Same-Sex Marriage Is Legal Everywhere In The US

An old man walks, with some trepidation, into an old house.

It's dark, there's lots of dust and the floors creak with each step he takes.  But he' not really worried (or so he tells himself) until he hears:

Boooo.... I am the spi-rit...of same-sex marriage...Woooo!

The old man screams:  Oh, no!  There goes the threat to our democracy.

Now, of course, neither that house nor that ghost exists---except, of course, in the fantasies of that old man.

And who is that old man?, you ask.

Why, he's none other than our good friend Antonin Scalia.

Yes, that Antonin Scalia.  The one who's been on the Supreme Court for nearly three decades.  

Now, to be fair, he didn't specifically say that same-sex marriage is the threat.  Rather, he blasted the Supreme Court--or, more specifically, five members of it. In calling them the threat to democracy, he probably came as close as he could to saying that he's against same-sex marriage without saying it.  He's like all of those people who say "states' rights" as a code phrase for their opposition to laws protecting racial equality.

Those five judges--Anthony Kennedy (who wrote the opinion), Stephen Beyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan--marriage is a right of all same-sex couples, regardless of where in the United States they live.  The other four judges--Scalia, John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas--each wrote their own dissenting opinions.

From the tone of this, you can tell that I'm pleased with the ruling. However, I still don't believe that granting same-sex marriage rights is the best solution.  I believe that, ideally, governments should have nothing at all to do with marriage other than to set a minimum age.  I also don't believe that religious institutions should be vested with the power of marriage.  If people want to have ceremonies in their houses of worship or prayer or whatever, that is fine.  But such a ceremony shouldn't legalize a person's union.  I'm no Constitutional lawyer or scholar, but it seems to me that the situation I've described--i.e., the one we have--conflicts with the Constitutional separation of church and state. Today's ruling does nothing to change that.

Still, though, today's decision is better than second-class citizenship, which is what too many same-sex couples now have.
 
 

The Diversity In Marriage Act (DIMA)

Back to serious, sober gender stuff today.

All right, perhaps not so serious and sober.  In fact, you might actually have fun (Whoda thunk it?) reading my latest Huffington Post piece.

I'll reproduce the text here:

The Diversity In Marriage Act


The state of Utah has just ruled that I can marry a black man. Or an Hispanic or Asian male. Even a Native American is acceptable, under the state's ruling.

But I can't marry a white man, let alone a white woman. Oh, I can't marry an African-descended, Latina or Asian female, either.

Now, you might think I've gone over to neighboring Colorado and partaken of their newly-legalized recreational drug. Truth is, I'm nowhere near that Rocky Mountain mecca. I've been there only once, and that was to avail myself to the services of one Dr. Marci Bowers. And I've never set foot in the Beehive State. I'm safely ensconced in the very state that kicked out someone named Joseph Smith, who is largely responsible for the Utah we know and love today.

Time was, not so long ago, someone who used "Utah" and "same-sex marriage" in the same sentence would have been suspected of inhaling Boulder's Best -- and I'm not talking about the pure mountain air. Or he or she would have been directed to take his or her medication.

But what would have been seen as a hallucination or fantasy less than a year ago actually came to pass, however briefly, last month. Judge Robert Shelby -- a conservative Republican -- ruled Utah's same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional. So, for a few heady days, Johns joined Jims and Willas wed Wendys in Salt Lake City and a few other locales in the state.

Of course, Utah being Utah, there were plenty of politicians and lay people who simply wouldn't let such a situation be. So they appealed Judge Shelby's decision to the Supreme Court. They made all of the predictable arguments citing long-discredited studies (or pure-and-simple folklore) about the "benefits" of being raised by one biological parent of each gender and the ways in which heterosexual marriage promotes "responsible" sexual behavior.

Now, such arguments couldn't sway someone like Judge Shelby. But, apparently, Utah's foes of same-sex marriage thought they might work in that liberal bastion known as the United States Supreme Court, where such left-wing stalwarts as Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia occupy the bench.

So what did those righteous folks who wanted to save us from the spectacle of Mr. and Mr. or Ms. and Ms. do? They did their homework and came up with a set of germane court rulings. And -- I must give them their due -- they used those rulings in a way that I never, in a million years, could have imagined.

Various courts have ruled that publicly-funded colleges and universities can use "diversity" as a criterion for admissions. Educators and related professionals have long argued that contact with people from nations, cultures and religions different from one's own enhances a student's educational experience. In other words, the prep school kid, the scholarship student from the slums and the young woman from Asia will all gain social and thinking skills they might not otherwise would have acquired in the classroom.

Ergo, a kid will learn more from two parents who are different sexes than from parents of the same sex -- or only one parent.

Now, I don't know whether Utah's same-sex marriage foes gained such reasoning skills (or, for that matter, learned the word "ergo") in the hallowed halls of their fair state's esteemed institutions of higher learning. Perhaps they're just naturally brilliant. I mean, how else could they have argued, in essence, that "diversity in marriage" is the ideal and will teach kids what they need to learn? At any rate, I never could have constructed such a logical tour de force.

