The State of Gay Unions.

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From the president's State of the Union address:

A strong America must also value the institution of marriage. I believe we should respect individuals as we take a principled stand for one of the most fundamental, enduring institutions of our civilization. Congress has already taken a stand on this issue by passing the Defense of Marriage Act, signed in 1996 by President Clinton. That statute protects marriage under Federal law as the union of a man and a woman, and declares that one state may not redefine marriage for other states.

Activist judges, however, have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives. On an issue of such great consequence, the people's voice must be heard. If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process. Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage.

The outcome of this debate is important -- and so is the way we conduct it. The same moral tradition that defines marriage also teaches that each individual has dignity and value in God's sight.

Bush does not endorse a specific constitutional amendment, but "if judges" mandate same-sex marriage, he would favor supporting traditional marriage through the "constitutional process." Still, that won't be enough to stop criticism from the right. Already, a press release has been issued from the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, who declares:

Sixty-four days ago the Massachusetts State Supreme Court tossed a cultural time bomb into the public square when they mandated the Legislature to create homosexual marriages. Disappointingly, this evening in his State of the Union address, President Bush promised to help the families of America -- after the bomb goes off and the damage is done. Now is the time, before the Court of Massachusetts imposes same sex marriage on America, to protect the sacred and irreplaceable institution of marriage.

The President should immediately call upon Congress to pass an amendment this year to the Constitution codifying into law what history and nature has taught us -- marriage is between a man and a woman.

The families of America have consistently supported the President on both his foreign and domestic policies. They have stood with him in his efforts of homeland security and now they want the President to focus on the security of the American home by protecting the institution of marriage.

But Bush has not done so, at least not to the extent the religious right's leaders are demanding. Of course, he's now opened the way to discussing the "constitutional process," which could jeopardize our rights to equality under the law. He should be called to account for that, although I wish there'd be some acknowledgement by gay leaders that his position is far more ambiguous than the religious right expected from their man.

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Welcome, Judge Pickering.

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Last week, Judge Charles W. Pickering of Mississippi accepted President Bush's offer of a recess appointment to a long-vacant Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals slot -- an end-run that bypassed Senate Democrats who had filibustered Pickering's confirmation. Much consternation was expressed by the left.

But despite his opponents' charges of "racial insensitivity," Pickering has a long and distinguished civil rights record that includes bravely testifying for the prosecution in a criminal hate-murder case against the Ku Klux Klan. Also not widely reported were his rulings regarding gays and lesbians. In 1991, Pickering sharply rebuked an attorney who tried to use a plaintiff's homosexuality in a fraud trial, saying "Homosexuals are as much entitled to be protected from fraud as any other human beings." And in 1994 he stopped an anti-gay citizens group in the town of Ovett, Mississippi, from using the courts to harass Camp Sister Spirit, a lesbian community. "The judge who threw out the anti-Camp Sister Spirit case and rebuked homophobia from the bench in the Deep South over ten years ago deserves a promotion," according to a statement last year from the Log Cabin Republicans.

The Human Rights Campaign, which was part of the Democratic coalition that opposed Pickering, condemned his appointment, making much of remarks by Pickering 20 years ago before a Baptist group in which he briefly mentioned divorce and homosexuality as social ills. Not exactly fire and brimstone, and it's the worst that liberal gays could find.

Once again, the broad--based liberal-left agenda of the gay "mainstream" takes precedence over support for fair-minded conservatives.

The Right and the Left, Again.

Sunday's New York Times reported that:

[Sandy] Rios of Concerned Women for America said Mr. Bush had implicitly endorsed gay unions. "It is the same as saying the federal government doesn't want to weigh in on slavery, but if the states want to call it chattel that is O.K," Ms. Rios said.

By the way, right-winger Rios was condemning the same Bush statements that the left-wing National Gay & Lesbian Task Force called "a declaration of war on gay America."

More Recent Postings

1/11/03 - 1/17/04

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Bush’s Marriage Initiative: On the Menu

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"Bush Plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of Marriage," reports the New York Times. The program includes "training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain 'healthy marriages.' -- Aside from the fact that the this reeks of the sort of nanny state-social worker meddling that Democrats usually specialize in, there's no basis in the U.S. Constitution for making taxpayer-funded marriage counseling a responsibility of the federal government.

