Re: Homosexual Alliance to Attack Marriage
By Letters To The Editor Kevin Menken (03/27/06)
One wonders where the "NoDNC.com staff" comes up with their rather selective understanding of the concept of "marriage," and even more why they seem to believe that heterosexuals are so insecure and unreliable at making commitments that both the states and the federal government must provide thousands of special rights and benefits exclusively to their families as a bribe to honor their own commitments. After all, the "staff" is so convinced that the homosexual alliance is so bent on "attacking" marriage that one wonders where all the Rightwing was when such common hetero offenses as adultery, rape, child abuse, and wifebeating inside marriage took their toll on an everchanging institution.
Instead, they try to focus on creating a "history" of American marriage, as if the institution was created exclusively on our soil and there weren't variances in different states. Why, one of the most protective marriage laws in the land exists in places like Georgia, where a 13 or 14 year old may certainly marry without parental permission as long as the woman/girl in the relationship is pregnant. In Illinois, along with several other states, first cousins have been accessing those cushy little family rights for decades, as long as the woman is over fifty and can't bear children. Murderers, rapists, child abusers, adulterers, divorcees are all granted automatic access (and reaccess) to the special rights laws reserved for promoting the "stability" of heterosexual supremacists and their relationships.
If we look at the history of marriage, the "staff" rather skips over the evolution of the American family, one which was most influenced by economic changes, industrialization and post-industrialization. It is rare for whole families to remain on the family farm (a time when most of the family statutes were created) and yet conservatives seem more concerned about preserving outdated regulations than in recognizing that families, whether gay Americans were around or not, have both changed and evolved over the years. Most households in this nation are no longer based on the patriarchal model, where the wife is property and the children are slave labor. And even if this seems to make conservative males pine for the good old days when their peepee exerted both political and real power, no amount of scapegoating the gays is likely going to restore that era.
Apparently the NoDNC.com staff doesn't realize that gay Americans are part of the same families the Right pretends to support - and in the end it is becoming increasingly evident that the real danger to those families are not a few thousand gays being able to make health decisions and have their own funeral wishes carried out, but an increasingly nosy and interfering "conservative" movement which believes that government works best when it's sitting in our bedrooms.
Marriage has evolved many times over the centuries - and while it may sadden some conservatives who yearn for an ancient time when every sperm was sacred, they haven't done much to reassert anti-masturbation laws even though their Crown Prince of activist judges, Antonin Scalia, believes the state should have the right to criminalize that activity too. In fact, all the crowing about the sanctity of "traditional" marriage has been devoid of legislating amendments holding themselves responsible for any of their own behavior - both inside and outside of marriage. Instead, they are obsessed with gays, working overtime trying to pin every heterosexual marital woe on the group - on one hand claiming they are too few in number to deserve the right to determine their own relationships and destiny, and on the other hand demanding that male heterosexuals are infinitely more capable of making those decisions FOR them. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
There are few reasons to believe that heterosexual men, who resist any responsibility for their latent lesbian sex fantasies, whose eyes wander over other ladies when their wives are standing nearby, whose disregard for consent of a partner when their own sexual feelings overtake them, and whose long history of commiting atrocities against their own vows makes one understand better how even 1000 special benefits and privileges cannot keep an irresponsible, insecure bunch from racking up a whopping 50% failure rate. As a business, marriage is bankrupt, but it has nothing to do with the gays at all - and while everyone understands that, some "conservatives" hope that by pointing the finger elsewhere they'll manage to escape having to ever look into the mirror.
But heterosupremacist activists like to point out how ideal the family is, and that it is necessary for gay couples to be buried hundreds of miles apart at death in order to protect the "sanctity" of heterosexual superiority. Moreover, it is even more important to assert that a distant cousin have final say at funerals rather than a partner of 20 years because, if we dared acknowledge reality, it might harm the fragile heterosupremacist concept of "marriage." And even though most of the statutes involving property rights, health decisions, and funeral arrangements weren't designed as "incidents" of marriage, heterosupremacists have for years asserted those rights in the courtroom whenever a buck was to be easily made off of the estate of a gay relative.
What NoDNC doesn't like to talk about is the heterosupremacist conspiracy against families, the ugly drive which first started rearing its head during the Terri Schiavo debacle. In that case, the faith-based theocrats tried desperately to assert over and over again that it was the state, along with other relatives and outsiders, who had the right to determine the sanctity of the Schiavo marriage. No one knows what tradition this position was based, except it strangely recalls the distant time when the patriarch arranged and approved marriages - except in this case, the Right wanted the government to assert that authority. Who can forget that commitment to "traditional" marriage when unrelated persons appeared on our television screens to remind us, over and over, that, in THEIR determination, Michael Schiavo had violated his vows and the state had the right to dissolve the marriage without his consent?
