CHILDREN OF GAY PARENTS: Joshua Elder

I wanted to comment on something I saw on Marriage Debate a while back. It was about how children of gay parents would say that their upbringing was have been no different (or at least no better) than if they had been raised by heterosexual parents. I totally agree. I'm the only child of a single mother, and while I think my mother is an amazing woman and a great parent, my situation was not ideal. My mother made mistakes and I paid for them. It's hard for children to say this, especially when society directs so much venom towards single mothers/gay parents/etc already. Kids don't want to run their own folks down, and they'll be damned if they'll let anyone else do it. I got into a fight in the third grade over the whole "bastard" thing. No one was gonna talk about my momma like that.

My point being that in the name of tolerance (especially in light of the growth of single parent families and gay couple adoption), we've lost that critical distinction between loving the sinner and hating the sin. We don't think we can do one without doing the other. And to be fair, we often can't. Which is why any poll of the children of gay parents will be all but useless.
posted by Eve at 7:27 PM | link 0 comments

EUROPE AND THE U.S.: Michael Sellitto

I think Stanley Kurtz's arguments about "the gays" wrecking marriage in Scandinavia have been sufficiently debunked at this point.

Regardless, numbers or percentages of marriages occurring are not very meaningful. How do they impact the lives of people in Scandinavia?

Well, let's compare Scandiavia with the US on some statistics that we can all probably agree have meaning:

Scandinavia has:

- lower infant mortality rate than the US
- longer average lifespan than the US
- fewer abortions, per capita
- higher literacy rate

It certainly sounds like, regardless of whether marriage has "ended" in Scandinavia, as Kurtz puts it, that those countries have a healthier population than we have in the US.
posted by Eve at 6:38 PM | link 0 comments

GLAAD STARTS MEDIA CONTEST: From the Associated Press

Borrowing a page from the playbook of online political organization MoveOn.org, a national gay rights group is sponsoring an advertising contest that it hopes will lead to television audiences seeing positive images of same-sex marriage.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which monitors how gays and lesbians are portrayed in the media, plans to air the winning entry or entries in its "I Do" competition in markets where political opposition to marriage rights for gay couples is fiercest, said Joan Garry, the New York-based group's executive director. ...

The contest begins Thursday with the launch of a new Web site where viewers will be able to vote for their favorite 30-second ads after the July 1 submission deadline. A seven-member panel of entertainment industry judges will choose the winner from a group of finalists selected by GLAAD's staff.

As part of the campaign, GLAAD also plans to produce a public service announcement on "the universality of love" featuring actress Susan Sarandon.

GLAAD based the idea on a formula that Berkeley, Calif.-based MoveOn employed late last year when it invited its liberal members to participate in an advertising contest dubbed "Bush in 30 Seconds." ...

The budding videographer behind the first-place spot won't be paid, but will get their work viewed by a panel of judges that includes "Scream" director Kevin Williamson, actress Judith Light, and "Chicago" producer Craig Zadan.

Bruce Cohen, a Hollywood producer whose credits include "American Beauty" and "Down With Love," said he agreed to judge the contest because he supports the cause, but added that he's glad he isn't charged with boiling down the essence of a debate that has roiled the nation into 30 seconds of video.

"If I would be able to come up with something, I would hope that it is and moving and impactful, but with a sense of humor, which my guess is the best ones will be," Cohen said. "Marriage is as all-American and all-family as you can get."

Garry said GLAAD's success in raising money for airing the ads will determine where and for how long they appear. The first ad is expected to appear by the end of the summer, she said.

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posted by Eve at 6:22 PM | link 0 comments

EUROPE AND THE U.S.: Lucia Liljegren

Only a few years ago, many lamented the sky high American illegitimacy rate as a wretched example for the western hemisphere. Somehow, Americans had managed to combine capitalists values and a shockingly high illegitimacy rate. To be sure, many Americans married, but many American marriages also crumbled. Often, parents decided not to marry anyone at all.

Today, the family is reviving in the US. In the mid-1990’s, the sky high American illegitimacy rate seems to have ended its mad ascent after nearly tripling in the years between 1970 and 1993. Yet, since the campaign to legalize same sex marriage has built up steam, the rate of increase in non-marital births has slowed dramatically. This is no coincidence.

A careful look at the campaign for same sex marriage in the US shows that its principle themes are to promote responsible parenthood and long term commitment. Advocates of same sex marriage like Jonathan Rauch and court cases like Goodridge vs. Massachusetts stressed both themes. This important message seems to be getting out; American parents seem about to reverse the long term trend of forgoing marriage.

Examine the evidence. The figure below shows the relationship between out-of-wedlock births and the campaign for same sex marriage. Isolated discussions of same sex marriage began in the mid-80s and mounted slowly. Gays made local gains in 1989 when San Francisco and New York extended domestic partnership benefits to same sex couples. Naturally, local victories in only two cities had little effect on the nationwide illegitimacy rate. However, with these local victories, discussions began to gain steam. Nationwide conversation took off in 1993, when the Supreme Court of the State of Hawaii ruled that denying same sex marriage violated due process. ...

There is hope yet. If we continue discussing same sex marriage, and enacting it more widely, Americans may once again remember that people raising kids had best be married.

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posted by Eve at 4:32 PM | link 0 comments

SSM CASE GOES TO OREGON APPEALS COURT: From 365Gay.com

Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers is appealing a ruling that ordered the state to recognize the 3,022 marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples in the Portland area.

The notice of appeal was filed Thursday with the Oregon Court of Appeals. It seeks to overturn the ruling last month by Multnomah County judge Frank Bearden that also gave the state 90 days to provide gay and lesbian couples with either marriage or the legal equivalent. (story)

In his ruling Bearden also ordered the county to stop issuing more marriage licenses to gay couples until the courts and the legislature made a final decision on same-sex marriage.

Bearden's ruling said that if the legislature failed to act he would allow the licensing to resume.

Multnomah County began issuing marriage licenses to gays and lesbians on March 3 after a legal review determined it was unconstitutional to ban applications from same-sex couples. The county stopped issuing the licenses April 20 following Bearden's ruling.

Legal authorities say that the Court of Appeals is likely to send to case directly to the state Supreme Court.

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posted by Eve at 4:21 PM | link 0 comments

GAYS QUIETLY TIE THE KNOT IN BRAZILIAN STATE: From the Associated Press

To the cheers of a delighted crowd, Joazinho Moraes and Alcindo Sandini exchanged gold rings and cut their white wedding cake inside their beauty salon across the street from the city's Roman Catholic cathedral.

A day earlier, the two men sealed their commitment by signing papers before a justice of the peace, becoming the latest gay couple to get hitched in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's first state to permit civil unions between same-sex couples.

Now it was time to party with champagne and hors d'oeuvres, a celebration that symbolizes one of the biggest gains for gay rights in Latin America.

Unlike the controversy raging in the United States over gay marriages, a landmark judicial decision two months ago allowing civil unions in Brazil's southernmost state has generated little tension in Porto Alegre. It's such a non-issue in South America's largest country that many people don't even know about it.

In the United States, homosexuals from San Francisco to New York state raced to get married for fear that newly permitted gay marriages could soon be made illegal. But even opponents of civil unions in Rio Grande do Sul doubt the decision will be overturned. ...

The order allowing civil unions gives same-sex couples in Rio Grande do Sul broad rights in areas such as inheritance and child custody, and legal grounds to seek insurance benefits and pensions.

Legislation approved last year in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was hailed as the first big victory for gay rights in Latin America. But unlike the Brazilian decree, the Argentine measure does not grant gay couples legal status for their unions, allow them to adopt children or receive inheritances.

The Rio Grande do Sul decision came after a lesbian college professor heading on a sabbatical abroad tried to get her university to pay for her partner's costs, but was refused because they were not married.

Following a request by the state's human rights commission, a panel of judges issued an opinion defending gays' right to seek the same legal protections afforded to traditional married couples. Under Brazilian law, it cannot be overturned in federal courts.

"The only way to change it would be with a constitutional amendment to say 'All Brazilians are equal except gays' and that will never happen," said Luis Gustavo Weiler, a leader of Nuances, a Porto Alegre gay group.

The order generated modest interest in Porto Alegre's newspapers, with local religious leaders condemning civil unions as condoning "sin" and "heresy." But it barely made ripples elsewhere in Brazil, and didn't lead to calls by national politicians to halt civil unions.

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posted by Eve at 4:16 PM | link 0 comments

TOWARD A MORE PERFECT UNION: Nerve.com

[Nerve.com had a symposium on various marriage-related questions, with participants ranging from Margaret Cho to Maggie Gallagher. Some of the panelist selections seemed pretty random to me, and I would really have liked to see some... how to put this... black people. I got bored reading a lot of first-person accounts from roughly the same demographic spread. But there are some interesting bits nonetheless. --Eve]

The whole thing is here.

Excerpts from the segment on "The Future of Marriage": MARGARET CHO: The future of marriage depends on same-sex marriage being made legal. Otherwise, the institution of marriage will be null and void for everyone. Unless same-sex marriage is legalized, there will be no way to honor marriage and be an American at the same time. The Constitution wouldn't apply to the idea that we are all equal, because if gays and lesbians cannot be married, equality is nonexistent. That would mean marriage would be nonexistent, because it would divide the very nature of the statement "We the people . . . " It would be "Us and them the people..." or something like that.

DARCY COSPER: ...I don't want to get married, and I'm skeptical about the institution in general, but I'm also adamantly and actively pro-gay marriage. It seems to me this is an extremely simple, clear-cut civil rights issue, and that if church and state were truly separated by our legislators, there would be no debate left, just the obvious mandate to grant equal rights and legal protections to all U.S. citizens. ...

The issue gets more complex and compelling for me when some activists insist that to offer civil unions rather than marriage for gay couples is insufficient, even if those unions were to provide every single legal benefit of marriage except the term "marriage" itself. I don't disagree; to legislate only civil unions smacks of faux tolerance and ugly "separate but equal" bet-hedging.

But if, as suggested by gay-rights supporters' resistance to settling for civil unions, marriage isn't merely a legal liaison; if it isn't necessarily a religious institution; if it's no longer required to socially sanction sex or children; since it's not an economic need or social protection for women (because marriages are as likely to end as they are to endure); and as it's now perfectly plausible, economically, legally, and socially, for a couple to spend a lifetime together without marriage--then what is marriage for? How does it serve us? What real or symbolic power does marriage have that in this progressive, innovative era it persists as the one ancient tradition to which members of all strata of society so passionately adhere? I'd love to hear Nerve readers' ideas on this.

