-effects? Because I’m getting kind of tired of waiting around for the rain of toads.
Because it’s been defended as tradition.
Oh, I beg to differ. But I’ll let piny have at.
Okay lemme break this down for ya….slavery held people against their will, beat them, killed them, made them do jobs they didn’t want…..defining marriage as a man and a woman hardly does that….like i said channel your energy into results instead of personal attacks on good people like me who are actually championing gay rights but not your way
And I hope that the voters of this country makes the people that commit these silly political acts on both sides of the aisle pay come election time.
Actually, the low estimate is approximately one percent, but this article mentions mainstream mean of four-five percent. It also indicates that there’s a huge problem with homophobia slanting survey results, such that the venue for the survey can halve the number of people willing to admit to having had gay sexual contact. There are also questions as to what’s an appropriate definition of “gay:” exclusively homosexual contact, or the potential to be attracted to members of the same sex. Plenty of people who call themselves straight have had gay sex.
And yes, we are being oppressed. You’re saying that we need to find another word for our marriages, because our marriages can’t be referred to as marriages. How is that not bigotry?
Neither did anti-miscegnation laws, per se. Were they not bigotry? Did they not constitute racial discrimination?
But there was a popular movement against slavery, imperialism, witch hunts, religious persecutions, etc. There’s not a popular movement championing gay rights and even when people on the other side of the aisle try to help you but not your way they are still painted as bigots just because they don’t see it exactly your way. My view is in the middle and I can tell you that this will go nowhere when you alienate the middle.
Brandcn, the older marriage tradition is actually polygamy — widely practiced in many cultures, including those that are antecedent to ours. Marriage was a property transaction for a long time also. Now, folks tend to see marriage as a religiously sanctioned love match between people who will raise children: romantic love as the signal component of marriage is an innovation in the last few hundred years. So the use of the term “tradition” is a conclusion rather than an argument.
Your other argument is a vox populi argument — but that works in the red states, not here. You said that the voters in New York, Alabama and Georgia have rejected marriage equality, but that assertion is wrong. The issue has not been presented to the New York voters. Nor do I know how the polling on this issue in New York goes. I’m confident it is close, not the 80/20 landslide one finds in Bible Belt states.
Finally, if you agree on extending the substantive rights, why do you care about the word? “Tradition”, as I said, is not much of a cognizable answer. As far as I can tell, the only reason to give same sex couples the same substantive rights but deny use of the word is so that folks can still say that “marriage” is the gold standard and what same sex couples have is something less worthy.
There’s not a popular movement championing gay rights
In 1993, I marched on Washington with about 400,000 of my closest friends for gay and lesbian civil rights. My girlfriend and I held the banner for my university’s g/l/b/t group. So what were we all, chopped liver?
No you are the ones that make this an us versus them thing. And I understand why, that form of politics worked for the last 50 years. Americans can now see through smear campaigns. And actually in 12 states that was on the ballot in ’04 and the average defeat was 70/30. And it was not just in bible belt states.
There was not a popular movement against abolishing anti-miscegnation laws; quite the opposite. Had the question been put to a popular vote, the people would have voted to prohibit interracial marriage.
Plenty of people who call themselves straight have had gay sex.
[raises hand] I gave a guy a handjob once. Does that count? (Because if “gay” is ever-had-same-sex-activity, the number is well into double-digits.)
If they can see through smear campaigns, why did those defend-marriage bills pass? It’s not an us-vs.-them thing. It’s a, “We’re the same as you,” thing.
And in order for there to be a popular movement to abolish all those things, there first had to be historical popular support for them. Were they just when it existed? Were witch hunts just while King James supported them? Was Jim Crow just through the mid-sixties?
for the last 50 years
Meaning 1956, the year between the bus boycott and the integration of Central High School?
Quick history of the Civil Rights Movement: a bunch of liberal Northerners used the courts and the federal government to complete Reconstruction and force equality under the law down the throats of a resistant Southern white populace. Against the will of the majority in those places. Now, tell me that was a bad thing.
400,000 out of 300 million Americans not excatly a “popular movement” And each individual on this earth is different so no one is the same as anyone. One of my best friends is gay and he even agrees that this will go nowhere unless the tone is changed to centrists.