It is that same heterosupremacist attitude which many estranged family members love to use when a gay individual passes on. Suddenly they come out of the woodwork, particularly if there is lucrative property value involved, not to assert their love and closeness or grieving, but their religious, legal, and moral right to claim all worldly possessions and toss the surviving partner out into the street. The basis for this abuse of "family" law, as any heterosupremacist will tell you, is that these two lived in "sin" and the state has no business recognizing their wishes.
Yet NoDNC regurgitates the rather tired, obvious talking point that gays have equal rights to marry anyone they like of the opposite sex - which means that, true to form, the supremacists actually expect others to live a lie in order to preserve the image which underlines the heterosexual superiority. In that regard, the Right has little regard for the opposite sex wife or husband, or the children who may come along, as long as the family appears to be the model approved for special control over their lives. To encourage this, heterosupremacists like to fancy such things as re-criminalizing gay behavior (again, while ignoring their own), refusing to let them adopt children (even if they are the godparents or the designated parents of a deceased brother or sister), and socially harassing them so that they are considered an embarassment to their own families. Heterosupremacists will argue that this is necessary in order to "protect" the sanctity of the family, even if that very family produced the homosexual member in the first place. If the "homosexual activists" dare speak up about this injustice, the supremacists will remind them that they are lucky they are allowed to be citizens at all, let alone not be stoned to death in the public square as dominionist law dictates.
But what is obviously troubling to the supremacists is their opposition to the idea that marriage is an individual endeavor and thus an individual right. To them, it is a duty for the State to assign classes of people according to the white male's preference for pecking order - and that requires the white male be afforded supreme recognition and all others rights under the Constitution be regulated according to how closely behavior reflects their own. This isn't a new concept - after all, the opposition to interracial marriage was well-grounded on the principle that God didn't want the races to mix.
This is one intersection where the struggle of racial minorities and the right to choose the consenting adults we marry reflects on same-sex couples who are not, despite the Right's demands, "single." One need only look over the foundation for current marriage law compiled by the editors of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 to understand the basis for our freedom to choose a partner in life.The Supreme Court, in both Loving v. Virginia(388 U.S. 1 1967) and Zablocki v. Redhail (434 U.S. 374 1978) firmly established that marriage as a "basic civil right of man."*And while the Court has also recognized it as the foundation of society and the family, heterosupremacists long ago should have given up the notion that childbearing is the sole reason for marriage. Since gays are part of families and are supposed to be equal citizens in this country, that right is an inherent part of their membership.*
The Right adamantly hates the idea that marriage is, in fact, grounded on the concept of a right to privacy. In Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur (414 U.S. 632 1974) the Supreme Court held that it "has long recognized that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment." Moreover, freedom of association, including freedom of intimate association, extends to "certain kinds of highly personal relationships" that "act as critical buffers between the individual and the power of the State." (Roberts v. United States Jaycees 468 U.S. 609 1984).*
Nor does the State have the right to dictate how those families must be formed - which is why the Right has resorted to constitutional amendments. . .not because of activist judges who 'legislate" from the bench, but because the Right knows that constitutionally they have no firm ground. The State's responsibility extends only to promoting stability in society, not in defining preferential forms in which a family is supposed to appear. And despite the heterosupremacist argument that gays cannot maintain monogamous relationships, it is the heterosexuals themselves - and in particular men - who are the leading parties having adulterous affairs despite being elevated to special status in society.
Heterosupremacists would have a more convincing argument if they would advocate the issuance of a sex permit at the time a straight couple applies for the marriage license. Since they believe that abstinence should be not only taught but enforced and marriage is under siege, taking some real steps to stem the immorality of heterosexual men seems to be the most effective tool for meaningful results. They have already shown that they have no regard either for the right of privacy, or the right to intimate association, so it's time to put all the cards on the table so the American people can decide exactly what they want "traditional" marriage to be today.
Since it is not only evangelical doctrine, but rightwing political thought that there is no right to privacy nor right to intimate association beyond state recognition, it's time to refuse to allow people to remarry after breaking their vows, force dissolved marriages on those who commit adultery whether the parties want it or not, and demand heterosexuals show themselves capable of meeting the commitments before God and the State instead of clogging up our courts with their petty relationship disputes. When heterosexual men are willing to abstain completely from any sexual thoughts and activities before marriage, then you can come to that tiny little group of homosexual activists you have obsessed wield the power to destroy your fragile concept of "marriage." Until then, you are just playing another blame game.
*Editors, Harvard Law Review. Sexual Orientation and the Law. Harvard University Press 1990.
Kevin Menken
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