As a gay republican, the most common retort I receive from those who dismiss me as a backward, self-hating closet case is “what about gay marriage? How can you vote for a party that wants to deny you the right to marry your partner?”It is true that the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, was passed by overwhelming majorities in a Republican House and a Republican Senate.
The US DOMA stated simply:
No state need recognize a marriage between persons of the same sex, even if the marriage was concluded or recognized in another state.
The Federal Government may not recognize same-sex or polygamous marriages for any purpose, even if concluded or recognized by one of the states.
What you don’t usually hear about DOMA from the left is that it passed by an 85-14 margin in the Senate and a 342-67 margin in the House, meaning that it was supported by clear majorities of both parties. AND that it was signed into law… by President Bill Clinton, on September 21st, 1996.
In 2004, Karl Rove & Company were accused of gay-baiting by introducing state-level statute propositions and constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage in order to get out the narrow-minded bigot (read: Republican) vote. But what those accusers forget is that in the year 2000, California’s own Proposition 22, which simply stated “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,” passed with a 61% majority.
That’s right; even reliably blue-state California couldn’t muster enough “social progressives” to defeat a new law that plainly and explicitly denied gays the right to marry.
Perhaps 2000 is too far back. Perhaps eight long years have taught the errant Democrat majority of yesteryear to reach down in their hearts, ignore their personal intestinal objection to homosexuality, and vote to grant their gay brothers and sisters the right to wed. Indeed, the current Democrat party platform states that they “support full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and seek equal responsibilities, benefits, and protections for these families.” Sounds like a gay marriage endorsement, doesn’t it?
Wrong.
The next sentence in the platform states: “In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there.” Now, technically, that’s a de facto endorsement, since before the platform had been written in 2004, the Massachusetts Supreme Court had already ruled that gays must be allowed to marry there. Plus, the several states are required to recognize each other’s legal proceedings, so if you get married in Massachusetts, then you are married everywhere.
But you’ll notice that the Democrat platform stopped short of actually taking up the sword for the “civil rights” that its constituents claim to hold so dear. Rather, it pays lip service to “inclusion” and “equality” for gay and lesbian families, but then it kicks the actual issue down to the states for somebody else to deal with.
Now, in the interest of equal time, the 2004 Republican platform reads: “We believe, and the social science confirms, that the well-being of children is best accomplished in the environment of the home, nurtured by their mother and father anchored by the bonds of marriage. We further believe that legal recognition and the accompanying benefits afforded couples should be preserved for that unique and special union of one man and one woman which has historically been called marriage.”
OK.
“The social science confirms?” Bullshit. I’m open to any number of studies that suggest that certain family configurations are more likely than others to produce progeny that end up at Harvard (or in the state pen), but let’s be honest about the frequency of the “best” conditions for “the well-being of children”, by any definition: they’re few and far between. Is it also “optimal” for one of the parents to stay at home? If so, should we ban two wage-earner households from procreating? Wait: wouldn’t it be better still for both parents to stay at home; would that be “optimal”? Should American wage-earners without children then be taxed to subsidize all families with children so neither parent has to work?
That’s ridiculous, of course; just as it’s also ridiculous for a government body to determine – let alone enforce – an optimal child-rearing family configuration. Some scenarios may be better than others of course, but there’s plenty more to it than the gender of the parents.
Anecdotally speaking, you can’t tell me that Steve and David’s adopted children would better off living in neglect with their crack-addict mother in Compton than they are living with two caring fathers in Valencia.
I think my party is wrong on this issue. But there’s a difference, more important than the one of gay marriage, between the Republican platform and the Democrat platform; between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party….
It’s the difference between “princpled” and “fickle”.
Watching the gay marriage debate unfold reveals a corollary that you begin to notice as you observe politics: Conservatives are people who make decisions based on principle, while liberals are those who make decisions based on emotion.
The right may be as wrong as it’s ever been on gay marriage…
But the left is as spineless on gay marriage as it is on every issue.
The eternal PR problem of having principles is that it means you have say “no” sometimes, and saying “no” to people hurts their feelings. It’s easy to tar-and-feather a politician who says, “No, I don’t think the federal government should fund a new program to pay for children’s health care.” HE MUST WANT CHILDREN TO BE SICK!!
But it’s tough to make somebody look bad when they hug a crippled fourth-grader and say “I want to help the children” (even if that actually means “I will use the force of the state to rob productive members of society for the purposes of involuntary charity”).
The big-think Republicans who set the party platform may have their principles out of order (“social conservatism” and “tradition” before “individual liberty” and “equal protection”), but at least they have some. The Democrat party’s only principle is “say ‘yes’ to enough people to get 51% of the vote.” Politicians may all be whores, but the Democrat Party itself is an institutional brothel in a way that the Republican Party is not. In 1996 and 2000, I guess Democrats felt they didn’t need the gay vote; at least not enough to proselytize and offend a majority base that still objected to gay marriage. Perhaps today the Democrat Party opinion leaders feel differently, but I still wouldn’t stake my well-being on the loyalty of such a fickle crew.
George W. Bush’s Federal Marriage Amendment is a bad idea all around. It bans gay marriage by setting in stone (the Constitution) the final gasps of a dying social morality. It revokes the doctrine that states must recognize each other’s legal proceedings; an awful, litigious Pandora’s Box that ought not be opened. But the largest problem with it is not pragmatic but principled: it sells out the philosophy of limited government and federalism. (This, by the way, has been the true conservative objection to George W. Bush’s presidency all along: He uses big-government methods to implement social conservatism, a stunning about-face for a man from a party that complained for decades about “social engineering.”)
When you come down to it, marriage isn’t a federal institution, nor should it be. Nor, further though, should it be a state institution either.
Marriage existed long before any state in the US issued a marriage license. The statutory codification of marriage by the States was therefore, in essence, a legal consideration by the States to accommodate the circumstances of life. Two people own property together. They share a mutual right of survivorship on that property. Two people share their finances. Two people each have the power to act on the other’s behalf. Etc.
In religious terms, marriage carries a connotation of love and commitment and any number of other characteristics, but in legal terms marriage is nothing but a contract. So, my gay brethren, if you want a gay marriage… write the contract yourselves.
Have a lawyer draw up a contract that states, “The undersigned parties commit to each other a permanent mutual duty of care. They award to each other the rights and privileges of marriage as described in California statute and case law, and assume for each other the duties and responsibilities of marriage as described in California statute and case law.”
For concerns like hospital visitation rights, have your lawyer draw up small, mutual “power of attorney” cards. Draw up wills.
Sign the contract, file the wills, keep the cards in your wallets, and call Alanis Morissette to preside over your ceremony. You’ve both agreed to subject yourselves to the law that governs marriage. Sounds like a legal marriage to me.
There are, of course, a few lingering concerns such as the right to adopt children as a couple. Quantitatively though, such concerns seem to be balanced out by the tax benefits of filing as two single individuals rather than as a couple that shares one household. But I certainly don’t mean to say that those lingering concerns should be ignored. Adoption rights for gay couples, specifically, sounds like an excellent subject for an equal protection class-action lawsuit. And if the day comes when that happens, I’ll sign the petition. I’ll march with the ACLU.
But I’ll be standing on principle. So don’t ask me to switch parties.
0 comments:
Post a Comment