| CLICK & FIND: | |
| Advertising Index | Online Dating |
| Restaurants | Discovery |
| Volunteer Work | Home & Garden |
|
|
|
||||||||
| HOT LINKS: UO Football|UO Hoops|Search|Front Page|NW Now|Wire|R-G Free Trial|Site Map|Forms|Feedback |
| FINDERS: Classifieds|Events|Restaurants|WebCams|City Info|Web Directory|Autos|Homes|Jobs|Coupons |
| ADS/DELIVERY: Place Classified|R-G Ads|Special Sections|Order R-G|Deliver R-G|Delivery Issues|NIE |
|
|
August 1, 2004 By Julie Novkov
"They are among us... . The courts will protect them in the enjoyment of every civil right guaranteed to the most favored citizen... . Their rights, social, civil, political and religious, will be jealously guarded; but they must not marry or be given in marriage with the sons and daughters of our people. ... Such, indeed, we believe, was the law of every state." - Lonas vs. State, upholding the criminal conviction of a black man for attempting to live with his white wife. The Oregon courts are currently considering challenges to Oregon officials' decisions limiting marriage to male-female couples. Voters also face a decision in November about whether to amend the Oregon Constitution to define marriage as a relationship that can involve only a woman and a man. For most of us, our family lives and our personal relationships are deeply emotional issues. While acknowledging these emotions, we need to think carefully and logically about what it means to bar some Oregonians from being able to enter into the relationship of marriage. In doing so, it is instructive to consider the historical parallel of the ban on interracial marriage. In our constitutional system, we value our liberties. So highly do we cherish our freedom to arrange our private lives that we insist - through the structure of our constitution - that the government never deny this freedom without good reasons. We also insist constitutionally that the government justify treating groups of people differently or allowing some people privileges that others do not enjoy. At the crux of the same-sex marriage debate is this dilemma: The government is denying a right to some citizens that other citizens enjoy. What justifications can the government provide for denying the right to marry, and are those justifications good enough? What are the reasons to oppose same-sex marriage? Two serious arguments tend to prevail. The first is that marriage has traditionally been a relationship between a man and a woman, and that there is no comparable tradition of same-sex marriage. The second is that marriage is fundamentally connected to producing and nurturing healthy children in families and that children do best when raised in intact families with opposite-sex parents. Both of these arguments were used to justify barring interracial marriage. Are they stronger when used against same-sex marriage than against interracial marriage? Tradition deserves to be taken seriously, as it is a basis for many of our laws and customs. Those who oppose same-sex marriage implicitly link the state-based tradition of recognizing and registering marriage with marriage's much deeper religiously based roots. We must therefore try to understand just what traditional marriage has involved over the centuries. Upon a little reflection, commitment to traditional marriage becomes problematic. Marriage as a relationship between a single man and a single woman has traditional roots, but marriage has historically been limited or defined in other ways. Another tradition with almost as significant and widespread an acceptance is that of polygamy, a practice discussed extensively in the Hebrew Bible and continued today in some parts of the world. Finally, one of the most long-standing traditions, likely second only to the requirement of at least one male and one female partner, is that of endogamy. Endogamy is the idea that people should be permitted to marry only those of their community, ethnic group, religious commitments or race. In some countries and ethnic groups, rules limiting marriage to members of the same group still exist. All of these traditions - opposite-sex marriage, polygamy and endogamy - have had extensive state-based support throughout the centuries. And at least some Western countries have rejected all of these traditions, even that of limiting marriage exclusively to opposite-sex couples, in recent years. The challenge for defenders of tradition is to separate the ban on same-sex marriage on the one hand from requiring endogamy on the other. How can one agree that bans on interracial marriage are wrong while denying marriage to same-sex couples? In 1967, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Loving vs. Virginia that the state of Virginia could not prosecute men and women who married and established families across a wall between black and white. The laws against interracial intimacy, explained the court, were rooted in a tradition of discrimination and disparagement that could not be sustained under the bright light of constitutional modernity. The struggle to remove bans on interracial marriage is instructive for the debate over same-sex marriage. The two cases are not perfectly parallel, but they are close. Those supporting the ban cited tradition and claimed that scientific evidence showed that racial mixing would lead to unhealthy families and unfit children. They also relied upon religious traditions, often claiming that God had placed the races on different continents to demonstrate the wisdom of maintaining separation among the races. They pointed to particular passages in the Bible to support their claims. They claimed that preventing interracial marriage did not deny the right to marry, since those who wished to marry across the racial boundary could always find legitimate partners of their own race if they wanted to exercise their rights. They also claimed repeatedly that banning interracial marriage did not send a message of inferiority or exclusion to the races who were barred from marrying whites. We see now that these arguments are absurd at