I can imagine one scenario about the future of marriage: Suppose civil unions, rather than marriages, are legislated for gay couples, as seems a likely intermediate step for U.S. voters and legislators. What if straight couples like as me and my boyfriend--monogamous, cohabitating couples who've made long-term or lifetime commitments to each other but resist marriage per se, with all its associations and implications--began to forgo marriage in favor of civil unions?

MAGGIE GALLAGHER: I am pretty comfortable with saying that in the long run, marriage will prevail.

The marriage idea occurs again and again in human culture, in widely varying places, and in widely varying form, but it always has something to do with bringing together the people who make the baby, so that a) society gets the next generation it needs and b) children get both a mother and a father.

You have to ask yourself: why? There aren't many ideas as universal in human culture as marriage. I think the answer is pretty obvious: a) sex makes babies; b) societies need babies; and c) children need mothers and fathers.

Successful societies (by which I don't mean "good" or "moral" societies, but simply societies that succeed in reproducing themselves through history) recognize the need to channel the energy of young men and women into this particular kind of relationship. "Marriage" is the word for the way we try to create and sustain this social ideal.

Societies that lose the marriage idea are replaced (and sometimes fairly rapidly) by people and cultures that manage to hang onto this vision.

I realize that all three components of what I am calling the "marriage idea" are now controversial. Many people claim that sex doesn't make babies (in spite of the fact that that half of our pregnancies are unintended and one-third of our children are born outside of marriage). Many people believe that overpopulation now threatens us and that babies are consumption items, or luxury goods, not an essential task any society must do. And some people still contest the idea that family structure matters, that kids really do better if they are raised by their own mom and dad.

Big topics for another day.

Marriage will survive. Whether marriage will survive in America, or American civilization can perpetuate itself in the long run without a stronger marriage culture, is another matter.

DR. SCOTT HALZMAN: People need marriage. Not cohabitation, not serial monogamies, not commitment ceremonies, but real marriage. Men and women need attachment; marriage is the means to fulfill that need.

Finding the right woman or the right man represents the termination of a quest that begins almost at birth, and takes on a new meaning when sex hormones besiege our bodies. Through fantasizing, flirting, dating and mating we cull through the possible candidates for a person to whom we want to attach. We want, more than anything, to make that person ours.

Need we be bonded to others, however, through government auspices and social constraints? Doesn't the very word "bond" run contrary to American ideals? After all, aren't permanent attachments unnecessary and archaic?

Yet those social and governmental intrusions serve a critical role in providing structure and definition to the relationship of two people. When I met my wife seventeen years ago at a Club Med, I wanted to go beyond telling my friends and families that I found a great gal. I wanted to make it official, have the world know, and, in kind have the world sanction it. I wanted to bond with her; that bond was my choice. In short, I wanted to marry her. Marriage elevates the relationship of a man and a woman; it brings them closer to God. It also gives them a unique social status; I no longer have a "babe," I have a "wife." And for anyone that's been married, there's a world of difference.

ETHAN WATTERS: This generation has delayed marriage longer than any generation in American history. This in itself is remarkable and has led to innumerable changes in the manner and meaning of young adulthood. But the fact also highlights the question at hand: what does this mean for the future of marriage? There are two possibilities. Some sociologists assume that we here in America are moving the way of Europe, which has steadily devalued the institution. Perpetual cohabitation is now an accepted long-term outcome for heterosexual relationships. The other possibility is that marriage will swing back into style, driving the average marrying age down.

I believe that the idea of marriage is far too deep in the American psyche for us to give it up anytime soon. As the lead cohort of marriage delayers hits their forties, I believe there will be a rush back to the altar. The average marrying age will come back down by a year or two (but never back down to anything near the 1950s and 1960s levels). We will still have a large group of single adults but the vast majority of us will invest our lives in our new marriages. My guess is that we’ll be good at being married. Having waited to become fully formed adults, we will have maturity and composure to weather the tough spots. The irony is that the generation that has delayed marriage might also reinvigorate the institution.

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And from question four, "Unmarried... With Children?":

ETHAN WATTERS: Marriage is due for a comeback in the next few years. I would guess that this will lead many cohabitating parents to tie the knot. In the long run, however, I think we will get more and more used to families assuming a variety of forms, including single parents and cohabitating parents. As these forms become more mainstream, the experiences of the children in these situations will similarly normalize. A child of a single mother in the '50s would have suffered some of the marginalization experienced by his mother. This will be less true of the child of the single parent who is born tomorrow. This goes for cohabitating parents and gay parents as well.

MAGGIE GALLAGHER: I never met a single mother who said, "I can't wait until my child grows up to be an unwed mom." Or, "Goodness, I'm looking forward to my son having children with three women in two different states."

Both common sense and social science show that children really do fare better in an intact family, with their own married mothers and fathers--in a decent, average, loving marriage.

That's the ideal. That's what children want. That's what the human heart wants.

I think we are in the process of rebuilding a marriage culture, unless ideological and legal elites intervene to deconstruct the marriage idea.

DAVID MOATS: The instinct of traditionalists that the nuclear family is best grows out of the sense that there is a role for a father and a mother in a child's life and that anything less is not good enough. But even in a traditional family, fathers and mothers sometimes let their children down and fail to provide the love that is expected or desired. Family structure is varied enough that we are all likely to find ourselves at one time or another in a nontraditional situation. If we are single, we may form a parental relationship with the child of a lover. If we are remarried, we may end up adopting the new spouse's children. With greater freedom of choice in marriage and divorce, families are taking different forms, and children are feeling the pain of unsought changes. It is hard to imagine a return to the old days, but it is not hard to imagine a renewed emphasis on commitment and a willingness to work through problems, especially among children of the much-divorced baby boomers. At the same time, there may be children of baby boomers who are afraid of commitment, which makes commitment all the more difficult and may make divorce more likely. Children are resilient and tough creatures. They are acutely attuned to bullshit. Having fatherly and motherly love is important, whatever the shape of the family. Even in non-traditional families, it is possible to provide it and for children to thrive.

DARCY COSPER: Two of my best friends are currently preparing to have a child out of wedlock, not because they're not committed to one another, nor because they don't plan, as partners, to raise the child to adulthood--they absolutely are and do. They're just not interested in the trappings (and traps) of marriage, and it's not clear to me how this disinterest on their part could have any bearing at all on their child's well-being.

My hunch is that the key to a child's short- and long-term well-being is to be raised by loving, devoted adults, whether single or married parents, gay or straight parents, biological or adoptive or step-parents, immediate family or extended family or community.

I grew up in very nontraditional households, first in a community in which there was a lot of collective/collaborative child care, and after my parents' divorce, in a loose-knit group of recently divorced, newly single mothers and their children--the "Kramer vs. Kramer" generation. I haven't turned into a psychokiller yet; in fact, I seem to be a relatively happy, useful member of society, and some of my finest, fondest memories from childhood have to do with these two dangerously, wackily untraditional, it-takes-a-village type communities. So my personal experience suggests that the hetero/nuclear family unit isn't the only way to ensure that children grow up to be relatively happy, useful pseudo-adults--and may even be inferior to other possible configurations.

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posted by Eve at 10:57 PM | link 0 comments

WHOSE DREAM?: Keith Boykin

Maybe it was destiny. As the nation commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision on May 17, gays and lesbians launched a new chapter in their own struggle for equality. But the black clergy that lit the fire for change half a century ago is now out to dampen that flame, at least where same-sex marriage is concerned.

"If the KKK opposes gay marriage, I would ride with them," Reverend Gregory Daniels, a black minister from Chicago, announced from the pulpit in February. A few eyebrows were raised, mostly in the gay community, but that reaction was overshadowed by the disappointment with a much more prominent Chicago minister, Reverend Jesse Jackson. In a speech at Harvard Law School in February, Jackson spoke out against same-sex marriage and rejected comparisons between the civil rights and gay rights movements. "Gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution," he said, and "they did not require the Voting Rights Act to have the right to vote." ...

In the past six months, dozens of black ministers across the country have spoken out against same-sex marriage. And despite the common liberal portrayal of these clergy as stooges of the white religious right, some of the ministers, like Jackson and Reverend Walter Fauntroy, who once represented Washington, D.C., in Congress, have long records fighting for progressive causes. Has the black church succumbed to the machinations of the white religious right? "I'm sure they're being co-opted, but they don't need a great deal of co-optation," says Reverend Peter Gomes, a black Baptist minister. "I think they come to the prejudice on their own."

Gomes attributes the black social conservatism to racial assimilation. "The African American religious community has spent so much time trying to prove to the white community that it is the same, that for all intents and purposes it shares many of the worst prejudices of the white community."

Gomes's perspective may be influenced by his identity: He's openly gay, and the chaplain at Harvard University. That's a very different constituency than he would find in a black church, and no doubt it's significant that support for same-sex marriage is strongest among black ministers who preach at white churches. There are notable exceptions to this rule, such as reverends Al Sharpton and Joseph Lowery. Support is also strong among secular black leaders such as Coretta Scott King, Carol Moseley Braun, and Julian Bond.

It's puzzling that the black church is so much more conservative on same-sex marriage than it is on other divisive issues such as abortion. The answer may lie in the invisibility of the black gay and lesbian community. While the black church embraces single mothers, drug addicts, and ex-cons, it does not embrace black homosexuals largely because they haven't organized to make their presence felt. Instead, black gays and lesbians have been shamed and silenced into a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" relationship with the church.

A few years ago I interviewed Reverend H. Beecher Hicks, pastor of a popular black church in Washington, D.C. Hicks strongly condemned homosexuality and told me that "those who seek to find a way to legitimize this particular lifestyle will meet with no success." But days later when I visited his church for Sunday service, I recognized a number of black gay men in the congregation. Some were members of the choir, others were ushers, and a few had even more prominent roles. I can't imagine how this church would survive without black gay men, and I can't imagine that the homophobia would continue from the pulpit if they spoke up against it.

But they don't speak up. Far too many black gays and lesbians maintain a truce with the church that allows them to serve quietly, and this conspiracy of silence enables the church to remain simultaneously the most homophobic institution in the black community and the most homo-tolerant. While black gays and lesbians have been sidelined, the white gay community has been caught off guard. As conservatives wisely used black ministers to speak against same-sex marriage, the gay community put out images of white couples and put white spokespeople forward, thereby creating the perception that this is an issue for white folks trying to cash in on the black struggle.

