2001-07-16 - 3:37 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Groove is in the Heart"

Well, I was on a roll and decided to go with it. To balance out the previous entry, here is my reaction to a comment of Portia's with which I agree, instead.

She says, "Gays can't legally be married, and thus the benefits the gov't gives to married couples are denied them."

Ok, so, first: what is marriage?

Best way I can define it, from a governmental point of view, is a set of privileges that are automatically granted to you by the state when you "get married". These privileges include a tax break in some cases, legal recognition of the two of you as a unit, the right to visit your SO in intensive care and make decisions for him/her in certain situations.

All right, so, my initial reaction to this is: Why should the government be doing this? Why are they granting these privileges to some people and not others? This concept shouldn't even exist as a function of the government unless it's available to every adult citizen.

The traditional argument I've heard for state recognition of marriage is that it encourages an institution (marriage and family) which is, overall, beneficial to society. The government is encouraging people to behave a certain way. This reminds me of the Gore position on tax breaks that so irritated me during the presidential debates -- "if you do X, or if you fit profile Y, we'll give you a tax break". Ick. Society can hype marriage all they want, but it's not the job of the government to encourage it by giving it to certain people who meet some exclusionary rules.

Marriage as a state-administered institution is deeply ingrained in our society -- not just in state matters but in private ones as well. Recognition of marriage by the state means automatic recognition of a couple as being a "family" by private institutions, such as hospitals, insurance companies, and so on. There is no way to look at this issue except by accepting the concept of marriage as a legal union as a given.

We are, therefore, operating in a world where marriage exists and isn't going anywhere. Futher, it is defined as being "between a man and a woman", preventing millions of people from being able to get married. Way I see it, we have a problem here. Certain citizens are getting special privileges over others, and they're getting it over those others due to a congenital condition. (If you try to tell me people "choose" to be gay, I will laugh at you, but even if they did, so what?) If it's okay to deny two people these special privileges because they haven't got the requisite Tab A/Slot B combination despite having the same intentions and commitment as a couple who does, you might as well say non-white folks can't get married either, since, well, they're not white.

I've heard a lot of other bad arguments why marriage should be restricted to heterosexual couples. I've heard people say that the gay "lifestyle" is more promiscuous, that gay couples are less likely to remain together, that the relationship between two of the same sex is not the same thing as between two of the opposite sex. These arguments are stupid and pointless.

For one thing, they cannot be objectively verified. Even if they could be, and if they did apply to the majority of the homosexual population, what about the minority to whom it does not apply? Why should they be denied marriage because some other people with the same sexual orientation have different behaviors? Second, given the high divorce rate, the numbers of extramarital affairs (particularly among politicians!), and the general dysfunction in so many heterosexual marriages, if you're gonna deny gay folks the privilege of state-recognized marriage, you'd better deny it to the straight ones, too.

The only argument against gay marriage that actually has a leg to stand on -- and it's an weak, technical argument -- is the one that says that marriage is defined in the law as "between a man and a woman". But that's ridiculous too. At the very least, any person who believes in "equal opporunity under the law" -- something of a Republican mantra -- should be very interested in changing the wording of the law so that it is open to all U.S. citizens. Otherwise, the same person who dislikes affirmative action because he feels it gives special privileges to a select group is now suddenly opposed to marriage (special privileges) for anyone but straight couples (a select group)? Very hypocritical.

Some Republicans I've talked to like to argue that gay folks can get most of those privileges simply by going through a lawyer. A lawyer supposedly can set up a legal relationship between the two people that gives them everything except the tax break, near as I can figure. But why should gay folks have to go to a lawyer when straight folks can just go to their local government, fill out a piece of paper, have a ceremony, and be done with it? And what about that tax break? It's harder for gay folks to get those privileges, which still doesn't sound to me like "equal opportunity under the law".

This is, of course, my main beef with Republican politics aside from their faults that are common to politicians in general. Although they talk the right talk when it comes to tax cuts and smaller government, they fail miserably at staying out of people's private lives.

previous index next