IGF CultureWatch

By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week. The first to be wed in San Francisco were Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, pioneering gay-rights activists who have been a couple for more than 50 years.

More ceremonies will follow, at least until November, when gay marriage will go before California's voters. They should choose to keep it. To understand why, imagine your life without marriage. Meaning, not merely your life if you didn't happen to get married. What I am asking you to imagine is life without even the possibility of marriage.

Re-enter your childhood, but imagine your first crush, first kiss, first date and first sexual encounter, all bereft of any hope of marriage as a destination for your feelings. Re-enter your first serious relationship, but think about it knowing that marrying the person is out of the question.

Imagine that in the law's eyes you and your soul mate will never be more than acquaintances. And now add even more strangeness. Imagine coming of age into a whole community, a whole culture, without marriage and the bonds of mutuality and kinship that go with it.

What is this weird world like? It has more sex and less commitment than a world with marriage. It is a world of fragile families living on the shadowy outskirts of the law; a world marked by heightened fear of loneliness or abandonment in crisis or old age; a world in some respects not even civilized, because marriage is the foundation of civilization.

This was the world I grew up in. The AIDS quilt is its monument.

Few heterosexuals can imagine living in such an upside-down world, where love separates you from marriage instead of connecting you with it. Many don't bother to try. Instead, they say same-sex couples can get the equivalent of a marriage by going to a lawyer and drawing up paperwork - as if heterosexual couples would settle for anything of the sort.

Even a moment's reflection shows the fatuousness of "Let them eat contracts." No private transaction excuses you from testifying in court against your partner, or entitles you to Social Security survivor benefits, or authorizes joint tax filing, or secures U.S. residency for your partner if he or she is a foreigner. I could go on and on.

Marriage, remember, is not just a contract between two people. It is a contract that two people make, as a couple, with their community - which is why there is always a witness. Two people can't go into a room by themselves and come out legally married. The partners agree to take care of each other so the community doesn't have to. In exchange, the community deems them a family, binding them to each other and to society with a host of legal and social ties.

This is a fantastically fruitful bargain. Marriage makes you, on average, healthier, happier and wealthier. If you are a couple raising kids, marrying is likely to make them healthier, happier and wealthier, too. Marriage is our first and best line of defense against financial, medical and emotional meltdown. It provides domesticity and a safe harbor for sex. It stabilizes communities by formalizing responsibilities and creating kin networks. And its absence can be calamitous, whether in inner cities or gay ghettos.

In 2008, denying gay Americans the opportunity to marry is not only inhumane, it is unsustainable. History has turned a corner: Gay couples - including gay parents - live openly and for the most part comfortably in mainstream life. This will not change, ever.

Because parents want happy children, communities want responsible neighbors, employers want productive workers, and governments want smaller welfare caseloads, society has a powerful interest in recognizing and supporting same-sex couples. It will either fold them into marriage or create alternatives to marriage, such as publicly recognized and subsidized cohabitation. Conservatives often say same-sex marriage should be prohibited because it does not exemplify the ideal form of family. They should consider how much less ideal an example gay couples will set by building families and raising children out of wedlock.

Nowadays, even opponents of same-sex marriage generally concede it would be good for gay people. What they worry about are the possible secondary effects it could have as it ramifies through law and society. What if gay marriage becomes a vehicle for polygamists who want to marry multiple partners, egalitarians who want to radically rewrite family law, or secularists who want to suppress religious objections to homosexuality?

Space doesn't permit me to treat those and other objections in detail, beyond noting that same-sex marriage no more leads logically to polygamy than giving women one vote leads to giving men two; that gay marriage requires only few and modest changes to existing family law; and that the Constitution provides robust protections for religious freedom.

I'll also note, in passing, that these arguments conscript homosexuals into marriagelessness in order to stop heterosexuals from making bad decisions, a deal to which we gay folks say, "Thanks, but no thanks." We wonder how many heterosexuals would give up their own marriage, or for that matter their own divorce, to discourage other people from making poor policy choices. Any volunteers?

Honest advocacy requires acknowledging that same-sex marriage is a significant social change and, as such, is not risk-free. I believe the risks are modest, manageable, and likely to be outweighed by the benefits. Still, it's wise to guard against unintended consequences by trying gay marriage in one or two states and seeing what happens, which is exactly what the country is doing.

By the same token, however, honest opposition requires acknowledging that there are risks and unforeseen consequences on both sides of the equation. Some of the unforeseen consequences of allowing same-sex marriage will be good, not bad. And barring gay marriage is risky in its own right.

America needs more marriages, not fewer, and the best way to encourage marriage is to encourage marriage, which is what society does by bringing gay couples inside the tent. A good way to discourage marriage, on the other hand, is to tarnish it as discriminatory in the minds of millions of young Americans. Conservatives who object to redefining marriage risk redefining it themselves, as a civil-rights violation.