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posted by Eve at 10:52 PM | link 0 comments

GAY MARRIAGE? BEEN THERE, DONE THAT, DUTCH SAY: From the Philadelphia Inquirer

Like a lot of politicians, the mayor of Leeuwarden, a small town about 60 miles north of the Dutch capital, is married.

It's just that his spouse happens to be a man.

Same-sex marriage may be making headlines in America, but here in the land of tulips and canals--not to mention state-sanctioned marijuana cafes, brothels and euthanasia--it's yesterday's news.

In 2000, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize gay nuptials. These days they have become so unremarkable that the city council of Leeuwarden felt no compunction in nominating Geert Dales, a former Amsterdam alderman who married his longtime partner in 2002, to lead their midsized borough. ...

Counting the Netherlands, 10 European countries now recognize gay unions. The list includes Belgium, which became the second country to legalize same-sex marriage, and seven others--France, Germany, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway--that allow registered partnerships designed to grant homosexual couples the same legal rights as married heterosexuals. Portugal has a more limited civil-unions law.

Among Western Europe's most populous nations, only heavily Catholic Italy, where the Vatican wields significant influence over politics, has not addressed gay partnerships.

The list of countries offering gay-marriage rights is expected to expand. Spain's left-wing prime minister has pledged to grant them, and Sweden's parliament is considering a bill to do the same. Switzerland and Britain are moving toward enacting civil-partnership proposals. Civil unions also are under consideration in Ireland and the Czech Republic.

Gay marriage is legal in Canada's three most populous provinces. In France, a battle is brewing over whether to allow full marriage as well as civil partnerships.

"It's not a particularly fast-moving trend, but it's definitely a trend," said Lee Badgett, a labor economist at the University of Massachusetts who has spent the last seven months in Amsterdam studying same-sex marriage.

Backers of gay unions argue that their existence in Europe has not harmed the institution of marriage as opponents feared it would, and critics have offered no data to refute that. Analysts disagree, though, about whether the European and Canadian political currents propelling acceptance of the unions will migrate to the United States, despite what happened recently in Massachusetts, which on May 17 became the first U.S. state to allow gay marriage.

Badgett doesn't think so.

"I think the patterns in Europe are just so different," she said. "It comes down to raw political power in a lot of cases--most of the countries that did this just don't have the organized religious right that the U.S. does."

There is also a big difference in public opinion. A Gallup Poll in early May found that 55 percent of Americans opposed gay marriage, while about 49 percent favored civil unions. President Bush and many Republicans want a constitutional ban on gay marriage, while his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, supports civil unions but not gay marriage. While Vermont, California, Hawaii and New Jersey now provide some rights to same-sex couples, 39 states have passed laws prohibiting or refusing to recognize same-sex marriage.

But in a February cover story in the National Journal, journalist Paul Starobin argued that change was in the winds, because a recent poll showed that 56 percent of Americans in the 18-to-29 age group favored gay marriage. ...

If so, the American political debate has a long way to move. By the time the Netherlands enacted its same-sex marriage law in late 2000, it already had a civil-unions law that gave gay couples the same rights as married couples over matters such as inheritance and pensions. The marriage right was seen as a largely symbolic but important final step for some gay people, and 70 percent of the Dutch public favored it, according to polls.

Unlike in the United States, even many of the leading Dutch opponents of same-sex marriage said they had no problem with gay civil unions. In fact, they cited the Netherlands' progressive partnership law as an argument against moving to full marriage.

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posted by Eve at 10:45 PM | link 0 comments

WATCHDOG GROUP ASKS IRS TO INVESTIGATE CATHOLIC DIOCESE: From the Associated Press

A secular group asked the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Roman Catholic diocese in Colorado Springs on Thursday, saying the bishop violated federal tax law when he threatened to withhold Communion from those who disagree with the church.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State in Washington, said Bishop Michael Sheridan went too far when he sent out a church letter saying Catholics should not receive Communion if they vote for politicians who disagree with the church by backing abortion rights and other topics. ...

The leaders of Colorado's three Catholic dioceses, with about 600,000 Catholics, all have spoken out.

Earlier this month, Sheridan wrote in a Catholic newspaper that Catholic politicians may not take Communion if they break with church teachings against abortion rights, euthanasia, gay marriage and stem-cell research. He said the same standard applies to ordinary Catholics who vote for such candidates--believed to be the most dramatic warning from any U.S. prelate on the topic so far. ...

In a letter to the IRS, Lynn said the church should lose its tax-exempt status because it is using church resources for political purposes.

"I believe that Bishop Sheridan, by issuing this document in a church publication in his official capacity as head of a religious organization, may have violated federal tax law and jeopardized the tax-exempt status of the Diocese of Colorado Springs," Lynn wrote division director Steven Miller.

Lynn said churches and other tax-exempt organizations can engage in limited political debate involving bills before Congress, but cannot tell people how to vote.

Earlier this week, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote a column saying Catholics should refrain from Communion if they're "living in serious sin" or deny the church's teachings. He did not mention voting or political hot-button topics.

Denver attorney Robert Tiernan has also said he also believes Chaput and Sheridan are electioneering and said he will challenge the Roman Catholic church's tax-exempt status in Colorado.

Timothy Dore, an attorney who heads the church's lobbying efforts in Colorado, said previously that voter registration and education efforts are intended to raise awareness of Catholic social teaching, not tell people how to vote.

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posted by Eve at 10:42 PM | link 0 comments

BLACK MINISTERS JOIN DRIVE AGAINST SSM: From the Chicago Tribune

With a collective cry of "hallelujah," more than two dozen African-American clerics on Wednesday joined a growing national chorus of religious leaders in black churches who oppose same-sex marriage and may withdraw their support for politicians who favor it.

Meeting at the Sweet Holy Spirit Gospel Baptist Church on the South Side, leaders from more than 28 denominations vowed to collect 50,000 signatures in the city's black churches and warned city and state politicians that they should not count on the churches' historical support unless they oppose same-sex unions.

Although black churches' political activity has generally centered on economic concerns rather than such social issues as gay rights and abortion, leaders say that may be changing.

"African-Americans and people of color as a whole have not made their religion an intricate part of their politics," said Bishop Tavis Grant, head of the Greater First Church International in East Chicago. "This particular issue, like no other issue, has the potential to galvanize and cause communities of color to become more diversified in politics."

African-Americans might now think twice about blindly voting for Democratic candidates, said Bishop Larry Trotter of Sweet Holy Spirit, who also issued a warning to Mayor Richard Daley.

"We are going to appeal to Mayor Daley because he was very vocal about the acceptance of same-sex marriage in our city, which, for one, goes against the voter who is a Christian and, two, goes against his own church, the Catholic Church," Trotter said. "The people we put in office are going to have to represent the church or cease coming to the church for support when it is election time."

Slowly, black religious leaders across the country have begun speaking out in an effort to prevent same-sex unions from being legalized in their states.

But there is great disagreement among African-Americans over the issue, fueled by a comparison some advocates of gay marriage make between the civil rights struggle and the fight for gay rights. ...

A survey last fall by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life showed that 62 percent of blacks have an unfavorable opinion of homosexuality--close to the 69 percent of white evangelicals who hold that view.

And this week, a poll released by John Green of the Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of Akron showed that black Protestants gave President Bush higher marks on his social policies than on economics. The 3,500 respondents, surveyed in April and May, were asked how they rated Bush on the issues, and the percentage of those who rated him "excellent" or "good" was subtracted from the percentage of those who said "poor" or "very poor." Bush's net rating on economic policies was negative 60 percent, but only negative 15 percent on social policies, defined by the survey as his stance on abortion and marriage.

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posted by Eve at 10:37 PM | link 0 comments

PENNA. HOUSE DELAYS VOTE ON SSM: From the

After nearly two hours of emotional debate on legislation to prohibit same-sex marriages in Pennsylvania, state House members decided they weren't ready to take a stand on the hot topic, and put off a vote until after the Nov. 2 election.

Conservatives argued strongly for the bill, saying, "Marriage is a God-given institution between one man and one woman and is the foundation of the family," while moderates lambasted it, saying it would make gay people second-class citizens.

Finally state Rep. Harry Readshaw, D-Carrick, moved to postpone further debate until Nov. 8. That would be after the November election in which many legislators will seek another term. His motion was narrowly approved 96-94.

"I think they were afraid of it," said Rep. Jerry Birmelin, R-Wayne, who sponsored the legislation that said "no marriage license shall be issued to two individuals of the same sex." It also said any marriage "between individuals of the same sex which was entered into in another state or foreign jurisdiction ... shall be void in this commonwealth." ...

Critics said one little-known provision of the bill would have banned "spousal equivalent relationships," such as civil unions or domestic partnerships sanctioned in other states.

They said it could conceivably affect some heterosexual as well as homosexual couples, especially senior citizens -- for example, elderly widows and widowers who live together without getting married so as not to disturb their finances, wills or health benefits from their first marriages. ...

Rep. Steven Nickol, R-York, said he was concerned about the bill's ban on spousal equivalent relationships, which were defined as a "civil union, domestic partnership or life partnership between two individuals of the same sex or different sexes, which the individuals may believe is similar to marriage."

He noted that many younger couples and even some senior citizens -- of the same sex or different sexes -- often live together, either for convenience, safety, companionship or just because they don't feel like going through a formal civil or religious ceremony.

He said he feared "protracted and expensive litigation" if the Legislature started telling either gay or straight couples, for example, whom they could leave their possessions to after they died.

Rep. Kathy Manderino, D-Philadelphia, said Birmelin's proposal could make it difficult for a surviving partner to get insurance payments or other benefits if his or her partner were killed on the job.

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posted by Eve at 10:26 PM | link 0 comments

WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE?: Gabriel Rosenberg replies to Stanley Kurtz

...The first thing that struck me about the article was the leading graphic showing the rate of out-of-wedlock birth in the Netherlands from 1970 to 2003. It's a bar graph and the bars are blue until 1997, the year when a registered partnership bill passed, at which point the bars become red. Before looking at the text, I would have thought the red bars were a projection based on the trend of the blue bars. I was thus a little suprised that this was supposed to be evidence of an effect of registered partnerships. ...

