Help is on the way!
Posted on 06/02/2002 11:10:43 PM PDT by kattracks
Last week two things happened:
In Massachusetts, seven same-sex couples appealed the case for gay marriage to the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
In Washington, D.C., three Republican and three Democratic representatives introduced the Federal Marriage Amendment, which says: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."
The FMA is the brainchild of the Alliance for Marriage, which has gathered an unusually broad multicultural, interfaith coalition of support from African American and Hispanic leaders as well as Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Jews. This broad support is not surprising: Marriage is not and should not be a conservative or liberal issue.
The usual suspects responded in the usual way: It's a "vicious attempt to make the U.S. Constitution explicitly anti-lesbian and gay rights," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women.
Gandy packs a lot into one sentence. To believe (as I do) that marriage is between men and women, that it aims to get mothers and fathers for children, and to regulate those sexual relationships (permanent, life-giving) upon which the very existence of the next generation depends makes one a vicious bigot.
No big news there. More surprising has been the tepid reaction on what the left likes to call the far-right.
Many economic conservatives have little stomach for this fight. They no longer understand marriage as a key social institution, carrying out an important public purpose. They see marriage as an essentially private relationship, a soft good to be encouraged by culture and religion and family, but having no intrinsic relationship to law (which is supposed to regulate important things like property rights).
Perhaps more surprisingly, one prominent social conservative group, the Family Research Council, has come out against the FMA, saying it does not go far enough, that it would not create a constitutional ban on domestic partnership legislation. OK, but if in a few months Massachusetts judges impose gay marriage, and a flood of lawsuits urge (plausibly) that the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution requires every state to recognize Massachusetts' gay marriages, how will the FRC prevent it? The mere existence of a powerful, coherent, well-organized campaign with broad public support acts as a check on rogue judges tempted to make a name for themselves by reorganizing marriage. Whereas the reverse -- jumbled, incoherent, factional infighting -- can only encourage judicial experiments.
Gay activists, meanwhile, are pushing hard for gay marriage because they understand very well that marriage is not private, it is normative. People can live as they choose. We tolerate all kinds of sexual couplings in our society, but marriage is something different: It is the way that law, culture and society actively affirm the importance of one particular kind of sexual union. In legislating gay marriage, America would no longer merely tolerate or accept homosexuality. We would (all of us, as a society) actively celebrate it.
In the process, we would transform the very meaning of marriage at a time when this institution is in crisis. Why does marriage exist? Does it have anything to do with encouraging men and women to create new families? Does it have anything to do with minimizing fatherlessness? Does it have something to do with telling young men and women that there is something unique and special about placing their lives and their futures in the service of this idea of permanent, fruitful love?
My own belief is that if American civilization is to prosper in the long run, we need to recapture and deepen our understanding of the basic meaning of marriage.
Contact Maggie Gallagher | Read her biography
©2002 Universal Press Syndicate
I agree with this statement.
The only way to do that is to remove government from giving out licenses. Make all marriages under a contract. As it is today many couples go into marriage with the idea: 'well if it doesn't work I can always get a devorce.' Needless to say this is a direct result of the failures of bad law.
Contracts can change this for everyone. So with a contract when you enter a marriage you know exactly what you are getting into. Each contract can be different.
When someone asks you today what school did you goto. People ask you this to know what kind of schooling you actually got. Same should go with marriage. People will ask what institution did you get married under?
Perhaps we could answer, "Under the one that made divorce practically impossible."
Somebody back me up on this, please.
Matthew 22:21Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.
The holy marriage ceremony belongs to the faithful and to the church, so the government should stay out of it completely. That prevents the institution of marriage from being profaned by forced acceptance of that which is abbhorent to the faithful.
The rest of the equation is the realm of the law and the courts. This includes child custody, inheritance, common property, spousal benifits, etc.. This should be the subject of a private contract of domestic partnership between any adults who wish to enter into such a contract, be they hetro, homo, polygamist, or whatever. The only role the government has is in writing probate, child protection and joint tax filing laws and regs, which a domestic partnership contract must take into account if it is to be valid.
Under this system, God keeps his, Caesar keeps his, and everyone is free to do as they wish.
While the social values of marriage - health and safety of the current and next generation are essential to the survival of civilization - I believe the civic laws governing marriage have evolved for the primary purpose of protecting property rights. Before the Industrial Age, wealth was generally in property.
Today we live in an age where every adult is expected to be an income earner, and wealth is often related to pension or other monetary benefits. This is the angle that unisex couples are using to push their agenda. If we can separate the two principles - strength of future generations and transfer of financial assets - we might have a better chance of defeating the cancer that this idea formal recognition of homosexual union is in reality.
Here is an example of what I mean - medical insurance rates are different for families, couples and single individuals. Actuaries could figure the rates for any person who wishes to put any other person on his/her policy. What someone does in the bedroom would not be the deciding factor. An unmarried child could nominate their parent, for example. Two sisters could share one health insurance.
In fact, I believe that a libertarian interpretation of marriage law must come down on the side of gay unions having every legal right as normal marriages would.
It is on issues exactly like this where the ACLU/libertarian dictums against a higher morality, while they may sound high-minded, will actually destroy that which they hope to protect; which is a civilized and well ordered society.<P. I have long argued that libertarians are not conservatives, issues like this will illustrate quite clearly the truth of that observation.
Interesting post. BTTT.
Notice that the case is being brought before a state supreme court -- this is part of the strategy.
States define marriage, and they have a certain amount of cover from the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty in these matters -- cover that former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, in retirement, has been urging liberal "cause people" to make use of, to shelter from the more-conservative appointees to SCOTUS over the last 15 years or so.
This Massachusetts case follows cases in Vermont and Hawaii in which Evan Wolfson and Lambda tried to get the state supreme court to rule that homosexuals had the right to marry. That was Step One, getting marriage redefined in one state.
Step Two is, after Step One was accomplished, to sue in every other state in the Union to force them all to accept gay marriage (of course against the People's will -- that was the idea of going to court in the first place) under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
In other words, the first state to accept marrying a man to his brother, or his dog, or a car, becomes the lowest common denominator in the definition of marriage, and the trendsetter for the nation.
Evil, huh? The Hawaiian case was mooted when the people woke up and circulated and passed a statewide referendum stomping gay marriage flatter than an empty beer can. The political ferment is still working in Vermont, and the outcome is cloudy -- but the legislature there decided on "civil unions" instead, which doesn't satisfy Wolfson (according to an interview he gave), because he and his playmates want the whole nine yards. They want gay marriages to be accepted as being every bit as solemnly moral as getting hitched by the Pope in St. Peter's Basilica. That is what they are after.
Right. Now, marriage is a contract between the husband and wife on one side and the government on the other. It should be between the husband on one side and the wife on the other.
Such matters have no place in the Constitution.
I would say that in an ideal libertarian world, the government would have no role in marriage at all.
We cannot stop people from doing what they will in this regard, but we can imagine a society in which government stays out.
You mean like in Utopia?
Here in the real world, unfortunately, gov. does have a role to play in marriage contracts, ie, property rights, child custody, pension & benefit considerations etc.
By preferring a dream world to the messy realities libertarians provide ammunition to those people determined to undermine society's moral foundations.
Oh, I forgot, there are no morals above man's own wishes & desires, and as long as I don't interfere w/ you, you won't interfere w/ me.
What a beautiful world that would be. Maybe in the next world, but then there is no next world. hmmmm...a cunundrum.
Help is on the way!
Dan
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