The opponents of same-sex marriage seem to have made it their main concern to protect traditional marriage. They are worried that the value of marriage would be compromised by allowing same-sex couples to have all the rights and responsibilities that go along with being officially married in the eyes of the law. Of course, their use of hysterical scare tactics regarding children has the unmistakable implication that homosexuals are bad and dangerous people and that the world would be better off if gay people didn't exist. ("God forbid my child should even know that there are gay people!") Many folks who voted for Proposition 8 need to see how wrong these attitudes are.
Those who voted for Prop 8 also need to understand that the issue is civil marriage – no one is demanding in court that any religious group sanction gay marriage. The issue is the United States Constitution – the basic concept of equal rights. This is why, despite whatever other considerations he may have had, President Barack Obama came out forcefully against both the federal Defense of Marriage Act and Prop 8.
I have previously written in this forum about the many reasons why gay marriage needs to be affirmed. Perhaps the most important of those reasons, that bears repeating, is that the ideal family is not the heterosexual nuclear family with 2.3 children, but a family in which children learn how to live in a world of diversity and multiculturalism, a world in which the members of same-sex based families are not made to feel like second-class citizens of a country that supposedly believes in equality, liberty, and justice for all.
My main concern here is to address the concept of "protecting" traditional marriage. The first point has to be that in those states where gay marriages have been legally validated the sky has not fallen. But the real concern of the "protectors" seems to be that gay marriage makes a mockery of a sacred institution. They do not really believe that gay married couples literally threaten to destroy heterosexual marriages or the fabric of society.
My concern is to clarify what actually does make a mockery of a sacred institution. Many legally married couples, some famous and many not famous, have consisted of a gay man married to a lesbian woman (or a gay person deliberately married to a heterosexual person) in what is typically described as a "marriage of convenience." THIS makes a mockery of a sacred institution! There is no sexual component in most, if not all, of such marriages, and I submit that this lack is more of an affront to the institution of marriage than is the presence of sexuality in a same-sex marriage. It would be far preferable to make it possible for gay men and lesbian women to marry the same-sex partner with whom they form a family and share everything, including a healthy sexual relationship. Gay marriage protects both the institution of marriage and gay families.
Most people are aware of the spectacle of celebrity couples getting married on a lark in Las Vegas or elsewhere, only to be divorced or have the marriage annulled almost immediately afterwards. THIS makes a mockery of a sacred institution! Many of the staunchest defenders of the sanctity of marriage have been married and divorced numerous times. THIS makes a mockery of a sacred institution!
There is a famous image in the New Testament where hypocrites are advised to take out the beam in their own eye before offering to remove the tiny splinter in the other person's eye. Another famous image is "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." There are many real threats to the sanctity of marriage. Same-sex marriage is not one of them. Heterosexuals who complain about same-sex promiscuity but then at the same time fight against gay marriage are being totally hypocritical. Let heterosexuals concentrate on cleaning up their own act rather than attacking others.
On the subject of the U.S. Constitution: Well written constitutions are always left purposely vague in various ways, in order to keep them from becoming too quickly irrelevant or un-adaptable as times change. The times, they are a'changin'! They always change – traditionally! When marriage is so narrowly defined in a constitution as between "one man and one woman" this cardinal rule that constitutions should not be too specific is being violated. Many cultures around the world have long traditions of plural marriage. Do we or should we ban folks in such marriages from coming into the United States? Do we jail all United States citizens living in polygamous relationships?
Constitutions are protected when they are created to be flexible. Same-sex marriage protects both the institution of marriage and gay families – and the families of transgender folks.
Carl L. Jech is a 33-year resident of San Francisco and lives in Noe Valley. He is the author of Will the Gay Issue Go Away? and an openly gay, Harvard-educated instructor of humanities courses in world religions at DeAnza College in Cupertino.