Now that I understood better what the graph was actually claiming, I could start to consider its significance. Using the direct CBS numbers I noticed that the illegitimacy rate has risen every year since 1973. So the claim must be that registered partnerships exacerbated this trend. We do see from the numbers that while the rate of increase rose drastically during the 70's, the rate of increase stabilized during the 80's before rising drastically again during the 1993-1998 timeframe and then stabilizing again. ...So what might have been some of the causes of this acceleration during the time frame 1993 to 1998? I don't know, but it wasn't registered partnerships and it certainly wasn't same-sex marriage. The former didn't occur until the end of that time frame (it passed in 1997 and became law in 1998) and the latter not until after it. It seems like Kurtz might realize this because he labels his graph as "Out-of-Wedlock Births and the Campaign for Same-Sex Marriage." So it seems at times that Kurtz is arguing not that same-sex marriage will lead to an increase of out-of-wedlock birth, but rather the campaign for it will. I don't know how he proposes to stop people from campaigning for same-sex marriage, but perhaps, as the subtitle of his article indicates, we can learn some lessons from the Netherlands.

In his article Kurtz refers to the danger of a menu of relationship options. Sure enough the Dutch do have four types of living/partnership arrangements recognized under family law. And all four options are open to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples. It does seem natural to me that now that marriage has to compete with three other arrangements, [fewer] people will choose marriage. So the question then becomes how do we avoid this "menu" of living arrangements. One solution that seems obvious to me is to adopt same-sex marriage to begin with. That would weaken the drive for civil unions, registered partnerships, legally recognized cohabitation, etc. ...The choice of spouse is not a threat to marriage. It's the choice of alternative living arrangements with the same spouse. ...

...Perhaps this is another lesson from the Netherlands. Instead of arguing how married couples must have children, try focusing on how marriage helps those couples that do have children. The answer is not that it gives the child a mother and a father. A couple can cohabit and do that. They can even live apart and do that. What is probably meant instead is that marriage makes it more likely for the mother and father to stay together which is good for the child. That seems like a natural argument and one can even explain how marriage helps to keep the couple together, and how that is good for the child. But then one might ask, isn't it better for a child being raised by same-sex parents for those parents to stay together? And couldn't marriage increase the chances of that couple remaining together?

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posted by Eve at 3:23 PM | link 0 comments

WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE?: Matt Taylor

To understand whether and how legal recognition of gay couples has affected marriage in Europe, more data is needed. In particular, it would be interesting to see surveys that measure political and religious views toward marriage, ask how these views were affected by gay marriage and/or domestic partnership, and examine how that correlates with the subject's marital history.

If indeed gay marriage can lead to divorce and/or single parenting, the details of the causal mechanism need to be understood. With such knowledge, it might be possible to craft a marriage policy that satisfies the needs of gay and lesbian couples without adverse effects on child-rearing.
posted by Eve at 3:19 PM | link 0 comments

SLIPPERY SLOPE: Jose Solano

Just a short comment on "slippery slope." Somehow the postings I've been reading seem to think that polygamy is further down the slippery slope than homosexuality. Certainly this cannot be based on any major religious/cultural perception or tenet. For ancient Judaism and the not so ancient Sephardic Jews, in the Moslem world, among certain Mormons and numerous other people there is nothing wrong with polygamy. The case from nature can be far more strongly made for polygamy than for homosexuality. Till just recently it is homosexuality that has been at the bottom end of the slippery slope of human sexual relationships. Powerful political action has raised its position on the slope but in reality the only thing further down the slope is the very common multi-partner homosexuality for which government may in time be issuing "marriage" licenses.
posted by Eve at 3:18 PM | link 0 comments

posted by Eve at 3:00 PM | link 0 comments

THE MARRIAGE MOVEMENT AND THE BLACK CHURCH: A Brookings Institute roundtable

BROOKINGS WELFARE REFORM & BEYOND INITIATIVE PUBLIC FORUM:

"The Marriage Movement and the Black Church"

Wednesday, June 2, 2004
9:30 a.m. - 11: 30 a.m.

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC

Introduction: RON HASKINS, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

PANEL ONE
Moderator: ROBERT FRANKLIN
Presidential Distinguished Professor, Emory University

Panelists:
Rev. LESLIE BRAXTON
Senior Pastor, Mount Zion Baptist Church, Seattle, Washington

Rev. MICHAEL NABORS
Senior Pastor, New Calvary Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan

Rev. THABITI ANYABWILE
Associate, Center for the Study of Social Policy, Washington, D.C.

Rev. Dr. CHERYL ANTHONY
Founder and C.E.O., Judah International Christian Center, Brooklyn, New
York

PANEL TWO
Moderator: RALPH SMITH
Senior Vice President, Annie E. Casey Foundation

Panelists:
DIANN DAWSON
Director, Office of Regional Operators, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

W. BRADFORD WILCOX
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville

RONALD MINCY
Professor of Social Work Policy and Practice, Columbia University

ROBERT WOODSON
Founder and President, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise

In the growing national debate over marriage, the role of the black
church is attracting increased attention. The African American family
has undergone major changes in recent decades: nearly seven of ten black
children are born to unmarried parents and marriage rates have
plummeted. Despite a recent increase in the number of black children
living in two-parent families and a 40 percent decline in the birth rate
among black teenagers over the last decade, about 85 percent of black
children are still expected to spend some or all of their childhood in a
single-parent family.

The black church could play a vital role in educating young people and
parents about the importance of marriage and about the consequences of
nonmarital childbearing, especially by teenagers. Because faith-based
organizations are among the most important social institutions in many
black communities, the support, resistance, or level of participation of
black faith leaders in programs that encourage marriage could either
foster or forestall those programs.

At a June 2 symposium at Brookings sponsored by the Welfare Reform &
Beyond initiative, several prominent African American ministers will
present their views on whether the black church should focus its
attention on promoting marriage and reducing nonmarital childbearing
and, if so, how the church should go about achieving these goals. After
the presentations, a panel of researchers, policymakers, and community
activists will provide context for the marriage debate in the black
community and respond to the ministers' remarks.

RSVP: Please call the Brookings Office of Communications, 202/797-6105,
or by email at communications@brookings.edu or visit us online at
http://www.brookings.edu/comm/events/20040602.htm.
posted by Eve at 2:59 PM | link 0 comments

FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES SEE MONEY IN GAY FAMILIES: From FoxNews.com

Now that gay marriage has taken center stage as a hot-button issue and has been legalized in Massachusetts, Fortune 500 companies are eyeing its business potential--and seeing dollar signs.

Recognizing same-sex couples and families as an emerging market, large corporations have begun targeting the demographic in their ads.

Companies including International Business Machines (IBM), Volvo and JP Morgan (JPM) have featured gay couples or parents, mostly in print or online ads. And Subaru has been marketing to the gay population as a whole for years. ...

Still, for practical purposes, most marketing and advertising experts put gays and lesbians at 4 percent or more of the total American population--an enormous market given that, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Americans spent $3.8 trillion on retail sales including auto and restaurants in 2003. ...

According to Witeck Combs Communications and MarketResearch.com, gay and lesbian parents spent $22 billion on their kids in 2002; that number was expected to go up to $28 billion by the end of this year, according to Witeck Combs.

Most of the gay couple and family ads are in print or online media specifically aimed at the gay community. Car companies have taken out ads featuring same-sex families, the most notable being Ford Motor Co.'s high-profile Volvo ad, which ran in gay magazines like The Advocate and Out.

The spread depicted one gay couple with a baby and a pregnant lesbian with her partner, and the slogan "Whether you're starting a family or creating one as you go... Volvo. For life."

IBM ran a print ad in publications like the same-sex parenting magazine And Baby that shows several of its own gay employees, including a pregnant woman.

The travel, financial services and wedding industries have also marketed to same-sex couples and families. Some cruise lines and resorts advertise gay-family-friendly vacations. Financial companies like John Hancock Financial Services and JP Morgan Brown Co., a brokerage service of JP Morgan, have taken out ads featuring gay and lesbian couples. And the bridal business has also started going after gay couples who want to tie the knot. ...

Though few ads have appeared in mainstream publications or on network TV, Johnson said it's smarter and more cost-effective to target the demographic in media specifically for them.

"The logical first step is not to buy 30 seconds on NBC. The logical first step is to put your ad in The Advocate," Johnson said. "It's a more efficient starting point. If that works, then who knows? Maybe you take things more broadly."

Though some corporations are gingerly reaching out to gay couples and families, the number of Fortune 500s targeting the demographic is still fairly slim. Those that are doing it only have a toe in the water so far.

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posted by Eve at 2:52 PM | link 0 comments

SUIT FILED AGAINST OREGON COMMISSIONERS: From the Oregonian

An opponent of same-sex marriages filed a lawsuit on Monday alleging that four elected officials and two administrators misspent public money in allowing marriage licenses to be issued to same-sex partners.

The suit was filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court on behalf of Johny Alan Belgarde, who is director of the Christian Coalition of Oregon. The coalition is attempting to recall the four elected officials named in the court complaint.

Defendants in the suit are Diane Linn, chairwoman of the county board, and Commissioners Maria Rojo de Steffey, Serena Cruz and Lisa Naito. The other defendants are Cecillia Johnson, director of the county Department of Business and Community Services, and David Boyer, the county's finance officer.

The suit asks the defendants to return to the county general fund money spent by the county in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The suit also asks for an injunction to prevent similar expenditures in the future.

The four commissioners who approved the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples in March said they were acting under legal opinions suggesting that same-sex partners were entitled to the same rights as heterosexuals under the Oregon Constitution.

Issuance of licenses to same-sex partners in Multnomah County has been halted by a court order while the issue is considered by the courts and possibly the state Legislature.

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posted by Eve at 2:50 PM | link 0 comments

ARE THERE OVER 1000 FEDERAL MARRIAGE BENEFITS?: IMAPP press release

Maggie writes: Remember when all good Americans understood that federal tax and welfare policies created disincentives to marriage? Thought you might be interested in our new policy brief which looks at how the SSM debate may create an unbalanced public perception of federal marriage benefits through a misinterpretation of the 1997 GAO report (originally ordered by Henry Hyde). Press release below, full copy here (PDF).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: May 26, 2004

Contact: Joshua Baker, info@imapp.org; 202.216.9430

ARE THERE OVER 1000 FEDERAL MARRIAGE BENEFITS? A Re-Analysis of the 1997 GAO Report

Does federal law shower newlyweds with important financial benefits? A report just released by the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, "1,000 Federal Benefits of Marriage?", calls into question the widespread idea that most couples get many marriage benefits from the U.S. government.

"I wish there were 1,049 marriage benefits under federal law," quipped Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, "but couples who marry expecting a big wedding present from the federal government are likely to be disappointed."

