CONSTITUTIONAL RESTRAINT: Mark Barton replies to Matt Taylor
Matt Taylor: The SJC, it seems, believes that unenumerated "natural, essential and unalienable rights" require use of their preferred vocabulary. This is the height of political correctness -- treating a good-faith use of certain terminology for one's social group as a terrible injury. I myself am gay, half of a same-sex couple of 9 years, and we couldn't care less whether our relationship is called "marriage," "civil union," or "chopped liver," so long as the substance of marriage is available to us under the law.
Mark B.: I would agree that as a
political consideration, one should not be quick to reject a solution that provides all the substantive benefits of marriage (at least within the state of Massachusetts) and differs only in the name, especially if there's a risk of backlash. And I'd agree that as a consideration about
personal karma, it's often good to rise above squabbles about terminology. I don't see, however, that it's any business of the MSJC to be political or magnanimous on my behalf (or that of the plantiffs).
Moreover, I'm afraid I can't accept that "civil union" is neutral terminology. It's been chosen very deliberately to be not only different from "marriage," but less prestigious. I accept that some of the more thoughtful and sympathetic anti-SSM advocates have settled on that terminology in a good-faith attempt to further certain perceived noble goals, while minimizing the cost to me, but that's very different from a good-faith attempt to offer me full equality with differentiated terminology just for clarity. When, for example, Elizabeth Marquardt goes on about marriage as a "norm" that she wants the government to endorse, that's inevitably an implicit condemnation and government disendorsement of
my relationship. Why should I, or the MSJC, treat such an endorsement as empty symbolism when the most respectable of the people calling for it seem to think it has real-world potency that will actually change people's behaviour in some manner, pushing them towards marriage? Given that it's at least as easy to see how such an endorsement would perpetuate negative attitudes towards gay people and gay relationships as how it would encourage the raising of children by their biological parents, why should I be magnanimous? Why should I not be entitled to, and welcome, the same sort of rational basis review (or strict judicial scrutiny) by the MSJC on my behalf?
posted by Eve at
2:20 PM | link
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