There are two ways to see the legal marriage of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. One is as the start of something radical: an experiment that jeopardizes millennia of accumulated social patrimony. The other is as the end of something radical: an experiment in which gay people were told that they could have all the sex and love they could find, but they could not even think about marriage. If I take the second view, it is on the conservative - in fact, traditional - grounds that gay souls and straight society are healthiest when sex, love and marriage all walk in step.

Will this summer of love lead to the winter of our discontent?

The finale to the California Supreme Court's decision recognizing a right to gay marriage isn't yet written. This November, California voters will decide whether to amend the state constitution by adding this language to it: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

They will decide whether the recent state supreme court decision is remembered mainly as a historic victory that hastened equality under the law or as an act of judicial arrogance and impatience that inflamed voters and stopped or even reversed years of democratic progress toward the recognition of gay relationships.

One way or another, Californians were going to have to vote on gay marriage no matter what the court did. The court held that voters had already banned gay marriages performed both inside and outside the state. In California, an initiative-passed statute could only be repealed by another initiative. However laudable the state legislature's intentions in twice passing gay-marriage bills, such marriages could not have become legal without a vote of the people.

Moreover, it's also clear that whatever the state supreme court decided, the proposed amendment was going to be on the ballot in November anyway. The signatures necessary to put the amendment on the ballot were already gathered by the time the court acted.

In terms of what happens in November, therefore, the main effect of the court's decision has been to change the context in which the vote will occur. By judicial decree, Californians will see thousands of gay couples actually getting married for almost five months before they vote. Those marriages will be real, not hypothetical.

The question is, what effect will this reality have on voters? On the one hand, whatever they think of gay marriage, some voters may feel that it would be unfair to strip existing married couples of their rights. Voters may also be reassured by seeing that nothing bad happens when gay couples wed.

On the other hand, seeing gay couples actually marry may anger some voters. The sight of two men or two women kissing, no matter how joyous the occasion to those involved, is still shocking to a lot of people. They may vote "yes" as a way to stave off what they see as growing decadence and immorality. Five months just isn't a lot of time to normalize what people have spent their entire lives believing is abnormal.

Other voters will be angry at what they see as judicial activism and vote "yes" as a way to rebuke the courts.

It's impossible to predict now what the net political effect of all these gay nuptials will be. But it is possible to say what the stakes are.

If Californians reject the amendment, it will be the first time voters anywhere in the world will have approved gay marriage. They will have done so where the issue is squarely presented. They will have done so in a state inhabited by almost 40 million people, a state whose influence on the nation's culture and law is even larger than its share of the population. Vermont could be ignored. Massachusetts could be legally quarantined. But California can be neither disregarded nor isolated.

In future years, gay couples from across the country will be able to go to California - not to some foreign country - to have their relationships sanctioned. This alone will put enormous pressure on other states to move ahead and to do so more quickly than they otherwise would have. The federal government, too, will face increased political pressure to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in a state.

We'll have an ongoing experiment that's larger and more significant than any other to prove that gay marriage makes a lot of families happier and causes nobody any harm. The impact will be huge.

That's one possible outcome. Here's another.

If the amendment passes, the result will set back the gay-marriage movement in the state by many years, perhaps a decade or more. While the amendment would be challenged as unconstitutional, such a challenge would face dim prospects. Anti-gay marriage amendments have now passed in 27 states and not one them has been held unconstitutional.

The amendment would be the final word on gay marriage in California - that is, until the voters themselves, in a future referendum, decide to repeal it. In the meantime, the California Supreme Court could not come to the rescue. The state legislature would be powerless to undo the amendment. The governor would be impotent to help.

And getting California voters to reverse their decision in some future election would not be easy. It would require a massive and costly effort to gather enough valid signatures from voters in the state to get the issue put back on the ballot. Next, there would be the enormous task of persuading voters to reverse themselves. Many of them, suffering from initiative fatigue, will vote against repeal simply on the ground that, "We've already voted on this."

If passed in November, I think the amendment would eventually be repealed. But that "eventually" could be a very long time indeed.

The stakes for the cause of gay marriage are higher than they have ever been. We are headed for a momentous battle in a full-scale culture war on the most strategic terrain in the country.

Let's say you and your partner live in D.C. and are thinking of trading in your domestic partnership for a California wedding. Your heart says: Marry while you can. If it's good enough for Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, it's good enough for you.

If you've done your homework, your head might say: But you'll have trouble getting a divorce if it doesn't work out, because the state has a residency requirement for that; and California is a community property state. Besides, there is no telling when your marriage will be recognized back home, where the city's congressional overlords are bipartisan in their opposition to marriage equality.