In 1997, the General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report identifying 1,049 federal statutes which refer to marital status. Earlier this year, that total was revised upward to 1,138. Despite the disclaimer in the original report that "no conclusions can be drawn . . . concerning the effect of [a] law on married people versus single people," this report is now routinely used to assert that there are "1,138 federal rights and privileges [of marriage which are denied] to gay couples," as Richard Lacayo recently put it in Time magazine.

The new analysis of the GAO report concludes the truth is "more complicated":

"Most of these legal provisions are not benefits per se, but ways in which married couples are treated differently than unmarried couples or individuals in federal law. In some cases they are clearly benefits to both spouses; in other cases they are more accurately described as benefits to one spouse and liabilities to the other, or benefits to couples in some cases and burdens to couples in other situations."

In addition, many of these statutory provisions (like benefits to Spanish-American War widows) affect only few if any contemporary individuals or couples.

"Federal law also creates clear marriage penalties for many couples, most often through means-tested eligibility requirements for Medicaid, welfare, and housing assistance which include spousal income, and also in the federal tax code."

Thus, "while marriage is deeply embedded in federal law, whether federal legal provisions provide net economic marriage benefits or marriage penalties is unclear, and would likely vary substantially from couple to couple."

If the GAO report is going to be used to advocate substantial changes in public policy, the study concludes, researchers should make a more serious effort to ascertain whether or not federal law confers a net marriage benefit on same-sex and other couples.

To interview Maggie Gallagher, or to request a copy of the policy brief, please contact Joshua Baker at info@imapp.org, or call (202) 216-9430.
posted by Eve at 2:43 PM | link 0 comments

THE CASE FOR SSM? Maggie Gallagher replies to Gregg Easterbrook

Technical question: What does social science tell us about how legal marriage will affect same-sex couples? Will it have the same powerful benefits marriage has for opposite-sex couples? (In this context marriage benefits do not refer to privileges and immunities granted by law but the "natural" good consequences that flow from entering the marriage relationship.)

I'm often asked to speculate. The first answer is: we don't know. There is no good body of social science research (comparable to the marriage research) on how marriage or quasi-marital legal arrangements affect the well-being of same-sex couples (or their children, for that matters).

The second answer is: it depends. It depends on at least two things: a. how (and how much) does gender matter?

b. How much social support (from the general community and from the gay community) for permanence, fidelity, healthy norms of behavior will these couples receive?

Social support in this sense could also be described as "social pressure." Social support for marriage norms, social pressure not to deviate from them.

My own guess, and it is just a guess, is that same-sex couples will receive some portion of the "marriage benefits" described in The Case for Marriage, but will look more like cohabiting same-sex couples than cohabiting opposite-sex couples look like married couples. That is, SS couples will experience a lower return to marriage.

Why? My sense is that SSM is embraced by the gay community as a right, not as a social norm, there is little or no "social support" (and/or social pressure) from within the gay community for getting or for staying married, and that the broader community will not offer the same social support/social pressure to ss couples as to opposite-sex couples (at least in jurisdictions where SSM is court-ordered). I also suspect that gender has something to do with the benefits of marriage i.e. there are specfic benefits to women that come from intimate partnership with a man, and most especially vice versa. Women do things for men that men just do not do for their fellow men, at least to the same extent.

High rates of exit (such as the high divorce rates in Swedish SS couples) would also lead us to predict a lower return to marriage. We know from prior research that when opposite-sex couples see divorce-risk as high, or have a reduced commitment to marital permanence, they do not make the same investments in each other.

But it would be nice to get some actual research on this question.
posted by Eve at 2:39 PM | link 0 comments

IS GAY-MARRIAGE COVERAGE SLANTED?: Terry Mattingly

Media-beat scribe Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post is getting knocked around a bit these days in the kingdom of Romenesko at Poynter. ...

...The crucial question seems to be this: Are there two sides to the gay-marriage story? Is this a case in which mainstream journalists -- as opposed to reporters at places such as Salon.com, Out and some sections of the New York Times -- should attempt to find some kind of balance between those in favor and those opposed? Or, in the view of the press, is this officially a battle between the enlightened and the bigots?

The key letter at Poynter.org came from Ron Kampeas, who is concerned that Kurtz is concerned that waves of celebratory news coverage in Massachusetts might be a sign of liberal bias. Here is the money paragraph:

"How do you avoid upbeat wedding coverage? The May 17 spot story was essentially that these people who could not previously get married were getting married. It was an event story, and demanded on the scene color. Was there a bias in the political story in the weeks and months that preceded it? I'm not sure, that's best left to the people who pick through the miles of newsprint. But as last Monday’s story was not the conceptual, political for-and-against story. Everyone interviewed at the events -– the couple, the licensed marrier, the guests, the family -– are naturally going to be happy. Does the 'Vows' column in the New York Times have a bias toward weddings? Should a wedding be covered like a campaign rally, with every second graf a reminder of 'why this might be wrong'[?] How do you fact-check a wedding? How many people, even among the opponents of gay marriage, could be counted on for pertinent nay-saying quotes in wedding coverage? Who, aside from the God Hates F**s guy, is going to say Bob and Steve or Millie and Joan should NOT have had fun today?"

That's one perspective. The key, however, is whether newsrooms contain journalists with the skills and the commitment to cover both sides of this highly complex and highly divisive moral, political, legal and even theological story. Can anyone find articulate voices on both sides? This may even be an issue that requires what I call a "visual fairness" strategy, with newspaper editors assigning reporters to cover developments on both sides of the debate and write stories that are played side by side.

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posted by Eve at 2:34 PM | link 0 comments

TWO MORE MASS. CITIES ISSUING OUT-OF-STATE SSM LICENSES: From the Contra Costa Times

Two city clerks confirmed Tuesday they are issuing marriage licenses to out-of-state gay couples, even as three other clerks temporarily stopped the practice under pressure from the governor.

The Attleboro clerk said the city solicitor authorized her to issue licenses to gay couples from the 11 states that have not adopted Defense of Marriage Acts that bar same-sex weddings.

The Fall River clerk said that city's law department had made the decision, prior to the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts on May 17, that all qualified applicants would be given licenses.

Republican Gov. Mitt Romney has stated that no gay couples from other states can marry in Massachusetts based on a 1913 statute that prohibits unions that would not be legal in a couple's home state.

Democratic Attorney General Thomas Reilly ordered clerks on Monday in Provincetown, Somerville, Springfield and Worcester to cease and desist from issuing marriage licenses to out-of-state couples.

All except Provincetown, a gay tourist mecca on Cape Cod, stopped issuing such licenses while they explore legal options. Provincetown officials met Tuesday night but delayed announcing any decision until Wednesday. [They've decided to stop, by the way. --Eve]

Reilly's office said Tuesday that he would take no action against other cities and towns unless he received referrals from Romney.

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posted by Eve at 2:19 PM | link 0 comments

A HIGH COURT GRILLING FOR SAN FRANCISCO: From the Sacramento Bee

This city encountered a stiff challenge from the California Supreme Court on Tuesday as it made its case for letting same-sex marriage resume here and validating the 4,037 marriages already performed.
The justices threw out mind-bending questions for two hours, but they seemed to reserve their tougher questions for the lawyer representing the city.

Why did San Francisco start marrying gay couples without first getting a ruling on the constitutionality of the state's ban on gay marriage? the justices asked.

And, they asked, why shouldn't gay marriages performed before such a ruling be treated as invalid? The constitutional question will be decided in other cases, all on hold in Superior Court, and not by the Supreme Court at this stage.

Therese Stewart, the chief deputy city attorney, argued that San Francisco had a higher duty--to enforce a fundamental right to marry.

She contended that another basic right, that of due process, should protect the existing gay marriages from being invalidated in the Supreme Court case, in which the couples were not parties with a right to be heard.

"But, of course, it's the city that created this mess," observed Justice Marvin Baxter. He said San Francisco should not have acted without obtaining a ruling.

Chief Justice Ronald George also reminded Stewart that "no such due process" was afforded by city officials when they decided in February that they weren't bound by state laws restricting marriage to a man and woman.

However, George and most of the other justices played devil's advocate to lawyers on both sides of the debate, quizzing them alternately about the implications of letting city officials defy certain laws and the ambiguities of a state constitutional provision that may or may not forbid local defiance.

The court has 90 days to issue its decision.

In March, when the justices accepted two separate cases filed against the city by state Attorney General Bill Lockyer and the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, they ordered a temporary halt to the city's monthlong gay-wedding fest.

The status of the marriages that had taken place seemed to be one of the stickier questions for the justices.

If they rule that the city exceeded its powers, asked Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, "would it not follow that the marriages were invalid?" But, she asked, would they then "spring back to life" if the state restrictions on marriage were held unconstitutional in a later case? ...

The justices questioned, for example, what legal limits could be set if city officials were allowed to defy state statutes.

If a recently shelved bill to legalize gay marriage had been enacted, asked Justice Ming Chin, could disapproving cities defy that? Other justices speculated about local police who might consider gun controls to be unconstitutional or local planning officials who might think property rights include the right to build on a beach.

Justice Carlos Moreno, seemingly wary of restricting local officials too much, asked whether a county clerk could have issued licenses to mixed-race couples before the historic 1948 state Supreme Court decision that cleared the way. The U.S. Supreme Court followed 19 years later.

Stewart said the line should be drawn at the point where the status quo has been "substantially undermined" by judicial decisions--like the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision striking down the Texas sodomy law.

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posted by Eve at 2:14 PM | link 0 comments

SSM BAN INTACT IN ARIZONA: From the Arizona Republic

The Arizona Supreme Court slammed shut the door on same-sex marriage in the state Tuesday, refusing to consider the case of Don Standhardt and Tod Keltner, two gay Phoenix men who were denied a marriage license.

The state's high court issued no comment with its refusal.

The decision lets stand an Arizona Court of Appeals ruling that there is no fundamental right to same-sex marriage in either the U.S. or Arizona constitutions. ...

When Standhardt and Keltner filed suit, it raised many hopes and perhaps even more fears that Arizona would follow in the footsteps of Massachusetts and start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Like the Massachusetts case, the Standhardt legal argument was based on a clause in the Arizona Constitution stating that no citizens or businesses could be granted privileges or immunities that were denied to others.

On July 1, 2003, days after the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down anti-sodomy laws in Texas, Standhardt and Keltner applied for a marriage license at the Clerk of the Superior Court's Office in Phoenix. They were denied because Arizona law expressly forbids same-sex marriage.