But politically speaking, it's clear Bush is hoping to placate the GOP's religious right base with a $1.5 billion "pro marriage" payoff, and perhaps avoid being pressed into endorsing the far more controversial anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment championed by social conservatives. As the Times noted:

[Administration] officials said they believed that the measure was especially timely because they were facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage, after a decision by the highest court in Massachusetts. The court ruled in November that gay couples had a right to marry under the state's Constitution.

The religious right is clearly hoping the marriage initiative will be just an appetizer to the anti-gay amendment main course, but Bush, I think, is hoping it will be enough to satiate the social right's rank and file voters, if not its virulently homophobic leaders.

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The Administration and the Marriage Amendment.

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There's a fair amount of misleading reporting around Vice President Dick Cheney's recent comments on a proposed anti-gay marriage amendment. Cheney said in an interview that "the president is going to have to make a decision in terms of what administration policy is on this particular provision, and I will support whatever decision he makes." Cheney declined to say whether he has discussed the issue of same-sex marriage with the president, the Denver Post reports, or shared his perspective as the parent of a gay daughter.
"I don't talk about the advice I give the president," Cheney said. "That is why he listens."

Some media are reporting that "Cheney says he will support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage," choosing to ignore the conditional tone of his statement, just as the New York Times misreported the story when Bush said he'd support such an amendment "if necessary" (and instead reported it as "Bush will").

It should come as no surprise that Cheney promises to support any decision the president might eventually make. That's his job. But it's not the same as saying that he personally favors such a ban. And it certainly doesn't tell us what Cheney is advising the president to do.

You don't have to be Bush backer to believe that getting the facts right is important when it comes to trying to prevent Bush/Cheney from making an actual endorsement of the amendment. They have not done so, though they may be floating trial balloons, or trying to placate the religious right without taking any action. As I've said before, declaring that they have endorsed the amendment is not only bad reporting, it's surrendering well before the battle's over.

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Could They Be Lying Liars?

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"Group opposed to gay marriage assailed for hiding poll results," reads the Boston Herald headline. Seems that the Massachusetts Family Institute / Coalition for Marriage released only those portions of a new Zogby poll that supported their position - and hid the fact that a narrow majority in the Bay State oppose their drive to ban gay marriage by amending the state constitution.

The Boston Globe followed up, quoting a coalition spokesman who says he merely "misspoke" on the poll findings. By the way, they also have a bridge in Brooklyn they're looking to sell.

Adventures in Hetero-Marriage Land.

Libertarian-minded columnist and IGF contributing author Deroy Murdock takes a look at the Britney Speakrs/Jason Allen Alexander quickie nuptials and quicker annulment. He writes (on the conservative National Review Online site):

Whatever objections they otherwise may generate, gay couples who desire marriage at least hope to stay hitched. Britney's latest misadventure, in contrast, reduced marriage from something sacred to just another Vegas activity, like watching the Bellagio Hotel's fountains between trips to the blackjack tables. "

"social conservatives who blow their stacks over homosexual matrimony's supposed threat to traditional marriage tomorrow should focus on the far greater damage that heterosexuals are wreaking on that venerable institution today.

And liberal columnist Ellen Goodman had this to say:

Britney and Jason were granted an annulment in 55 hours on the grounds that they lacked "understanding of each other's actions in entering upon this marriage." Compare them to gay couples who "understand" each other and commitment but are kept legally single. "

And the idea that same-sex marriage somehow disparages heterosexual marriage? We can put that to rest. Who needs gay couples when you have Britney and Jason?

Gays a Threat to Marriage?

According to a new survey, typical urban-dwellers now spend much of their adult lives unmarried - either dating or single (or, in the case of gay couples, unable to wed). According to the Washington Post:

"What's going on now is making the sexual revolution of the '60s and '70s pale in comparison," says Eli Coleman, director of the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota. He called [the new survey from the University of Chicago] the most comprehensive since that of acclaimed researcher Alfred Kinsey, who surveyed people about sex in the 1940s

However,

"social services, the church and law enforcement have been slow to address this latest sexual revolution. -- "It's not approved. It's not talked about," [project leader Edward] Laumann says. "Or they just look the other way."

Or they pretend that gay marriage would somehow be the real threat to the culture of marriage!

IGF's Paul Varnell has more to say on the hypocrisy of gay marriage opponents in his new posting, "Anti-Love Isn't Pro Marriage."
- Stephen H. Miller

More Recent Postings

1/4/04 - 1/11/04

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The Straight Threat to Marriage

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First published January 9, 2004, in National Review Online. Reprinted by permission of the author courtesy of Scripps Howard News Service.

