First published on May 19, 2004, in the Chicago Free
Press.
With all the legal impediments finally swept away, Massachusetts
gay and lesbian couples are now for the first time anywhere in
America being incontestably, legally wed.
And not just legally wed, but welcomed with religious marriage
ceremonies by the venerable and influential Unitarian church, whose
ministers almost to a man - and woman - have made themselves
available to same-sex couples wishing a blessing in the religious
tradition.
Politics is always with us if only because our uncomprehending
opponents try to make our lives a political issue and there are
always people who wish to use governments to control, to exclude
and to gain preference for themselves. But let us, if only briefly,
put politics out of our minds to savor these first few days of
legal gay marriage, the consummation of a painful, protracted
struggle for a simple acknowledgment of the dignity and virtue of
our relationships.
For the rest, the sequelae will just have to play themselves
out.
There is no doubt that this is an enormous defeat for religious
conservatives, Catholic and evangelical both, who fought this
outcome at every step with vast economic resources, religious
pressure, especially from the Catholic church, and a seemingly
endless series of increasingly bizarre legal arguments ending only
with a cold stare from the U.S. Supreme Court itself.
This is also a serious setback for Massachusetts' Mormon
governor Mitt Romney, who is reported to have higher aspirations
and viewed the gay marriage issue as way to gain national
prominence and conservative credentials. But he now has that most
unenviable of political reputations - loser.
Further, at the last minute Romney decided to block most
out-of-state gay couples from marrying by reviving enforcement of a
widely ignored 1913 law designed to prohibit out-of-state
interracial couples from marrying in Massachusetts if they could
not marry at home. No action could have better illustrated a
parallel between the black and gay movements and cemented the image
of Romney as a George Wallace of the north.
At the national level, evangelical leaders are deeply
discouraged. Consider this doomsday scenario from Dr. James Dobson
of Focus on the Family:
"Barring a miracle, the family as it has been known for more
than five millennia will crumble, presaging the fall of Western
civilization itself. ... For more than 40 years, the homosexual
activist movement has sought to implement a master plan that has
had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family. The ...
goals include universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle,
discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of
the clergy and Christian media, granting of special privileges and
rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia, ... and
securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more
people who claim to have homosexual tendencies."
At a soberer level of analysis, The New York Times
reported that evangelical leaders are perplexed at the lack of
horrified response from "people in the pews." Here is the Rev. Lou
Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition: "I don't see any
traction. The calls aren't coming in and I am not sure why."
But the obvious fact evangelical leaders are trying to ignore is
that while, no doubt, a majority of Americans oppose same-sex
marriage, they don't oppose it all that strongly. It is not exactly
biblical, it is an unknown and it "feels" funny. But at some level
they realize that contrary to conservative propaganda gay marriage
will not harm them or their children personally.
So now evangelical leaders - if they can be called leaders when
so few are following - are reduced to hoping against hope that the
sight of gay couples marrying in Massachusetts will induce a phobic
reaction in their followers. As the puritanical Richard Land, head
of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern
Baptist Convention, put it, "We need to do a better job of
educating our base, although I don't think we can do better than
Massachusetts is going to do for us."
But this is just whistling past the graveyard. Over the last
decade, evangelical leaders have been relentlessly "educating our
base" about the threat of gay marriage - with only modest results,
apparently. And if "the people in the pews" were going to be upset
by pictures of gay couples marrying, they would have long since
been upset - by newspaper and television coverage of happy brides
with brides and grooms with grooms in San Francisco and Portland,
Oregon. It didn't happen then and it won't happen now.
To the contrary, many people will inevitably find themselves
empathizing with the joy and delight they see on the faces of
radiant brides and delighted grooms, leaving the Lou Sheldons and
Richard Lands sputtering Groucho Marx's classic desperation plea,
"Who you gonna believe - me or your own eyes?"
There is, in fact, no better advertisement for gay marriage than
gay marriages, which, of course, is exactly why religious
conservatives fought so hard to block them from happening
anywhere.
It is our moment. Enjoy!