A week later, they filed suit in the Arizona Court of Appeals, which upheld the clerk's decision. So Standhardt and Keltner petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to hear the case, but that court refused and does not have to give reasons for doing so. ...

Because Ryan raised issues of federal law in his petition, he can now take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

When asked if he would, he answered, "That's a very big step, and I would have to consult with my co-counsel on the case. So I can't answer that yet."

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posted by Eve at 12:44 PM | link 0 comments

AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER CLOSES SSM LOOPHOLE: From the Queensland Courier-Mail

THE Howard Government will outlaw the Australian recognition of gay marriages formed overseas by inserting the words "man" and "woman" into the Marriage Act.

Prime Minister John Howard yesterday told his parliamentary colleagues that Federal Cabinet had decided to "go forward" with the plan so as to protect the traditional definition of marriage and head-off three imminent court challenges to the law as it stands. ...

There is no formal definition of marriage either in the Marriage Act or the Family Law Act, and until now the notion that marriage is a union between a man and a woman has only been assumed.

But with Canada and some US states now permitting marriage between foreign homosexual couples, family groups and Coalition backbenchers have been lobbying Federal Cabinet to ensure that such unions would not be recognised in Australia.

The Australian Family Association also wanted biological definitions of the genders written into law to prohibit transsexual couples from marrying--a move the Government has rejected. ...

Federal Cabinet's move came as Greens MP Michael Organ introduced a private member's Bill that would remove barriers to same-sex marriages and allow homosexual couples to adopt children and access IVF treatment.

Mr Organ's proposed laws also would grant gay couples equal access to superannuation, employment and health entitlements.

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posted by Eve at 2:58 AM | link 0 comments

NEW QUESTION: WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE?

As statistics begin to roll in from the European countries that legalized same-sex marriage and "registered partnerships" in the 1990s, all kinds of different interpretations have been offered. Some argue that marriage in these countries is dying, and same-sex marriage is one of the causes of death. Others say SSM has had no effect or has even strengthened marriage.

What do you think is happening in Europe? Why is it happening? And what--if any--are the implications for Americans?

Click below to join the debate!
posted by Eve at 5:19 PM | link 0 comments

WHAT HAPPENED IN SCANDINAVIA?: Stanley Kurtz replies to M.V. Lee Badgett

M.V. Lee Badgett, professor of economics and gay and lesbian studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has a Slate piece that purports to refute my work on same-sex unions and marriage in Scandinavia. It doesn't. Badgett's case is built on statistical sleight of hand. And his claim that "heterosexual marriage looks pretty healthy in Scandinavia" flies in the face of a broad scholarly consensus.

The idea that Scandinavian marriage is dying is not my invention. Have a look at this 2000 piece from the Los Angeles Times. Scandinavians, the Times reports, "have all but given up on marriage as a framework for family living, preferring cohabitation even after their children are born." According to the Times, "the 1990's witnessed a resolute rejection of marriage, even among couples having children." Whether they praise or blame the Scandinavian family system, scholars agree.

Badgett's odd claim that Scandinavian marriage is doing just fine is built on a statistical trick. According to Badgett, roughly four out of five couples with children in Denmark and Norway are married. That's true, but it's also incomplete and deeply misleading. What Badgett doesn't tell you is that her "couples with children" figure includes only couples who are living together. Children who live with single parents or step families are omitted from Badgett's report. ...

And the problem is getting worse. In Norway, cohabiting families are the fastest-growing family type, while married couples with children are the fastest shrinking family type. The proportion of Norwegian children living with married parents dropped 16 percent from 1989 to 2002 (from 78 percent to 62 percent). ...

You can read more in this summary from Statistics Norway. Notice what Norway's own national statisticians take to be the big story in the numbers--the rise of cohabitation and the decline of married couples with children. That's a far cry from Badgett's claim that "heterosexual marriage looks pretty healthy in Scandinavia." ...

...Until recently, Holland was vastly more traditional about marriage than Scandinavia. The Dutch had very low rates of parental cohabitation, and very low rates of out-of-wedlock birth. But since registered partnerships and formal gay marriage were introduced in the Netherlands, parental cohabitation has spread widely, and the out-of-wedlock birthrate has been moving up at a fast pace.

This is exactly what Badgett says needs to happen in order to prove that registered partnerships and gay marriage really do encourage parental cohabitation. The Netherlands does in fact meet the causal test Badgett sets. Gay marriage came in, and the out-of-wedlock birthrate shot up. ...

I've explained how I think the larger causal process works, but Badgett has ignored what I've said. I do not argue that gay marriage is the sole cause, or even the main cause, of parental cohabitation. It is one of several causes. Gay marriage is one part of a new stage of marital decline that contains three basic elements: parental cohabitation, legal equalization of marriage and cohabitation, and gay marriage. My claim is that these three factors are mutually reinforcing. When any of these three factors emerges, the others tend to follow. And they draw out the initial factors still further.

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posted by Eve at 5:10 PM | link 0 comments

DISESTABLISH MARRIAGE?: Henry Dieterich

...C.S. Lewis--I believe in Mere Christianity--suggests something like what I am about to suggest: that it might be better if the Church simply did not recognize civil marriages at all. In that case two people who were married, but not in the Church, would no more be considered married by the Church than two people living together outside of legal marriage. Similarly, marriage in the Church would have no standing in the law unless the couple also entered into a civil marriage. This would, at least, mean that no one would seek to marry in the Church as a means of entering into the legal relationship.

The problem with this proposal is that both these contracts are called "marriage" but the word means two very different things. One means "a permanent, exclusive union between a man and a woman undertaken for the common service of God, particularly envisioning the procreation of children by sexual union." The other means, "an open-ended, but not necessarily permanent, arrangement whereby two people enter into a set of legally defined mutual rights and duties, mainly economic, but beyond these the terms are entirely at the discretion of the parties." Nothing in the second definition could be said to imply logically that the relationship involve only two persons, and those of opposite sexes. Nothing in the two definitions makes using the same word for them even understandable, except that they share a historical root. ...

If secular marriage is increasingly meaningless in Christian terms, and the legal system is extending its privileges to relationships increasingly distant from the Christian idea of marriage, might it not be a good idea to get rid of it entirely? Rather than fight a losing battle to make civil marriage a dim reflection of Christian marriage, why not return marriage to the Church where it belongs and substitute significant-otherhood in the secular realm?

The state could register and license an official legal relationship between two persons, which would have certain legal privileges and duties attached to it, such as the ability to file a joint tax return, or to enjoy one another's pension benefits, health insurance, or inheritance, and so on. Married couples (married in religious services or other ceremonies, with no relation to the state) could gain such a status; but so could other individuals, whether or not their relationship involved sexual relations or some facsimile thereof. It might be considered good public policy to limit such a contract to two adult persons--or maybe not. But at any rate, it would not be called marriage. People could call themselves married if they felt like it, but the word itself would have no legal standing. The Church could then administer her own laws on marriage, without reference to the state if she so desired. The previous existence of a licensed partnership or even of a marriage undertaken outside the Church's discipline would have no effect on the canonical eligibility for marriage, except insofar as it might involve a sexual relationship.

Obviously I am not covering all the details of how such a regime of partnership would work. Likewise one might argue that I am too easily abandoning the field of culture to the secular realm. One might argue to the contrary that it would be better to try to roll back the secularization of marriage. Christians, by this argument, should attempt to influence the culture around them, rather than maintaining their own culture within, but in opposition to, it. There is much to be said for that argument. I would contend that to decide between them is a matter of prudence--whether the battle can be won, and at what cost. As a citizen of the State of Michigan, I did sign a petition for the defense of marriage. But at the same time, I wonder if what is left of marriage as a civil institution is worth the saving.

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posted by Eve at 4:58 PM | link 0 comments

THE WISDOM OF THE TICK

Everybody was a baby once, Arthur. Oh, sure, maybe not today, or even
yesterday. But once! Babies, chum: tiny, dimpled, fleshy mirrors of
our us-ness, that we parents hurl into the future, like leathery
footballs of hope! And you've got to get a good spiral on that baby,
or evil will make an interception!
--The Tick
posted by Eve at 4:44 PM | link 0 comments

SSM, NONTRADITIONAL MARRIAGES, AND POLYGAMY: Matt Taylor replies to Mark Miller

In response to R.K. Becker's variation on the slippery slope argument, Mark Miller writes: "...While I'm sure there are some who support unlimited marriage laws with no rules or lines drawn, I am not among them. There should be lines drawn with regard to marriage but I am not sure why that line should drawn based on gender. ... I am sure why that line should drawn at involving two people."

Many have personal moral objections to polygamy, but that is not sufficient to justify a legal ban on group marriages. Just as SSM proponents have argued that gay marriage has no effect on heterosexual couples, I can't see how letting a man have two wives in Utah would affect me and my (one) partner. Some have argued that polygamous marriages have historically involved coercion of young girls, but the problem there is the coercion, not the polygamy. We already have laws to protect young people from exploitation, and they would remain in force if polygamy were legalized.

Yes, lines should be drawn with regard to marriage, but they should be drawn only on the basis of human rights and the welfare of children. Marriages that offend tradition and/or the sensibilities of some citizens should be permitted, so long as the interests of children are upheld and no coercion or deception is involved.
posted by Eve at 4:42 PM | link 0 comments

SSM, NONTRADITIONAL MARRIAGE, AND POLYGAMY: R.K. Becker replies to Mark Miller and Eugene Volokh

Mark states that the examples I give do not hold because "there are significant differences between the arguments (both legal and moral) for SSM and the arguments for polygamy." Of course there are. But he does not provide any answer to the question I asked: why the arguments for polygamy, if made and presented in a serious movement, will be less persuasive to the general public (and, ultimately, the courts) than the arguments for SSM? I believe Mark when he says that he believes marriage is for two and no more, but, as I stated in my other post, to say that we personally draw the line now does not preclude others from moving that line later.

Particularly when the reason Mark gives for limiting marriage to two people is every bit as arbitrary as the reason the average SSM opponent on the street gives for limiting marriage to those of opposite genders. Just as the average SSM opponent simply asserts that marriage is between a man and a woman, Mark simply asserts that it's for no more than two people. Why should we have any confidence that the latter is any less fragile down the line than the former? Mark simply states that he believes that the latter is central to the institution while the former is not. But this is certainly not the case historically, as polygamy has been far more common in human culture than any kind of same-sex marriage. Obviously, it is the opposite-sex nature of marriage that has been the more "central" to the institution. How can Mark, or anyone else, be so certain that the less historically central definition of marriage will stand while the more central definition is discarded?