But you're in love, and there's been enough waiting. Del and Phyllis have waited more than fifty years. Many couples arranging trips to the coast this summer are in longstanding, well-tested relationships. When you marry, your love is its own authority, your mutual commitment no one else's to give. If you have that with someone, you are already married in the truest sense of the word. What you seek in California is to make it legal.

And there's the rub. How will you get your marriage recognized in D.C.? If Mayor Adrian Fenty and his attorney general are not ready to defy Congress, will you go to court? D.C. judges are appointed by the president, not the mayor, and D.C. courts ruled against same-sex marriage in the 1990s.

In a recent interview, one reporter essentially asked Fenty why the city did not act now based on optimistic predictions about the November elections. Fenty wisely avoided putting the cart before the horse.

Last week, a coalition of leading marriage equality advocates including Lambda Legal, Freedom to Marry, ACLU, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders and the Equality Federation said in a joint statement, "Pushing the federal government before we have a critical mass of states recognizing same-sex relationships or suing in states where the courts aren't ready is likely to get us bad rulings. Bad rulings will make it much more difficult for us to win marriage, and will certainly make it take much longer."

Same-sex couples have already lost cases in Arizona, Indiana, Washington State, New York, and Maryland. In 2005, a gay couple provoked threats from Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) by trying to get their Massachusetts marriage recognized in D.C. As I said at the time, taking a damn-the-consequences approach is the political equivalent of sailing down the Potomac on a flaming barge. It would be one thing if such decisions affected only the couples making them, but those who press ill-advised cases are taking the rest of us with them.

Enhancements to D.C's domestic partnership law already give registered partners nearly all the legal protections of marriage that a state can grant. We are blocked at the federal level by the Defense of Marriage Act. Even Del and Phyllis will get none of the federal benefits of marriage such as joint tax filing or Social Security.

Still, it will not do to say, as some do, "What's in a word?" The answer is: Everything. In New Jersey, a special commission reported in February that civil unions create a "second-class status." To cite one example, self-insured companies are regulated by federal, rather than state, law, and many refuse to provide health insurance to civilly-unionized partners. By the way, isn't it awkward talking about civil unions? Marriage requires no explanation, and thus has a built-in advantage over any alternative.

It is precisely because the fight for marriage equality is so important that we should wage it smartly and responsibly, which means working together. As last week's joint statement said, "We need to choose the courts and legislatures where we have the best chance of winning." In the meantime, all of us should be telling our stories and making our case to help move public opinion and lay the groundwork for future victories.

Until we get a federal version of the California ruling, married same-sex couples traveling from state to state will be in a legal no-man's-land. It is a profound injustice that will take more than rash actions to defeat. Let's stop demanding shortcuts and cooperate in the slow and steady work of making real and lasting change. Right now we have an initiative to defeat in California, to preserve the victory there.

June brings pride parades, which brings out drag queens in bright sunlight.

I don't envy anyone wearing pancake makeup, a wig, heels and pantyhose in 90-degree weather. I particularly don't envy drag queens, who-like other gender non-conformists in our society-suffer more than their share of unfair criticism.

A reader named Clyde writes, "I think drag is comparable to blackface minstrelsy. Whether it's men performing as women, or whites performing in blackface, caricaturing and making fun of groups of people perpetuates stereotypes."

There are at least two critical claims here. One is that drag caricatures-and thus makes fun of-groups of people, and the other is that drag perpetuates stereotypes. Let's consider each in turn.

While it's possible for a drag performance to make fun of women, misogyny is not essential to, or even typical of, drag. True, drag often involves exaggerated personas, but the point doesn't seem to be to mock women, but rather to revel in a particular kind of feminine glamour. For that reason, the analogy to minstrelsy falls short.

But what about the "bitchy" personalities adopted by some drag queens? Again, intentions and context matter. If the point is cruelty, then it's wrong. But mockery, and even bitchiness, can have its place in entertainment. Unless one objects to Joan Rivers-type humor altogether, it's difficult to make the case for objecting to it in drag performances.

The other part of Clyde's objection is related: it's that drag perpetuates stereotypes. There are multiple potential stereotypes at work here: that gay men are effeminate, that gay men want to be women, that gay men are bitchy, that gay men are excessively concerned about their appearance, that women are bitchy, that women are excessively concerned about their appearance, or that gay and transgender are the same thing.

A stereotype is an overgeneralization about a group. It may be negative, but it needn't be (consider "All Asians are good at math.")

I don't doubt that drag contributes to stereotypes. But I don't think the appropriate response to the problem is to reject drag queens. They're not responsible for others' ignorance, and in particular, for others' tendency to generalize from a sample of drag queens to most gay men (or most women).

Certainly, it's important to portray our community-indeed, our overlapping communities-accurately and fairly. And historically, the majority of media images portraying the GLBT community have focused on an unrepresentative minority of that community.

