Gay Marriage is a Family Value

A letter republished from the Indiana Statesman:

Gay Marriage is a Family Value Guest Editorial

By Levi Harris
November 17, 2004

So on Nov. 2, 11 states voted to insert gay marriage bans into their constitutions. Add to that the fact President Bush may soon name as many as three Supreme Court justices, and gay Americans’ prospects for equal rights may now be postponed for a generation. But legalizing gay marriage is still the right thing to do as a matter of policy and morality.

First, it’s ridiculous when conservatives say they want to preserve a definition of marriage that’s existed for thousands of years. Marriage has never been a static institution. In the Bible, Jacob, David, Solomon and others were polygamists. In the New Testament, polygamy was widespread enough for St. Paul to mention that church leaders should be “the husband of one wife.”

At old common law, wives were merely property. In America, slaves were forbidden to marry, no matter how long they’d been together. Until Loving Vs. Virginia in 1967, states could ban interracial marriage. So 37 years ago, it would have been illegal in some states for Clarence Thomas to marry Lynne Cheney.

Marriage is always evolving, yet it’s survived every change, and anyone who has seen “Casablanca” knows why: “The world will always welcome lovers.” Marriage won’t be destroyed by allowing two men to marry any more than it would when blacks and whites marry. (For the record, people used the Bible to oppose interracial marriage, too.)

Then there’s this argument that gays getting married will cheapen everyone else’s marriage, which is not only wrong, but also illegitimate. That’s like saying people I don’t like shouldn’t be allowed to have birthdays because my cake won’t taste as sweet. Or more on point, it’s like saying voting became less meaningful when blacks, women and 18-year-olds were granted the franchise. Selfishness and elitism do not make a constitutional argument.

Gay people don’t want to destroy marriage. Why would they spend their money and time fighting to be a part of something they want to dismantle? No, the way to destroy marriage is to refuse to let it adapt. Institutions must change to keep pace with reality, or they’ll become irrelevant. If gay Americans can’t marry, more and more families, straight and gay, will be created outside marriage so that someday marriage itself will be the exception, not the rule. The way to protect marriage is to expand it so more people are socialized to view it as having real meaning for their lives.

You know, conservatives like to talk about family values, but gay marriage IS a family value. We live in a country where gay parents can have their children ripped away from them only because they are gay. Gay Americans often have no legal standing to visit their partners in the hospital; to adopt children; to take medical leave when their partners are sick or dying; to receive their partner’s pension or life insurance benefits; or even to decide where to bury their partners.

For 24 years, I’ve heard conservatives whine about how disgusting gay folks are, how all they want to do is shop, dance, do drugs and sleep with as many different people as possible. At church, they showed me videos of Pride Parades, where these moral lepers would flaunt their depravity in the streets. The Right-Wingers taught me all gay sex was good for was spreading AIDS and other diseases.

But if they believe that, then how DARE they deny gay Americans the right to marry? When gay folks want to settle down, raise families and be monogamous, how dare the conservatives refuse them?

Trumpeting the virtues of marriage and then denying gay people that right is no different than making a room of black schoolchildren say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing “My Country ’Tis of Thee” and then telling them they can’t vote. Shame on the conservatives.

We hear conservatives speak of gay marriage as being part of the “Gay Agenda.” Well, if gay marriage is part of a “Gay Agenda,” then the Underground Railroad and the march in Selma were part of a “Black Agenda,” because all gays want is what Americans have always wanted: the freedom that comes with having their full-citizenship rights. Gay folks should be proud; there’s no shame in having an agenda for freedom.

It’ll be a hard row to hoe. Like most of the great victories of the Civil Rights Movement, I believe this battle will be fought in the courts. Courts are generally one progressive step ahead of the population, and legislatures one conservative step behind. If it hadn’t been for “activist judges” like Earl Warren, blacks and whites would still be going to separate schools in Birmingham and Little Rock.

Depending on how the Supreme Court changes in the days ahead, this fight may take 30 years. But we’ll keep fighting, and someday this discrimination will go the way of slavery, of internment camps, of segregation, and of anti-sodomy laws, because now, like then, we progressives are in the right. And we have some powerful allies: the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, reason and the irrefutable morality of recognizing the fundamental equality and human dignity of all people for all time.

If you’re gay, come out and stand up for yourself. If you’re straight, stick up for your gay friends. And if you’re interested in being a part of the struggle for equal rights, take the LSAT. We could always use another lawyer.

Levi Harris is a second-year law student at Indiana University in Bloomington. He is a 2003 alumnus of ISU and former Opinion Editor and columnist. You can contact him at Lsharris@indiana.edu.