Indeed, Mark's argument for the binary nature of marriage is based on the same thing that most people use when arguing against SSM--tradition. There has been no tradition more universal to human society than the idea that marriage is between opposite genders. What many don't see is that by rejecting the appeal to tradition in regard to preserving the historical definition of marriage, we by extension must also reject appeal to tradition in regard to anything else. If SSM is legalized, any such argument has now been effectively killed. It is this more than anything else that puts us on the "slippery slope."

Eugene Volokh does make a very good point about the greater social insularity of those presently arguing for polygamy. I think, however, that while this may well slow down the move toward polygamy, it will not be sufficient to prevent it from eventually being legalized, unless the negative effects of SSM surface before the polygamy movement is able to move into the mainstream.
posted by Eve at 4:30 PM | link 0 comments

SENATORS TARGET GAY MARRIAGE: From Roll Call

[To read the whole thing you need registration.]

As Republican Senators travel throughout their respective states this week, party leaders are urging them to promote a constitutional amendment that bans gay marriage--a move that breathes new life into
the controversial topic less than six months before the November
elections.

While Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (Pa.)
acknowledged that supporters of the ban don't have the 67 votes needed
to send the measure to the states for ratification, he vowed to force a
vote on the issue before the election, to compel Senators to take a
position on the issue.

"I intend to work very hard to get a vote," Santorum said. "I
have made it clear that is my desire and I believe the Senate should go
on the record."

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posted by Eve at 4:27 PM | link 0 comments

CALIF. SUPREME COURT CASE ON SAN FRANCISCO SSM

listen to the oral arguments here

audio-only here

read the briefs here
posted by Eve at 4:18 PM | link 0 comments

DICTIONARIES TAKE LEAD IN REDEFINING MODERN MARRIAGE: From the Washington Times

Now that Massachusetts has legalized same-sex "marriage," will major dictionaries expand their definitions of the word "marriage" itself?

The answer is simple: They already have.

Advocates of traditional marriage who once relied on dictionary definitions to bolster their case for the preservation of "one man-one woman" marriage might have to cite another authority.

Boston-based Houghton Mifflin, publisher of the American Heritage Dictionary, added a "same sex" clause to its definition of marriage in 2000.

"A union between two persons having the customary but usually not the legal force of marriage," the addition--or "sub sense"--states.

"But we'll be altering that in the future to reflect the Massachusetts decision," editor Joe Pickett said.

"There have been a lot of changes in the defining of family terms in the past 15 years," Mr. Pickett continued. "A family is not necessarily a 'nuclear' family anymore. We've also had to re-examine definitions influenced by reproductive technology and accommodate the different possibilities of 'mother' and 'father.' It's an interesting time."

The Oxford English Dictionary [OED] retooled "marriage" in 2001.

"It's not so much a redefinition, because our definition did not specify marriage had to be between a man and woman in the first place," said editor Jesse Sheidlower from OED's New York headquarters.

Indeed, the OED defines marriage as, "The condition of being a husband or wife; the relation between persons married to each other; matrimony."

But the entry includes a note that explains: "The term is now sometimes used with reference to long-term relationships between partners of the same sex."

References to same-sex "marriage" also can be found in the Oxford dictionary under the "gay" and "homosexual" entries.

Merriam-Webster--publisher of the nation's best-selling desk dictionary--expanded its definition of marriage last July, with the publication of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition.

The definition now includes the phrase: "The state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage."

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posted by Eve at 4:12 PM | link 0 comments

SCENES FROM A NEO-MARRIAGE CULTURE: Maggie Gallagher

So it begins, in Massachusetts: "I will try not to make any mistakes," one official said to two men in Boston City Hall. "But since it's the first wedding, I might call one of you the bride." Their marriage license reads not "Bride" and "Groom" but "Party A" and "Party B."

At the wedding of Julie and Hillary Goodridge, who lent their name to the historic Massachusetts supreme court decision ordering same-sex marriage, guests sang, "Here come the brides, so gay with pride, isn't it a wonder that they somehow survived."

"I pronounce you spouse and spouse," intoned Joan Drysdale, justice of the peace in Provincetown, Mass.

"Getting married is the thing my parents understand," Jon Anderson explained. "It's the legitimizing feature. Getting married is what makes it real for them."

The very first recipient of a marriage license in Provincetown had less traditional views, according to the Boston Herald: Jonathan Yarbrough called the concept of marriage forever "overrated" and said he, as a bisexual, and his partner, Cody Rogahn, who is gay, have an open marriage. "I think it's possible to love more than one person and have more than one partner, not in the polygamist sense," he said.

Personal aberration or the future of neo-marriage?

Chris McCary and John Sullivan of Anniston, Ala., began their marriage with a lie, checking the box on the marriage application form indicating they intended to live in Massachusetts. In fact, according to The New York Times, Mr. McCary said outside the town hall of Provincetown afterward he had no immediate plans to move. Mr. McCary, a divorce attorney, said, "Our marriage license may not be worth a lot now in Alabama, but someday it will be." Jesse White and Mariah Hegeary of Santa Fe, N.M., plan to fight for acknowledgement of their marriage in New Mexico.

In Provincetown, as many as one-third of the couples issued marriage licenses Monday are from other states.

In Rhode Island, Attorney General Patrick Lynch suggests Massachusetts gay marriages may well be legal there. Connecticut's attorney general Richard Blumenthal simply couldn't (or didn't) say how Connecticut courts will treat Massachusetts marriages.

"Courts" is the key word here. Gov. Mitt Romney suggests "an issue as fundamental to society as the definition of marriage should be decided by the people." But at this point, "leaving it to the states" means "leaving it to the state judges and attorneys general," not the American people.

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posted by Eve at 12:04 AM | link 0 comments

HOW WILL MARRIAGE AFFECT SAME-SEX COUPLES?: Gregg Easterbrook

[From the same piece posted below, but on a different subject.]

Overall, though, gays and lesbians who wed should be glad they did, since sociological research finds powerful evidence that most people benefit from marriage. This book by University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite and writer Maggie Gallagher shows that, as a group, the wedded are happier, healthier, live longer, achieve a higher standard of living, and even enjoy more and higher-quality sex than singles. (No, I don't know how researchers measure quality of sex, but clearly it is important to measure!) Presumably married homosexuals as a group will resemble married heterosexuals as a group: most of them better off, some rendered miserable by their vows.

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posted by Eve at 12:02 AM | link 0 comments

SINGLE ENTRY: Gregg Easterbrook

...But as today's riotous controversy regarding complaints of social prejudice against same-gender union sorts itself out, prepare yourself for the next big conundrum: Singles will complain that society is prejudiced against them. There are 59 million people 16 years of age or older in the United States who have never married, and another 41 million who are separated, divorced, or widowed. Defenders of traditional marriage say that it is a 3,000-year-old institution that has withstood tremendous trial and proven itself the best organizing basis for communities and for raising children. But if marriage loses its classical definition of a union between one man and one woman, acquiring a new definition of "benefits granted to any two people who make a legal commitment to each other"--since last Monday this has basically been the definition of marriage in Massachusetts--singles may have reason to be ticked off. Why shouldn't they get the benefits, too?

Much of the recent gay-marriage debate has been conducted on two grounds. First, gays and lesbians wish to be acknowledged as ordinary people who can enter into any ordinary social position, whether that means assuming a role as a teacher or a clergy member or taking a vow to serve the country in the military or honoring the bonds of matrimony. On this first point the same-sex union argument is strong. Gays and lesbians are that way because that's the way God made them. The majority of the gay men and lesbians I've known have struck me as amazingly normal, considering the barriers and extra anxieties they deal with, and considering that coming to terms with sexuality is traumatic even if you're straight, good looking, and bathed in the approval of the world. Homosexuals are the way God made them, and the ones who behave responsibly--passing the same test heterosexuals must pass--deserve the embrace of society.

The second recent grounds on which same-sex union has been argued is that defining marriage as a state entered into by one man and one woman denies privileges and benefits to gays and lesbians. Married people have an easier time getting credit and a much easier time adopting children, get each other's health-care benefits and Social Security survivor benefits, can inherit property from each other without tax, and enjoy other advantages over those living together outside marriage. Denial of these advantages to same-gender couples who want to marry is the crux of a civil-rights-like complaint regarding gay union. Denial was the essence of the Massachusetts court decision that put the current gay-marriage debate into fifth gear. The Massachusetts judges ruled that granting benefits only to one-man-one-woman unions constituted lack of equal treatment under the law.

On this second grounds for same-gender union, I'm not so sure. Jonathan Rauch contends persuasively in his extraordinary new book Gay Marriage that the best argument for same-gender union is that it will improve life for everyone--for the traditional majority as well as for gays and lesbians. Same-gender unions, Rauch reasons, will represent a vote of confidence for the institution of marriage, currently beset by divorce; will stabilize communities, by placing gays and lesbians into relationships that are socially acceptable; will help communities, by allowing gays and lesbians to assume their share of community labors at the church, the PTA, and so on; will replace a source of discord with a source of comity; will remove a great fear of huge numbers of parents, that they will have a gay child who must live in prejudice. Once communities adjust to gay union, the traditional majority will feel happier--and this, Rauch thinks, is the clincher argument.

It's certainly a better argument than, "We demand benefits!" If significant numbers of gays and lesbians begin to wed, the 100 million single people may become more dismayed that still more people wearing rings get special deals while they do not. Equally important, for every gay or lesbian pair who weds, winning benefits, a couple of single people must be taxed more to fund these benefits. Benefits can't just be demanded; someone must provide them. Marriage benefits for gays and lesbians will not come from the pockets of those in traditional one-man-one-woman unions. The benefits will come from the pockets of the single.

You chortle now, but as same-gender unions gain acceptance, prejudice against the single may become the final frontier. Marriage definitely isn't for everyone; some people were made by God to be single, and why should society punish them for that? Millions of people wish to marry but cannot find suitable partners; why should society punish them for that? The single makes substantial contributions to society, including often assisting in the all-important raising of children. Many single people form long-term or even life-long bonds to each other based not on eros but Platonic friendship; why shouldn't such people be able to pool their credit, inherit each other's property without taxation, and so on?

