Gay Marriage: the Reality
By Crispin Sartwell
As clearly as anything can be, the question of gay marriage is a matter of equal treatment before the law, of the idea that all persons are endowed with unalienable rights.
The notion that we're going to start amending state constitutions and the federal constitution to prohibit gay marriage is a travesty of the spirit of American liberty, a clear indication that people - including the President of the United States - don't understand or don't accept the fundamental creed of our nation. The counter-argument, of course - repeated almost mechanically - is that "activist judges" are whimsically or arbitrarily redefining the term 'marriage.' That argument is fraudulent, dishonest: the flimsiest pretext for sheer bigotry: a pathetic sophism in the service of institutionalized apartheid. The real reason that people oppose gay marriage is revulsion at homosexuality, at its supposed unnaturalness or its supposed condemnation by God. The people who oppose gay marriage know better than anyone that these are their motivations. That is, they know very well that they are bigots.Slavery was widely or rather relentlessly defended on Christian grounds. Interracial sex and marriage were held to be unnatural and were prohibited by law. What drove all of this was not the definition of terms, but a disgust with black bodies that was a congratulation of oneself for one's own purity, one's whiteness. The idea that the prohibition of gay marriage is a "defense of marriage" is an expression of that same conceptual structure. What people are defending is their own heterosexuality, and the only defense they will accept is that heterosexuality represents a kind of purity which homosexuality threatens to pollute. It is a mere declaration of one's own superiority, and it is exactly as irrational, as evil, and as incompatible with American freedom as legal racism. Actually, no one really gets to define a term like 'marriage.' Its meaning turns on what is true in the world. The fact that all over the country people of the same gender are making ceremonial and festive commitments to one another and are living together in monogamous households is a demonstration that the meaning of 'marriage' has already expanded. The courts cannot make meanings by fiat. But then again neither can state legislatures. Words mean the realities to which they correspond, not the whim of power, whether the power of a majority, a judge, or a president. And to that extent, gay folks would do well simply to ignore the authorities on this matter. But to the extent that the question is about equal protection of the law - practical matters in tax law or hospital visitation or child custody - to that extent gay people and anyone who cares about the ideas on which democracy depends must fight. Almost everyone, it seems, would like the gay marriage discussion to slow down. Many gay activists would like to see a pause in court and legislatures for a social consensus to develop or rather for the existing social consensus to shift. That is precisely the attitude that preserved slavery for decades, that urged Martin Luther King to moderate his demands for full equality before the law until the country could be cured of racism.
But the demands of King and his allies ultimately helped heal the country of racism (not that the cure was entire). Anyone who cares about freedom has an obligation to put the case as clearly and as urgently as possible.
Crispin Sartwell is a legally married heterosexual and has five children. He teaches political philosophy at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA.