As someone who came out in the late 1980's, growing up in a rather straitlaced suburb, I'm especially sensitive to that problem. At the time, there were few if any images of the GLBT community that I could relate to, and so I convinced myself that I wasn't one of "them."

But the way to combat this distortion is not to silence the divas among us. The way to combat it is for the rest of us "plain" homosexuals to make our presence known.

As for drag queens: if someone wants to don a sequined gown and lip-synch to "Over the Rainbow," far be it from me to stand in her way. (I use the feminine pronoun deliberately.) If other people think that her behavior says something about me or about gays in general, it's my job (not hers) to correct them. And I will correct those people, not because there's something wrong with the drag queen, but because she's who she is and I'm who I am. She speaks for herself, and I for myself.

If I were a drag queen, I might break into a La Cage aux Folles number right now. Instead, I want to conclude on a note of gratitude-to a particular drag queen whose name I've long forgotten.

I was quite young when I ventured into my first gay bar. I was clearly out of my element. Noticing my nervousness as I stood alone against the wall, a drag queen approached me. "How old are you, honey?"

"Nineteen," I replied sheepishly.

"Honey, there are hairpieces in this bar that are older than that!" she quipped back.

She made me laugh, and so I began to relax. Then she introduced me to several other patrons-including other young nervous preppy boys like me. I'm sure she realized I could relate to them more easily than to her. It was a simple act of kindness, and I recall it warmly.

Ironically, it was a drag diva who helped this "plain" homosexual find his voice. Wherever you are, thanks.

The May 15 decision by the California Supreme Court overturning the state's ban on same-sex marriage is clearly major news for all of us. It was a robust, comprehensive decision that examined nearly all the traditional arguments against permitting same-sex marriage and found them wanting.

The court said, "In light of the fundamental nature of the substantive rights embodied in the right to marry-and their central importance to an individual's opportunity to live a happy, meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society-the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all individuals and couples, without regard to their sexual orientation."

Specifically, the court pointed out that (1) allowing gays only a differently named relationship (such as "civil unions") will "impose appreciable harm on same-sex couples," (2) given the prejudice that gays have historically faced, forbidding them the word "marriage" would likely be viewed as an official view that their relationships are of lesser stature, and (3) calling gay relationships by a different name could perpetuate the view that gays and gay couples are "second-class citizens."

The decision is significant for several reasons. The majority included three justices appointed by Republicans and the court's lone Democratic appointee and was written by Republican-appointed Chief Justice Ronald George. And the California court is regarded as influential since other state courts sometimes look to it for precedents and judicial reasoning.

Even more important, the court drew an explicit parallel between government bans on interracial marriage and gay marriage, citing its own 1948 decision striking down California's ban on interracial marriage, a decision far in advance of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court's decision striking down all state prohibitions on interracial marriage.

Perhaps most important in the long run, observing that marriage was a fundamental constitutional right, the court-a first for a high court-invoked a demanding justification for discriminatory treatment of different groups called "strict scrutiny" and found that the state government's rationale for denying gays the word and status of "marriage" could not pass that test.

The three dissents do not seem to be up to snuff. They all argue, among other things, that the decision violates the separation of powers and constitutes judicial overreach. The court should have left an important matter like gay marriage to the political process, they argue.

But, of course, the California legislature has already passed bills instituting gay marriage-not once but twice. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed both bills, saying that the issue should be settled by the state Supreme Court.

The court had already stated that the legislature could not make an interpretive end run around a popularly approved proposition banning gay marriage, by claiming that it applied only to recognition of out-of-state gay marriages. So the issue faced, if not an impasse, at least a complicated legal situation. So in a way the court may have felt pressured to rule.

For partners who have been together for many years, marriage must feel like a long-delayed state certification of the worthiness and legitimacy of their relationship, just as the state did for their parents and grandparents. For young gays, however, who are early in the first throes of romantic love with a new partner, marriage may be a dangerous temptation.

How many young gays do we all know who claimed they were deeply in love with a new partner, only to lose interest in a few months and go off in search of a new partner? To be sure, some youthful attachments do endure, but a prolonged period of getting to know each other seems desirable. Young people should remember the old adage, "Marry in haste, repent at leisure."

California's constitution is the most "populist" in the country, allowing a simple majority of voters to institute state policies, recall state officials-and reverse Supreme Court decisions. What gay Californians face now is an initiative to undo the court's decision and once again prohibit gays from marrying.

So California gays now have the task of gearing up for an acrimonious and expensive fight to preserve gay marriage. Gays may well lose. Eight years ago slightly more than 61 percent of California voters approved just such a ban. Since then, public opinion has slowly moved in the direction of support for gay marriage, but by barely one percent or less a year. Probably not enough.

So the pro-marriage campaign had better be a good one, cogent and well-thought out. Examine it carefully before you respond to the myriad of fundraising appeals we will all soon be getting.