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posted by Eve at 11:59 PM | link 0 comments

LOVE SUPREME: GAY NUPTIALS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN MARRIAGE: Adam Haslett

...Such great expectations of marital happiness belong to a larger history of the Western emphasis on the self. The philosopher Charles Taylor, in an examination of how our attitude toward interior life has changed over the past five hundred years, argues that the trend line runs in one direction: from a self-understanding gained from our place in larger entities--such as a chain of being or divine order--toward purpose discovered from within, through what we consider to be authentic self-expression. This is the distance Western culture has travelled from the church confessional to the therapist's couch. In turn, the choice of whom to marry has become less about satisfying the demands of family and community than about satisfying oneself. When you add the contraceptive and reproductive technologies that have separated sex from procreation, what you have is a model of heterosexual marriage that is grounded in and almost entirely sustained on individual preference. This is a historically peculiar state of affairs, one that would be alien to our ancestors and to most traditional cultures today. And it makes the push for gay marriage inevitable. ...

Owing to the reforms of the past forty years, men and women now enter the married state with more legal parity than ever before. Under the old doctrine of coverture, a man owned not only his wife's property but her body as well. Today, in nearly every state, men's and women's rights and obligations in alimony, child custody, child support, and property division in divorce have been made formally gender-neutral. Arrests and prosecutions for domestic abuse, rare thirty years ago, are now routine. As recently as 1984, a man could not be prosecuted for raping his own wife; today, it's a crime in all fifty states. ...

What effect will allowing men to marry men and women to marry women have on our peculiarly modern venture of marriage? Proponents typically say that it will have hardly any--that there is no shortage of marriage licenses, and all that will happen is that more citizens and their children will have the benefits of existing family law. The opposition argues that one of the organizing institutions of our society will be imperilled.

History suggests that neither view is quite accurate. Despite comparisons to the repeal of miscegenation laws, no other expansion of the marriage franchise--to the sterile, to slaves, or to interracial couples--has required an alteration in the basic definition of the term: the union of a man and woman as husband and wife. To discount this as mere semantics misses what the definition points up: that marriage, through all its incarnations, has been a procedure that assigns people a new identity based on their gender. For centuries, it has been the ceremony that makes males into husbands and females into wives. Until very recently, this meant a lifetime commitment to both the security and the constriction of a well-defined social role. The symbolic danger that gay marriage poses to such an arrangement is obvious. It alters the public meaning of the word by further draining it of its power to reinforce traditional expectations of behavior. What does it mean to be a husband in a world where a man could have one of his own? This is up to each individual couple, one is tempted to say. Fair enough; but the words we use to describe our relationships are shared cultural property. There is no private language. In this sense, granting the word "marriage" to gay couples will eventually affect everyone.

The mistake is to consider the change in meaning particularly drastic. After all, undoing customary expectations for how a husband and wife behave toward each other has been one of the goals of the women’s movement since its inception. Rather than an abrupt departure, same-sex marriage is the culmination of a larger and ultimately more consequential change in the nature of marital relations between men and women.

Which is one of the reasons that the opposition to it is so fierce. It has come to symbolize what is, historically speaking, radical about contemporary marriage: the decline of the patriarchal legal structure and the rise of the goal of self-fulfillment. Gay marriage is unsettling, to many, not because it departs from modern meanings of matrimony but because it embodies them.

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posted by Eve at 11:47 PM | link 0 comments

MASS. GOVERNOR HAS A POINT: Andrew Sullivan

A while back, I referred to an obscure 1913 Masscahusetts law, designed to prevent inter-racial couples using Massachusetts to leverage marriage rights in their home states. Mitt Romney wants to deploy that statute today to prevent out-of-state gay couples from doing the same thing as their multi-racial forebears once tried to do. I'm no fan of the statute (or of Romney), but it seems to me that the governor is right. It's the law. And it should be enforced or repealed--not ignored or violated. Marriage rights advocates will be making a serious error if they try and use Massachusetts to coerce other states into recognition. Gay couples from states which specifically ban marriage rights for gays should therefore be prevented from marrying in Massachusetts: that's the deal of federalism. If, however, the couples come from states that have not banned such marriages, and whose attorneys-general have said they will recognize such marriages, then I see no reason to prevent them. But the law should also be applied to those heterosexual couples who fall under its purview. As blogger John Aravosis points out,

"Massachusetts permits an 18 year old to get married, no questions asked. Nebraska and Mississippi, however, require that same 18 year old to have a notarized consent form from their parent before conducting the marriage. If the Massachusetts clerks weren't presented with those consent forms, then the out-of-state heterosexuals weren't legally married (or so it would seem). There are lots of other requirements that vary by each state. If any of those were not met when an out of stater got married in Massachusetts, their marriage could be invalid."

Romney should enforce the law, acknowledge that it was designed to stop inter-racial marriages, and apply it equally to straights and gays today. My fundamental belief is that the right to marry is unalienable. But it was for inter-racial couples in 1913 as well--and they were still denied it for decades. Social change takes time and persuasion. Federalism requires and prudence dictates that we restrict marriage rights to those few states that enact them or recognize them elsewhere. Pushing for a national decision right now would be unwise and foolhardy. We have won an amazing victory. Let's not throw it away with extremism.

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posted by Eve at 11:44 PM | link 0 comments

WHAT RENO WAS, MASS. MAY SOON BECOME: Froma Harrop

On March 20, 1931, the lid came off in Reno. "Friendly Fred" Balzar, the Nevada governor, had just signed two bills designed to spur the depressed economy. One cut the state's residency requirement for divorce to six weeks from three months. The other legalized gambling.

Balzar predicted that the quickie divorce would prove the better economic stimulus, but he was wrong. The headlines two days later read: "Divorces Forgotten as Crowds Fill Gambling Halls in Reno."

While Balzar had clearly underestimated the lure of gambling, his view that Nevada's lenient divorce laws would attract out-of-state visitors was right on the money.

It's hard to miss the similarities between the Reno divorce and the Provincetown gay marriage. Like Nevada of last century, Massachusetts has radically changed its marriage laws, making it the only place to go for a specific kind of certification. Long a homosexual hub, the seafaring town at the tip of Cape Cod was a natural to become Matrimony Central for same-sex couples.

Other states are refusing to recognize gay marriages from Massachusetts, just as they once tried to ignore divorces granted by Nevada. But as with the Reno divorce, the Provincetown marriage will eventually prevail. The ringing of P-town cash registers will drown out most opposition. Hotels and restaurants expect the booming gay marriage trade to generate $3 million a year. ...

Legal experts disagree as to whether other states can be forced to recognize these Massachusetts marriages. Some cite the "full faith and credit clause" of the U.S. Constitution, which says that courts in different states must honor each other's actions. (The requirement eventually forced reluctant states to accept Reno divorces.) They say that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act--holding that states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states--runs afoul of the clause. ...

During the 1960s, most states eased their divorce laws, and Reno's reign as the nation's divorce capital drew to a close. So it will be with Provincetown institutions. Years hence, other states will lighten up on gay marriage, and much of P-town's lively new business will go elsewhere. But until then, P-town may become the Reno of the early 21st century.

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posted by Eve at 10:32 PM | link 0 comments

THE GEOGRAPHY OF GAY MARRIAGE: From the Washington Post

The bells have rung for gay marriage, at least in Massachusetts, which last Monday became the first state in the union to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Bay State victory, however, is only one round in the drive for nationwide acceptance of same-sex marriage. Even gay rights advocates concede they still face countless hurdles -- including public opinion, which remains overall decisively opposed to the notion of marriage between two men or two women.

Results of a poll released last week by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg National Election Survey show that a large majority of Americans do not want their home states to ratify laws allowing gay men or lesbians to wed. Call the couplings civil unions instead of marriage, though, and enough people say yes to create a slim majority for the idea of some form of legal recognition for gay couples. And more Americans oppose amending the Constitution to outlaw gay marriage than support that approach.

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posted by Eve at 10:30 PM | link 0 comments

CALIF. SUPREME COURT TACKLES SSM: From the San Francisco Chronicle

When the California Supreme Court looks at the legality of same-sex marriages in San Francisco on Tuesday, it will be led by its most politically adroit chief justice in decades.

Since being promoted to the top spot in 1996 by Gov. Pete Wilson, who had named him to the court five years earlier, Ronald George has cultivated three governors, the Legislature, the news media and the public while tiptoeing with his colleagues through the minefields of abortion, civil rights, prisoner releases and the gubernatorial recall.

George does not lack courage: He faced down a political challenge over an abortion case soon after taking office and took on a popular district attorney in a serial murder case as a trial judge. He is prodigiously hard-working after 32 years on the bench. He is affable, unpretentious and accessible; reporters who ask the court for information are often surprised to get a call back from the chief justice himself.

He is also quite cautious, by philosophy and disposition, and, for the most part, so is his court.

It is the most diverse Supreme Court, by ethnicity and gender, in California history, and more diverse ideologically than its 6-1 Republican majority would suggest. Its rulings are usually clear and thorough, although they are not always predictable. But it is not a court of risk-takers or trailblazers, which may be what advocates of same-sex marriage need.

"I don't think you're going to see this court go out on a proactive limb, like the Massachusetts court," which legalized same-sex marriages, said Santa Clara University law Professor Gerald Uelmen, a longtime analyst of the California court who generally admires George. ...

You don't please so many powerful people by ruffling too many feathers. George and his court, to a great extent, habitually act with deference to the political branches of government and often try to defuse controversies they can't avoid.

The state's high court stayed out of last year's recall election and also sidestepped both the continuing controversy over "three-strikes" sentences for minor crimes and the uproar this year over Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper's claim of innocence, leaving the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to play its customary role of lightning rod in each case.

The state court, with George at the helm, intervened in two other high- profile cases, but did so in a way that mollified then-Gov. Gray Davis and a fearful public -- blocking a convicted murderer's parole and a sex offender's release from a mental hospital. The subsequent rulings gave the governor broad, though not unlimited, authority over such releases.

The court seems to be acting with similar caution in the same-sex marriage case. The justices waited for a request from the state attorney general before halting San Francisco's City Hall weddings last month. Then they focused on a narrow question: whether Mayor Gavin Newsom exceeded his authority by issuing marriage licenses in defiance of state law.

The larger, more incendiary issue in the case -- whether California's one-man, one-woman marriage law violates the right of gays and lesbians to equality under the law -- was shuttled off to lower courts. If normal timetables are followed, this matter won't be back before the state's high court for a year or two, when the climate may be different.

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posted by Eve at 10:18 PM | link 0 comments