*** ORBUSMAX GUEST OP/ED ***

COUNTERPOINT: Defense of Marriage and Society? What About Defense of Fairness and Equity? - By Dan Brown

March 1, 2004

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Editor's note: The following is counterpoint response to an Orbusmax Guest Op/Ed by Justin Darr, "Attack of the Pink Swastika", published 2/26/04.
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WOW! It looks Gavin Newsom has hit a real hornet's nest! Hit it with a big pink stick… The recalcitrant San Francisco Mayor, by directing that marriage licenses be issued for homosexuals seeking to wed has brought this long simmering social pot to a full rolling boil.

Predictably, the extreme pinfeathers of both wings are operating at full scream… The "pro" crowd has descended to the ridiculous, styling this as the greatest civil rights movement in twenty years… But even more ridiculous are the rants coming from the right wing:

It's the end of law! The very end of civilization! Society is doomed if a few homosexuals say "I do"…

Even the President has felt compelled to wade in on this issue. Never mind that by clear Constitutional implication this should be an issue where the Federal State should be silent; never mind that he has a lot of more pressing issues to deal with. George W. Bush has proposed beginning the long slow process of drafting and ratifying a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as a heterosexual union only. The myopically traditional are all atwitter! I would suspect the President of attempting to distract the people from his numerous failures except I think the man is genuine.

And of course, the religious right has to get their licks in, dragging their god back into public policy…

They've had a terrible year. First the Supreme Court ruled that the ancient Jewish taboos against sodomy between consenting adults weren't enforceable in a modern society, then Roy Moore is prevented from inserting an oversized granite egress-limiting eyesore into a public building, and now queers are tying the knot! We're all going to hell in a bucket! One can hear their alternating outrage and relief expressed through the microphones of the Rusty Humpfries of the world. Marriage [defined our way blessed by our version of god] is safe! GAWD bless George W. Bush! And drag that mayor "over there" off in irons!

What is really at stake here? Is this really an issue of dire importance to society? Will homosexual marriages deal a death-blow to the crucial institution of the nuclear family already knocked to its knees by the rampant popularity of no-fault divorce, Murphy Brown parenting, and the selfishness of the "me first" generation? Or is "defense of marriage" just one more way for the always-present bigots to act out their base desires to victimize their chosen targets, as were the laws against interracial marriage, only struck down by the Supreme Court 40 years ago? Is this just one more back-door attempt to force a particular set of religious and social paradigms on a minority, irrespective of their rights to equal legal protections?

And what tradition? As an Atheist, I'm disgusted to hear people insist this institution they claim to be "holy," "ordained by god," and "ancient" should be defined by our secular Constitution. As an amateur historian, however, I'm amused. Their god aside, the people who claim marriage as practiced in the United States today, i.e. "a contract between a man and woman" is somehow an ancient institution are simply incorrect. Until relatively recently, and indeed throughout most of human history, marriage was what it still is in much of the world: A property transaction between whole families or alternately between a man and a man. A father bartered his property - his daughter - to another man for whatever he could get. We still see vestiges of this reality in traditional marriage ceremonies. A bride is "given" in marriage. Who can claim the reverse is ever true? And in law, the property status was until recently reinforced by marriage. Under the legal doctrine of couverture, accepted well into the nineteenth century, a wife was literally her husband's property.

How do you like those traditions, Ladies?

Most fascinating of all, marriage wasn't even formally recognized as a religious issue by Catholicism until the twelfth century, and even after that there was dissent: Martin Luther considered marriage to be more temporal and legal than religious. So the "traditions of marriage" are traditions only in the most recent and local of senses when compared to the long run of human experience.

Still, many argue marriage and the family it creates is the core stability of our society. But is that stability not, in today's America, first and most practically an economic issue? Are we not constantly reminded that married households are more prosperous, that they contribute more to the greater good of society? If that is in fact true, shouldn't society encourage the most people possible to marry? If that is in fact true, is it not at least partly because the laws are mostly preferential to the matrimonial status? Oh, sure, it goes both ways, as is the case with the tax anomaly called the "marriage penalty. The point is, government uses law, especially business and tax law, as a tool to influence social policy - what neoconservatives call "social engineering" when they don't like the outcomes or goals.

I'm not married. My longtime companion and I have chosen not to marry precisely because we privately consider marriage tainted by religious traditions we eschew. But my employer is decent enough to extend the same benefits to her as they would were we legally wed. They don't have to. If they didn't, I would have little legal recourse. That is discrimination, pure and simple. I earn the benefit by providing a value. Yet it could be "pegged" to an off-the-job issue that is in reality nobody's business.

And there is the core of the question in my mind. People today can be, and frequently are discriminated for or against based on marital status. There is benefit discrimination in the workplace as well as the subtle discrimination wherein legal issues automatically decided for married persons must be specified by a much longer process for equally - or perhaps more - committed persons who either choose not to marry or are legally enjoined from doing so. Yes, those persons can enter into agreements every bit as protective of their mutual interests as a marriage contract. But it is an expensive, cumbersome process requiring the aid of legal counsel.

I thought neoconservatives considered lawyers to be too rich and powerful. Not, I suppose, when the lawyers are getting fat by helping to discriminate against a target of their choice…

But any mule can kick down a barn. This one wouldn't be kicking without offering to build a better. Here's a fair compromise. Certainly this is not my idea, but it's one I endorse. And the best part is it will be equally unsatisfactory to the zealot pinfeathers on both wings:

Get the government out of marriage entirely. Change the laws to reflect only the legal issues of civil union. Any two adults could avail themselves of this formality. Thereafter, the same issues of benefits, the same taxes, the same protections can be applied to all.

Then the churches can have their own marriages, referred to as "marriage." The government would automatically recognize any "churched" wedding.

Too easy? Too practical? Too much of a compromise? That's what compromise is…

I guess it just depends on what is more important. Divisive dogmas or the kind of equity that promotes a prosperous, harmonious Nation. Are we grown-up enough to agree to disagree, and thereafter live and let live?

Maybe; maybe not.

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Dan Brown is a Materials Management Chemist, a graduate of the Evergreen State College, and of the University of Adversity.