As I wrote in my last post, the Obama Presidential victory is bitter-sweet for many Americans. As we rose to new heights in racial justice we nose-dived on LGBT civil rights, particularly the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry legally in California, Arizona, and Florida.
Arkansas passed a related measure effectively denying the right of gay and lesbian couples to adopt children. Their new law requires that adoptive parents be legally married. Same-gender couples cannot legally marry in Arkansas, therefore they cannot adopt children in that state. Single people of any orientation cannot adopt children either which violates their civil rights as well. There are plenty of single parents who had children of their own or adopted while they were married and are now divorced. How does Arkansas plan to reconcile that dilemma? No one knows, least of all the lawmakers who thought up that legislation.
Segregation in Gay and Lesbian Unions
Over the last couple of decades, a few forms of legally recognized unions have been created in some states to provide some of the rights of marriage to gay and lesbian couples. They are civil unions and domestic partnerships. These unions are not federally recognized and don’t have to be recognized by other states or territories within the U.S. A lot of other countries also do not recognize these unions as marriages. By creating civil unions and domestic partnerships we have effectively created a segregated “marriage” system for same-gender couples that is clearly not equal to the marriage rights of opposite-gender couples.
The segregated marriage institutions of civil unions and domestic partnerships should be abolished and full, legal marriage rights must be extended to gay and lesbian couples.
We all have a very clear understanding that separate is never equal. It wasn’t equal in education, on buses, in restaurants, at water fountains, in bathrooms, at voting booths, or in marriages between a man and a woman of different races. Equality came when segregation was abolished legally. Social acceptance came slower, but it was fueled by existing legal rights for interracial couples.
We feel so strongly about equal rights between races that we boycotted and embargoed South Africa for decades because of apartheid. Yet here we are in America in 2008, denying equal rights to a minority group by putting their rights up for popular vote.
Racial segregation is wrong and a popular vote concerning any civil right associated with race is not acceptable. So why is a popular vote acceptable against gay marriage? It’s not acceptable. It’s a huge travesty of justice against about 10% of the American population.
The Case for Legal Marriage for Gay and Lesbian Couples
If you want to protect an institution, you do not dilute it with other similar, but unequal, institutions that take people away from the one institution you want to protect. If you want to protect marriage, make marriage the only institution available to all couples.
By creating civil unions and domestic partnerships, gay and lesbian couples gained some rights, but opposite-sex couples also chose these lesser arrangements instead of marriage. This diluted the institution of marriage and continues to do so today. We created a slippery slope that is leading our nation away from marriage and setting up a whole new bureaucracy in the states in which these institutions exist. Each time another state adopts domestic partnership or civil union laws, marriage is diluted again because opposite-sex couples use them instead of marriage.
Lesbian and gay couples legally marrying does not dilute or damage marriage any more than interracial couples marrying diluted or damaged marriage before 1967. Many who are against gay marriage use the dilution argument but cannot explain how it would dilute marriage. They cannot explain it because there is no valid reason, just as there was no valid argument when interracial couples were denied the right to marry. It is clear, however, that denying marriage rights and creating separate, lesser unions dilutes and damages the institution of marriage.
Opponents of gay marriage bring up ridiculous examples that if two men or two women can marry, then next people will be able to marry their pets. These arguments are so ridiculous I can’t believe supposedly rational people use them. But they are using them as fear tactics to propagate bigotry and injustice against gay and lesbian couples, and it is working.
Polls show in California that 7 in 10 African Americans who voted for Obama/Biden voted yes on Proposition 8. This voting trend shows that the LGBT community has not successfully connected the dots between racial bigotry and denial of civil rights, and sexual orientation bigotry and denial of civil rights. African Americans are doing to LGBT couples exactly what was done to them before the civil rights movement. It is no less serious a travesty of justice now than it was before 1964 and the Civil Rights Act or before 1967 when it became legal for interracial couples to marry.
Some gay marriage opponents use the argument that gay-parent homes harm children or cause them to become gay or lesbian. They do no such things. Psychologists, psychiatrists and pediatricians have done extensive studies that demonstrate again and again that children brought up in committed same-sex couple homes thrive just as well as children brought up in opposite-sex couple homes. These professional groups have found that a loving, stable home is what is most important to children, not the genders of the adults within it. Children of same-sex couple homes do not become gay or lesbian at a higher rate than children from opposite-sex couple homes. Being gay isn’t contagious.
At a time of fiscal crisis in this country, all the extra bureaucracy caused by segregated, lesser unions cost states money they could stop spending if every state legalized marriage for all couples. The state bureaucracy for marriage is well established and smoothly run. The only changes would have to be some minor wording alterations on the marriage application form and the marriage license to say “spouse” where it now says “husband” and “wife”. Since these documents are created, edited and stored electronically, changes would be a minor, 10-minute clerical job. The fiscal argument for marriage rights is far stronger than a minor clerical change argument against them.
How Can We Get Our Equal Right to Marry?
The LGBT and supporting community has gone about obtaining civil rights the wrong way. We worked toward social tolerance and acceptance to gain popular votes in Constitutionally illegal elections instead of through the court system to demand equal rights, have them granted by the Supreme Court and imposed on all states and U.S. territories. African Americans obtained their civil rights and then worked and are still working to have them accepted socially. We failed to learn that we cannot rely on popular opinion when it comes to civil rights, and it is time to start fighting for them legally like we should have been doing all along. We should still work toward social tolerance and acceptance, but we cannot and should not rely on it to obtain the civil right to marriage equality we deserve as minority Americans.
Under the equal protections guaranteed by the Constitution, our right to marry is already protected. In 1967 in Loving v Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned anti-miscegenation laws that made interracial marriages illegal.
The Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, made same-sex marriages illegal. The law is unconstitutional and must either be repealed or overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.
We must stop fooling around and start exercising our right to legally marry by attempting to obtain a marriage license when we decide we want to marry our same-gender partners. If and/or when we are denied the right to get a marriage license we must involve the ACLU and other LGBT civil rights organizations to legally protest and sue on the grounds that our civil rights are being violated and that the law upholding that violation is unconstitutional.
Our softball strategy has not worked, so it’s time to play hardball and legally demand the equal rights we should already have until we get them and prevent them from being pawns in various elections. We as a country would not tolerate the same discriminatory practices to be brought up to deny African Americans or persons of any other race or ethnicity some civil right. We can no longer tolerate discrimination based on sexual orientation and we must fight for our rights in court.
\\ tags: Civil Rights and Justice, gay marriage, LGBT, LGBT civil rights, LGBT marriage rights
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