best and dangerous at worst. With respect to same-sex marriage, relying on tradition suffers from the same flaws as the tradition-based argument against interracial marriage. The courts and legislatures that rejected such traditions were right to do so, and their contemporary counterparts that make the same choice regarding same-sex marriage will also be right. We must also take care to separate religious from secular traditions. Our constitution protects religious freedom by allowing us free expression of religious belief but preventing the state from endorsing any particular set of beliefs. If we are to have marriage as a state-based institution, it must have some meaning beyond its religious significance. Indeed, if civil marriage depends on religion for its definitions, the state is placed in constitutionally untenable position of choosing which religion's definition of marriage should prevail. A growing number of religions and branches of religions sanctify unions between two men or two women. Civil marriage as a state-based institution cannot simply channel religious significance, neither should it try. Opponents of same-sex marriage respond that marriage is a fundamental unit of society, designed to create and nurture the next generation of citizens. (This argument is also familiar from the debate over interracial marriage.) We must prohibit same-sex marriage to protect the children. This argument has three parts. Its proponents claim that 1) only heterosexual couples procreate naturally, 2) social scientific evidence shows that the healthiest families are intact families with mothers and fathers, and 3) children need role models of both genders. The problem is that all of these claims are both under- and over-inclusive; they apply to some same-sex couples and do not apply to all opposite-sex couples. Not all heterosexual couples procreate "naturally," nor do all lesbian and gay couples procreate "unnaturally." Are children produced through in vitro fertilization, egg or sperm donation, surrogacy or adoption less legitimate than those produced by married heterosexual couples fortunate enough not to have fertility problems? Marriage is not a precondition for procreation, as women have known for millennia. And very few modern societies have restricted marriage to couples who can or intend to procreate. Would opponents of same-sex marriage bar nonfertile men and women from marrying? Prevent second marriages between individuals who are finished having children? No scientifically defensible study has ever shown that children raised in families composed of intact same-sex parents are unhealthy. While few generations of children have yet been raised openly in such families and long-term, large-scale studies are not yet feasible, neutral observers should be reassured. Studies quoted by opponents of same-sex marriage tend to compare the children of married opposite-sex couples to the children of single parents. Anyone who has spent any time - even an afternoon - as a single parent will confirm that handling kids without a support network is tough. Further, these studies sometimes do not consider the impact of family income. The agenda behind this argument is troubling. Those who worry about children's health when raised by same-sex parents ignore the mountain of social science evidence finding nearly unanimously that other social problems have a definitive negative impact on children. If we want to protect children, we should be worrying a lot about children raised in poverty. We should be worrying a lot about children raised in homes in which physical violence is practiced against a parent or against the children themselves. And we should worry a lot about environmental dangers, particularly cigarette smoke. All of these factors are proven to be injurious to children but get far less attention than speculative and spurious correlations between the genders of the parents and the children's mental health. But don't children need role models of both genders? Again, as a society we do not require single parents of either gender to find immediately a role model of the opposite gender. If having both male and female role models in the home is so important, why should we impose this requirement only on same-sex couples and not on single parents or divorced parents who have no contact with their former partners? One final argument that still makes the rounds is that homosexuality is unnatural. Those who make this argument may be unaware of recent research into primate behavior showing that same-sex sexual interaction is quite common among many species of monkeys and apes. Further, deriving standards for human law from animal behavior is a problematic enterprise. Same-sex couples all over the state and the nation have already formed families united by love. These families and the children in them deserve the same protections from the state as families formed by male-female couples. What is left, then, of the possible justifications for denying these protections to such families? Tradition cannot work, since we cannot distinguish logically between the traditions we want to endorse and those we want to reject. Religion cannot work, both because we cannot base our laws directly upon particular religious beliefs and because some religions sanctify same-sex unions. Linking marriage to procreation cannot work, because the link is too indistinct. Protecting children cannot work, because there is no definitive scientific evidence to promote banning same-sex marriage, and we do not deny parents' individual rights or tax society to counter much more clearly established threats to children. All that is left, it appears, is dislike for those who would choose same-sex marriage for themselves and their families. Ultimately, the large majority of heterosexuals in Oregon and elsewhere who will determine the fate of this question must ask themselves if dislike and animus are good enough reasons to prevent couples who love each other from marrying.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