Social conservatives are working overtime to argue that gay marriage would imperil straight matrimony. They say that if Jack and Joe were united, till death do them part, they would jeopardize husbands and wives, from sea to shining sea.

"We will lose marriage in this nation," without constitutionally limiting it to heterosexuals, warns Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. The Traditional Values Coalition, meanwhile, sees "same-sex marriage as a way of destroying the concept of marriage altogether."

It would be far easier to take these claims seriously if gay-marriage critics spent as much energy denouncing irresponsible heterosexuals whose behavior undermines traditional marriage. Among prominent Americans, such misdeeds are increasingly ubiquitous.

Exhibit A is musical product Britney Spears's micromarriage to hometown pal Jason Allen Alexander. The 22-year-olds were wed on January 3 in Las Vegas. Clad in sneakers, a baseball cap, ripped jeans, and a navel-revealing T-shirt, the vocalist was escorted down the Little White Wedding Chapel's aisle by a hotel chauffeur. Spears and Alexander, who wore baggy pants and a zippered sweater, soon were wife and husband.

Almost as soon, their marriage was annulled. Clark County Judge Lisa Brown accepted Spears's request and ruled that "There was no meeting of the minds in entering into this marriage contract, and in a court of equity there is cause for declaring the contract void."

The revolving-door couple's 55 hours of marital bliss were based neither on love nor shared commitment, but because "they took a joke too far," explained Spears's label, Jive Records.

Whatever objections they otherwise may generate, gay couples who desire marriage at least hope to stay hitched. Britney's latest misadventure, in contrast, reduced marriage from something sacred to just another Vegas activity, like watching the Bellagio Hotel's fountains between trips to the blackjack tables.

Consider David Letterman. His hilarious broadcasts keep Insomniac-Americans cackling every weeknight. Last November 3, he got a national standing ovation when his son, Harry Joseph, was born. Those who rail against gay marriage stayed mum about the fact that Harry's dad and mom, Regina Lasko, shack up. What message is sent by this widely hailed out-of-wedlock birth?

And then there's Jerry Seinfeld. This national treasure's eponymous TV show will generate belly laughs in syndication throughout this century, and deservedly so. The mere sound of those odd bass notes on Seinfeld's soundtrack can generate chuckles before any dialogue has been uttered.

But while Seinfeld boasts millions of fans, Eric Nederlander is not among them. Shortly after the Broadway theater heir and his then-wife, Jessica Sklar, returned from their June 1998 honeymoon, she met Seinfeld at Manhattan's Reebok Club gym. He asked Sklar out, she accepted and, before long, she ditched her new husband and ran off with the comedian.

Where was the social-conservative outrage at Seinfeld's dreadful actions? Can anyone on the religious right seriously argue that the real risk to holy matrimony is not men like Seinfeld and women like Sklar but devoted male couples who aim neither to discard one another nor divide others?

Of course, not every American is an overexposed pop diva, network talk-show host, or sitcom multimillionaire. For rank-and-file heterosexuals, marriage can involve decades of love and joy. In 51 percent of cases, people stay married for life. Such unions are inspiring, impressive, and deserve every American's applause.

On the other hand, 49 percent of couples break up, according to Divorce magazine. The Federal Administration for Children and Families calculated in 2002 that deadbeat parents nationwide owed their kids $92.3 billion in unpaid child support. In 2000, 33.2 percent of children were born outside marriage. Among blacks, that figure was 68.5 percent. A 1998 National Institute of Justice survey found that 1.5 million women suffer domestic violence annually, as do 835,000 men. So-called "reality" TV shows like Fox's Married by America and My Big Fat Obnoxious Fianc� turn wedding vows into punch lines. In nearly every instance, heterosexuals - not homosexuals - perpetrated these social ills.

Gay marriage is a big idea that deserves national debate. Nonetheless, social conservatives who blow their stacks over homosexual matrimony's supposed threat to traditional marriage tomorrow should focus on the far greater damage that heterosexuals are wreaking on that venerable institution today.

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That’ll Learn ‘Em.

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A suburban San Jose school district agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by six gay students who said they were subjected to beatings, death threats and other harassment. The Morgan Hill district, which did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement, also agreed to hold training sessions for students and teachers to discourage anti-gay harassment.

Although I'm against the epidemic of frivolous lawsuits that's overtaken the country, if what these students charge was done to them is true, then the school district deserves to be held accountable. While I'd prefer real school choice so that children can escape the clutches of uncaring educrats who can't or won't ensure their safety, as long as government schools use our tax dollars we should demand that gay kids not be treated as expendable.

