Like millions of others in commited same-sex relationships, we'll go on living our lives of fealty, domestic minutiae, and assorted civil inequities--just like everyone else--regardless of the outcome of the constitutional crucible in Massachuse tts. Because the whole matter is merely our daily fabric of life, I want to pass over it quickly, feeling as much spectator as participant, as I might at a giant picnic of tiresomely familiar extended family. But, like those picnics, this is, after all a big deal--it's history, and life. Some ideas are worth pausing over:
Speaking for the "libcons," New York Times op-ed columnist WILLIAM SAFIRE writes ("On Same-Sex Marriage," NYT December 1, 2002) that gay marriage "is generating [a] jangle of cognitive dissonance..." and that "[t]he pace of profound cultural change is too important to be left to activist judges. As moral-political issues go, th is big one deserves examination in communities with minds that can deal with internal contradictions...."
LAURENCE TRIBE, Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University, t o ld NPR's Bob Edwards (November 18, 2003) that, for all the "heartfelt but perhaps misguided arguments of those who think marriage will be in some way threatened...," Massachusetts lawmakers "don't have th e option" to define marriage as uniquely heterosexual. "The Supreme Judicial Court has said that the traditional, historic definition does not meet even the requirement of minimum rationality, if you look carefully at all of the reasons for creating and p r o tecting marriage, and the state Supreme Court, therefore, has itself defined marriage now as a matter of civil law, not a matter of religious law."
Speaking on NPR November 19, STANLEY KURTZ (a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a contributing editor for National Review Online) said not everyone who is anti-gay marriage is anti-gay. Nevertheless, citing Scandinavia's "higher ou t-of-wedlock birth rates and higher rates of family disollution," Kurtz worries about "a genuine conflict between the need for social tolerance and the welfare of children who need and deserve stable families."
ADAM NAGOURNEY writes (NYT, November 18, 2003) that neither Dems nor Republicans will score a clear political hit here, whatever the outcome, although a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found th at opposition among highly religious Americans is "an overwhelming six to one." Republican Vice President Dick Cheney and Democrat Representative Dick Gephardt each has an openly lesbian daughter--so we may at least hope for reflective, as well as reflexi ve, discourse on this thorny issue in the 2004 campaign year.
NPR's BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY reports about how one Detroit family's views on gay m arriage have shifted over three generations. Host ROBERT SIEGEL spoke with a couple in Catonsville, Maryland, who continue to struggle with moral relativism.
Reporting on the history of this issue, MARGOT ADLER told NPR "[t]his is not the first time that marriage has been in transition. Originally a transaction to preserve property and lineage, with fixed roles for each gende r, it was not until the middle of the 19th centu ry that married women in America could own property and have legal status. Fifty years ago, interracial marriage was viewed by many as unacceptable as same-sex marriage is viewed by some today...." She spok e with Mary Shanley (a professor of political sci ence at Vassar College), David Blankenhorn (president of the Institute for American Values), and author Laura Kipnis (Against Love: A Polemic).
ANTHONY BROOKS interviewed some of the seven plaintiff couples whose suit against the state of Massachusetts more than two years ago led to the decision announced in Boston, November 18, 2003.
Ciao for nao!
12/02/2003 11:53:19 AM
