In 1968, Spence Silver, a 3M research scientist, accidentally
created an adhesive with properties that were then novel. It was
spherical; it had the thickness of a paper fiber; it did not
dissolve; it did not melt; each individual sphere was very sticky.
But when many spheres were brought together onto a tape backing,
they didn't adhere very well.
For five years, Silver pitched his discovery to folks at 3M, but
no one thought much of his creation. Finally, in 1973, an
application was found: movable bulletin boards. But it was hardly
an earth-shattering application.
Enter Art Fry, a new-product development researcher at 3M. He
had learned about Silver's adhesive, and he thought to himself: If
I could put some of that adhesive on the back of a piece of paper,
I could create a more reliable bookmark for my church hymnal
instead of the scraps of paper that keep falling out. He brought
his idea to 3M. Some initially tried to kill the project; why
compete with something that already exists and works so well
already? But Fry and others persisted. They eventually went to
Richmond, Virginia, to see if they could sell this notion of scrap
paper with an adhesive edge. People were interested, and in 1980-a
dozen years after Silver's discovery-3M launched the Post-it
Note.
With all the hue and cry about civil union and its alleged
inferiority, I ask myself: Do the people who accidentally created
this new adhesive have any idea how powerful their invention is? I
don't think they do.
So let me offer an application for their creation. Since October
of 2001, I've been proposing a different way to move forward in our
struggle toward marriage equality. The dominant voices from our
community have demanded marriage for gays, and marriage has been
the rallying cry ever since we came so close in Hawaii. But some of
us want to see something that is at once more radical and more
conservative: civil union for all.
It's clearly more radical, because no nation on earth has ever
abandoned civil marriage and adopted an alternative. In a debate
with an advocate of same-sex marriage, my proposal of civil union
for all was dismissed as being so much wishful thinking. We will
always have civil marriage, I was told. Really? This same advocate
cautioned against filing marriage lawsuits too soon, for fear of
suits that may be unwinnable in the courts of law and public
opinion. All the while, she cited Hawaii- the suit most gay legal
thinkers thought was premature-as the beginning of the current push
for gay marriage.
Fifteen years ago, few of us fully envisioned the possibility of
gay marriage. Dismissing civil union for all out of hand similarly
represents a failure of imagination on the part of leaders in the
gay community and elsewhere. After all, civil marriage cannot trace
its lineage to the beginnings of ancient civilization. So who's to
say that a nation might not one day adopt civil union for all?
And what better nation to do this than the United States?
American exceptionalism is part of our birthright. If any nation is
poised to reinvent legal relationships on a large scale, it is our
great and innovative land. Liberty, justice, and civil union for
all.
The other complaint I hear from the champions for same-sex
marriage is: We didn't get civil union by asking for civil union. I
was up here in Vermont when we got civil union, and to be honest,
none of us were all that happy that we didn't get marriage. But at
the same time, few of us conceived anything like civil union. It's
awfully hard to ask for something that does not yet exist. Who
would know to ask for a Post-it Note that hadn't yet been invented?
Now that we have civil union for gay couples, it's not so
unimaginable to ask for civil union for all couples, is it?
And this is what makes my proposal conservative. By saying that
all couples, gay and straight, get a civil union, we solve a number
of issues simultaneously. Take polygamy, for example. The defenders
of traditional marriage wail that polygamy is right around the
corner if society allows same-sex marriage. We all know, though,
that marriage has long been associated with polygamy, and granting
or denying same-sex marriage won't affect that history one whit.
Civil union, in contrast, has no history. So let's define it: two
people who are unrelated by blood and above a certain age are
eligible for governmental recognition of their relationship and the
benefits and obligations that come from that recognition. Poof! No
polygamy.
And talk about the separation of church and state! Has anyone
you know pontificated about the sanctity of civil union, about the
need to protect traditional civil union? Of course not.
The champions of same-sex marriage think they can finesse the
church-state issue by talking about civil marriage and how no
religious body would be forced to conduct a gay wedding. These gay
leaders have no idea how integral marriage is to the theology of
many religious persons in the United States and elsewhere.
Time for some self-disclosure. I was formerly the chaplain of a
conservative Christian college. I know the religious right fairly
well. For many Christians, it's not just the sanctity of marriage
colliding with strictures against homosexuality. Marriage is a
mirror that reflects the relationship that Christ has with the
Church. And if this metaphorical marriage consecrates two men or
two women, who gets impregnated with the Spirit of God? The
religious objection is far deeper than simply maintaining the
status quo. It subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) reaffirms
the distinction between the sexes and the traditional subservience
of one gender to the other.