What they said, in essence, is that the state should mandate diversity in marriage. Well, they want gender diversity -- or, more accurately, polarity. But imagine that the legislatures of Utah or other states -- or the federal government -- were to pass a comprehensive Diversity In Marriage Act.

Would DIMA simply mandate what DOMA proscribed? Or would it go beyond DOMA and specify other ways, besides gender, in which each spouse must differ? Must they be of different races and cultural backgrounds? Will they be expected to speak different languages and practice different religions? (Perhaps only one member of the couple could be a theist.) Would dreamers only be permitted to marry schemers? Omnivores to vegans? Would I have to marry a mathematician? (Not that I wouldn't.) Or someone with Type O blood?

If Utah were to pass DIMA, a lot of people might not marry at all: It's one of the whitest states in the union. It's also one of the least religiously diverse, and one of the most socially homogenous in all sorts of other ways.

If I were feeling lonely, I guess I could go to Colorado. Even if they were to pass DIMA, I could brighten up my days in other ways. And, if I were to marry someone of my own race, gender or cultural background, or with a skill-set like mine, I could plead ignorance: Everyone looks the same when you're on a Rocky Mountain High. Or is that when you're drunk?

If you are, you've got to marry someone in a 12-step program. Otherwise, you'll be in violation of the Diversity In Marriage Act. You don't want to get stung with the penalties for such an infraction, especially in the Beehive State. Do the birds marry the bees there?

 

 

Stirring Up A Hornet's Nest In The Beehive State?

If you are anything like me, you probably never expected to use "Utah" and "same-sex marriage" in the same sentence.

But it looks like we may have to get used to such a locution.  As I've mentioned in an earlier post, a court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage.  Since then, hundreds of couples--most of them in Salt Lake City--have exchanged vows.

Meanwhile, the state has appealed Judge Robert Shelby's decision to the US Supreme Court.  The Beehive State's (With a name like that, the state wants to ban gay marriage?  Who do they think does all of those beehives?;-)) lawyers have argued that Judge Shelby--who, by the way, is a conservative Republican-- in essence, created a Constitutional right by ruling that the ban violated Federal guarantees of equal protection. In response, according to lawyer Peggy Tomic, advocates of same-sex marriage have filed papers in the Supreme Court in which they argue, in essence, that gay people aren't harming anyone by getting married in Utah.

Even if the Supreme Court grants the appeal--which, I believe, seems unlikely--it will still be something of a surprise to provincial New Yorkers like me that same-sex marriages ever took place in Utah.  But, as I've done some research, this turn of jurisprudence seems less surprising. After all, seemingly-conservative and mainly-rural Iowa legalized same-sex marriage a couple of years ago.  I know of Iowa only from acquaintances who hail from there; from their accounts, Iowans are "tolerant" and are taught to "mind their own business".  If that;s the case, then they are not so different--at least in that respect--from Vermonters, who surprised almost no one when they legalized same-sex marriage in their state.

But another fact makes recent events in Utah less surprising than they initially seemed.  According to at least one report, Salt Lake City has a higher percentage of its gay couples raising children than any other large city in the United States. Other cities near the top of that list include Virgina Beach, Detroit and Memphis.  

One reason why cities (with the possible exception of Detroit) that have such high proportions of gay couples raising children are located in socially conservative states may well be the social conservativism in such places.  It results in people coming out later in life and, often, entering into heterosexual marriages and having kids along the way.  Also, I think social conservatives lose, interestingly, some of their objection to gay marriage if not "the gay lifestyle" when they see gay couples raising kids. Seeing gay couples with kids is, perhaps, more palatable to some people than seeing images of  young, single gays leading seemingly-hedonistic lives in Chelsea or Castro.

Also, people in socially conservative places value order.  I think now of a Dutch minister who explained that his country's history of Calvinism is the very reason why marijuana and other drugs are legal in Amsterdam.  Legalizing something means regulating it.  It also means that people won't have to follow their proclivities "in the shadows" and resort to illegal means.  If you legalize pot, people don't have to support criminals in order to buy it; if you legalize gay marriage (and, indeed, almost anything else that goes along with homosexuality or queerness), there is less business for seedy bars and unscrupulous purveyors of pornography and sexual paraphernalia.   

Of course, if the Supreme Court upholds the ruling of a conservative Republican judge in what has been regarded as one of the most socially conservative states to strike down his state's ban on gay marriage, other states and jurisdictions will have less reason  to hold to bar such unions.  

That said, I still think that same-sex marriage is not the ne plus ultra of equal rights legislation for LGBT people.  I still believe that government should not have any say in marriage at all, save for setting a minimum age limit.  Everyone who wants to wed should, in the eyes of government, have the equivalent of a civil union, and couples could enshrine their marriages in their churches or other places of worship if they so wish.  And, finally, I think there should not be any tax benefits for any married couple, whether they are hetero- or same-sex.  But, given the legal and social systems we have, legalizing same-sex marriage is the best way to ensure that two men or two women have the same rights as a man and a woman.

(Now that Utah, in essence, allows same-sex marriage, at least one wag is wondering whether same-sex polygamy or polyandry will also be legal. In my own unbiased opinion, I think that there's a lot less reason to worry about gay marriage than about polygamy!)