Those are the people who showed up in DC. Well, one of my best friends is straight, and he thinks your friend is a pervert. What does your second sentence even mean?
Only that you are labeling all gays that don’t have your own view evil now you are turning your back on your own side that is fighting for the same thing. Why do you condemn only right wing attacks and not left. Anyone can see straight through it. And that sentence means that people like me that wants the same rights for gays are going to quit trying to help if we keep getting made into a political pawn for having a view in the middle.
You talk like I’m the enemy when tolerance to both sides is actually what the country needs. People will never give in if you keep playing this game. And that goes double for anyone on the right playing the same game.
Uh, what? No. Your friend believes that compromise is most effective; I believe that it is not. I further believe that this marriage/civil-unions compromise is legislated inequality, and that supporting it means supporting bigotry. We cannot have the same rights if we can’t get married.
Brandcn, any cause that can get 400,000 people to pack onto busses, go to Washington and march in the hot sun is a popular movement.
During the Civil Rights Movement, there were black folks who thought the leaders were taking the wrong approach or asking for too much. I probably don’t need to tell you all the names that some other people called those folks. But I hardly think you would assert that just because not every African-American agreed with Dr. King that he was wrong. It follows that just because your friend does not agree with the direction of the debate on same-sex marriage, that he’s right.
When Howard Dean was governor, civil unions were the extreme position even in liberal Vermont. Now, civil unions are where folks who don’t fully embrace equality look for compromise: it has become the centrist position. We’ve finally learned from the far right that continually pushing can shift the entire window of the debate. Marriage equality was a pipe dream ten years ago. Now, it’s a reality in one state and a fight in 49. In ten more years, it will be a reality in several states and a fight in the rest. In my lifetime, I will see this battle won conclusively.
Jill, do you think Feministe could try to attract a better class of troll? I’m getting tired of this guy’s punctuation and syntax, not to mention the run-on sentences. Oh well, could be worse. At least he can spell.
Raincitygirl, I agree. But this is better than teevee! Except that it’s not a terribly fair fight.
Brandcn, if we waited for everybody to agree on the absolute best way to do things, nothing would ever happen and the gay population of the U.S. would gain no rights whatsoever. There is no logical reason for marriage to be prohibited between two consenting adults of the same sex.
And that reminds me – if you want to defend marriage as belonging only to straights because of “tradition,” what about the millenium or so (beginning with ancient Greece and Rome) when full-grown men married girls who were often no more than twelve? Those girls were forced to bear children and stay almost exclusively within the house, forbidden from even walking to the market or visiting with a neighbor without a male escort, and rarely allowed to own property or participate in the community at large.
I thought we already had that. I’ve never been married, but I was under the impression that, in order to get government recognition of a marriage, you have to apply for and sign a marriage license.
That’s on the ballot. Polls show a different story.
Take this Fox News poll (scroll down):
Results (since the table won’t format):
Legally married: 27%
Legal Partnership: 25%
No Legal Recognition: 40%
Unsure: 8%
So, only 40% think that there should be no legal recognition of same-sex partnerships at all. And this is a national poll.
And here’s the results for New York:
And here’s the support in New York:
How do you like them apples?
:
Yes, but clergy are empowered by the state to perform the marriage, thereby changing the legal status, so you have that mixing of church and state and the vapors about the whole “sacred institution” bit.
ANd the judge’s opening comment that “The idea that same-sex marriage is even possible is a relatively new one. Until a few decades ago, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between
participants of different sex.”
is also patently untrue.
(the quote is from page 12 of the judgement
Erika, in many Western European countries you must have a civil ceremony at City Hall,a nd that is the legal marriage. The wedding may or may not happen on the same day, but it has no legal significance. When one of my cousins in the Netherlands was getting married, she and her boyfriend went to City Hall on a Thursday afternoon, and the only other people present were my uncle and aunt. On the Saturday they had the big wedding with the church, the dress, the cake, the party, etc. But at that time, they had already been married for 48 hours under Dutch law. And if they hadn’t already had the civil ceremony, they would’ve had to do so after the wedding if they wanted the wedding to be recognized by the state.