Who can forget how gender-bound our understanding of marriage
is? Think of the sentences that are forever wed to the wedding
ceremony. "I now pronounce you man and wife" (i.e., master and
property). "You may kiss the bride" (more preferential treatment
for the groom). For the life of me, I do not comprehend why gay
people, of all people, want to buy into this history. Call one
another "husband" and "wife" if you choose, but notice how straight
couples are beginning to abandon this language in favor of
something more egalitarian. There are no gendered expectations in
civil union; it skirts the sex-specific baggage of religious
marriage. In my book, that's an improvement.
Time for some more self-disclosure. I'm black. And am I the only
one to notice that black clergy stayed pretty much out of this
struggle until gays won the legal right to use the M-word? In
Massachusetts, the Black Ministerial Alliance did not make their
voice heard until after the advisory ruling that said that civil
union would not do. That was when they stood in opposition, and not
a moment before. Those of us who are black and gay often feel that
we have to choose which community we will call home. As the battle
for the M-word escalates and as more black clergy speak out against
same-sex marriage, I know of one black gay man who is feeling torn
between two communities he loves and treasures.
Call me deluded, but I happen to believe that most of the black
clergy who are rallying against same-sex marriage would give civil
union a pass. We don't know if they would, though, because we
haven't asked them. Instead, we cluck our tongues at these
unsympathetic black leaders: don't they recognize prejudice when
they see it? But maybe we're so blinded by our dogged pursuit of
the M-word that we don't see there are other ways of securing
equality for all.
So here's my pitch. Civil union won't work if it's only for gays
and straights can get married. That's called segregation, and
segregation is illegal in America. And I certainly am not opposed
to marriage for all. I just happen to prefer civil union for
all.
A straight woman asked me: what about straight people who want
to say they're married? I asked her: who's stopping them? Gay
couples have been using the M-word for quite some time now; we've
not waited for the government to give us permission. No one is
thrown in jail for saying they're married or civilly united or
whatever they choose. Indeed, the champions of same-sex marriage
infantilize gay couples by making us feel we are incomplete until
Big Brother calls us married. Hogwash. And to those who accuse me
of harboring internalized homophobia, I say: look in the mirror,
sweetheart. I don't need the M-word; why do you need it?
What I do need that I don't have now are the 1,138 benefits that
the federal government gives to straight married couples. (You do
realize that all those fabulous couples who got married in
Massachusetts since May 17, 2004, don't have these benefits, don't
you?) I need it to be portable, so that it is recognized from state
to state. And the idea that only marriage will give us this is
laughable. Besides, there's portability and there's portability.
Will the married gay couple from Boston be recognized as married in
Baghdad?
Last bit of self-disclosure. I am a practicing Episcopalian. And
while I live in Vermont, I've followed closely the story of the
Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal bishop of the neighboring diocese
of New Hampshire. Robinson was once asked for his take on gay
marriage. "If gay and lesbian people are full citizens of the
country and state in which they live, they should be accorded the
same rights as other couples. I don't think it matters whether you
call it marriage or civil union as long as the responsibilities and
the benefits are the same." Now, what would a man who had a
heterosexual marriage, fathered two children, divorced, joined his
life to that of another gay man well over a decade ago, conducted
many, many marriages as an Episcopal priest, signed many, many
marriage licenses as a deputy of the state, counseled couples prior
to marriage, in marriage, and before divorce, and now oversees the
Episcopal church in New Hampshire: I mean, what would he know about
marriage?
All the same, Robinson may concede more than I want to concede.
I would not be content with civil union for gays and civil marriage
for straights. It's all one or the other for me. So like Monty Hall
(remember him?), I say: Let's make a deal. Make it civil union for
all, and we'll drop our insistence for marriage. And if the other
side won't settle for civil union, then I guess I'll have to settle
for marriage.
But I really would prefer civil union for all. After all, we gay
people created it. It's a cultural makeover not even Queer Eye for
the Straight Guy could engineer. It's simple and elegant at the
same time. It takes religion out of the picture. It's new and
improved. So let's make it ubiquitous as well.
Like that little piece of scrap paper with the weird adhesive on
its edge. Who would have thought in 1980 that the Post-it Note
would become so common? I didn't. And who imagines today that civil
union for all could become universal? I do.