The Right to Fire

Hewlett-Packard did not violate the rights of a devout Christian employee when it fired him for posting Biblical scriptures on his cubicle that were critical of homosexuality, the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled.

Those who believe that private (or shareholder-owned) companies should have the right to hire or fire at will should see nothing wrong with HP giving the sack to a homophobe. But those who believe companies should not be able to fire (or not hire) on the basis of an employee or applicant's personal beliefs may have to contort themselves to explain why some expressions of religious conviction are more equal than others.

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Anti-Love Isn’t Pro-Marriage

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First published on January 7, 2004, in the Chicago Free Press. This version has been slightly revised.

Have you noticed how seldom the defenders of marriage as an exclusive heterosexual privilege talk about love as a reason for marrying?

They give a number of reasons why only heterosexuals should be allowed to marry: the procreation of children, the preservation of social stability, the purported "fit" of the male and female genitalia. But they never seem to mention that men and women might love each other and want to spend their lives together.

This is odd if you think about it. Of all the motivations heterosexuals might have for marrying, love would seem to be first and foremost. Is it really likely that a man might say to a women, "I notice that our genitals would fit together well. Would you marry me?" or "Our nation needs to generate more children. Please be my wife."

But the defenders of exclusionary heterosexual marriage dare not mention love because they know that if they admit for one moment that one primary reason people marry is love, then gays and lesbians - who have as much capacity for love as heterosexuals - would have just as much claim to marriage as heterosexuals. And they know most Americans would realize that.

Not that they came to this point willingly. During much of the 1990s, religious right groups such as the Traditional Values Coalition tried to deny the existence of same-sex love. They characterized committed gay and lesbian couples as "sex partners" or "just friends who have sex."

Apparently that was not broadly persuasive. Perhaps the slowly growing visibility of gay couples was a factor, or awareness of the 600,000 same-sex couples acknowledged in the 2000 census. In any case, that tactic was largely abandoned.

So gay marriage opponents have been forced to retreat to curiously strained or insubstantial reasons based on human physiology ("natural fit") or so-called "social policy" (e.g., the need for babies, two parents families, etc.).

Consider the argument that we need heterosexual-only marriage in order to be sure the nation and/or the human race will survive. In fact, heterosexuals are creating babies at a high rate. In 1950, the U.S. population was 150 million. By 2000, the U.S. population was 280 million.

So the problem is not one of inducing heterosexuals to marry so there will be more children. They are having plenty of children. The problem is that heterosexuals are having children without marriage. In 1990, 26.6 percent of babies were born to unmarried women. By 2000, 33.2 percent were born to unmarried women. So the task is inducing heterosexuals who have children to marry.

Religious right advocates say allowing gay marriage would separate the concepts of marriage and child-rearing. You can be sure that if gay couples had been able to marry during the 1990s, religious right polemicists would have blamed the rising birthrates among single women on gay marriage. But it is clear that many heterosexuals already separate marriage and child-rearing.

So the religious right argument amounts to this: Because heterosexuals are producing children without marrying, therefore homosexuals should not be permitted to marry. Another way to put that is: Because many heterosexuals who produce children do not love each other enough to marry, therefore we should not permit same-sex couples who love each other to marry.

The core question then is: What does prohibiting loving gay couples from marrying do to increase the likelihood that unmarried heterosexual procreators will feel enough love for each other so they will want to marry? How exactly might that work?

But if gay marriage opponents fall back on illogical arguments against gay marriage, they also conspicuously avoid mention of ways in which gay married couples can be a social good and help solve the very problems they claim to be concerned about.

Single parents, usually women, face real challenges. Researchers have found substantial social problems associated with single parenting: Higher crime rates, drug abuse, lower educational attainments, chronic poverty. Many single mothers are unwilling or unable to care for their children, so the children are put up for adoption or foster care.

But if the problem is heterosexual procreators who do not marry, one obvious solution is adoption by married gay and lesbian couples. In most states gays can already adopt and provide foster care for children. By marrying, gay couples would be able to provide evidence of their love for each other, their commitment to the concept of family, and greater assurance of a stable and loving home life for children than unmarried parents can.

Because the arguments against gay marriage are so poor but advanced so fervently, we might wonder if gay marriage opponents are arguing in good faith. That is, are they using arguments they find convincing, or ones they may not themselves believe but hope will convince others. If the latter, then they must be reluctant to submit their actual reasons for opposing gay marriage to public scrutiny.

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