Recently, I had to have “the” talk with my four year old son. You know, the one where a parent has to explain that things or people who seem different from us on the surface are not really that different at all. My son had over heard someone saying that they had two moms. And his immediate response was “two moms? how weird!?!” Needless to say, we are working on removing the term “weird” from his vocabulary. But, his knee-jerk reaction really made me reflect on some of the reactions I have had to gay marriage and marriage rights in my lifetime. I started off totally ignorant, knowing very little about the subtle differences between civil unions and plain ol’ marriage. I had no clue of the difficulty LGBT folks had when seeking joint adoptions, burial rights, and a host of other things I take for granted in my heterosexual relationship. But, as I have gotten older and started a family of my own, I see things a bit differently now. And, it makes me wonder, what does “defense of marriage” really even mean? When President Clinton passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, what exactly was he seeking to defend?
DOMA is an interesting piece of legislation. It basically says that heterosexual marriage is the only legally recognizable “type” of marriage. And, even if individual states work to validate same-sex marriage within their own constitutions, DOMA directly undermines those efforts. So, what do heterosexual folks have to gain from denying equal rights to their same-sex peers? Well, nothing really. It doesn’t make my marriage any stronger knowing that someone can’t be with their husband or wife who is in a hospital room. It also doesn’t help me in anyway knowing that children in need of loving parents may not get adopted because of our aversion to homosexual relationships in this country. In essence, I get nothing except some false sense of superiority over people who’d like the chance to publicly profess their love for someone who feels the same way for them.
Instead, DOMA teaches LGBT husbands, wives, and family members that these relationships are shameful or less than. They are socialized to hate themselves and hide from the judgmental eyes of the larger public. Why? Well, because we hate them. We hate that they won’t simply behave like us, look like us, and be straight like us. We hate that they are different. We hate that they are “weird.” To placate same-sex couples, some states have offered civil unions. And, although California’s civil union laws are pretty similar to heterosexual marriage laws, many states still deny same-sex couples transfer of estate provisions in case a spouse passes away, personal possession benefits in the case of divorce, or even have mechanisms in place to guarantee that same-sex couples will get equal treatment to heterosexual couples when it comes to child-rearing. In many states, unwed heterosexual couples have more defined rights than wedded same-sex couples. So, who is really in need of defense here?
Everyday, when I walk outside with my perfect little brown family in our quaint suburban OC neighborhood with our two cars and “normal” lifestyle, I am keenly aware of how safe my relationship is. I have no concerns that people will look at me funny if I hold hands with my husband in public. And, when I stroll through the neighborhood grocery store, I am almost always greeted with a friendly “hi there, your family is so beautiful…” So, what exactly do I need to be defended from? To tell the truth, my brown hue is probably in more need of defense than my “normal” marriage.
In such clear terms, I was able to explain to my son that people are simply different, unique, or interesting. And, in explaining this to him, I realized that this country seems to struggle most with simply articulating these logically sound concepts in our federal and local policy. We teach our children that bullying is wrong all the while we socialize the subjugation of certain groups like women, minorities, the elderly, and LGBT citizens. We are shocked when children do harmful, tragic, or violent things to one another yet we normalize it for those groups we find to be “weird” and abnormal. Just a few years ago, interracial marriage was illegal in this country. It wasn’t until 1967 with the decision of Loving vs. Virginia that this archaic system of discrimination was finally overturned by the US Supreme Court. It suffices to say that interracial marriage was pretty “weird” back then. And, just like same-sex marriage today, a majority of Americans hated interracial couples too.
So, I ask the simple question, what are we defending: marriage or hate?
This is a great piece and a very interesting view concerning DOMA, and does raise some questions as to how useful DOMA really is to society, if at all. Your son saying that two moms is 'weird' is in its own way true, it's not yet a common thing to see two women in a relationship, though it's your choice in how to deal with it. Though really it's mainstream culture that defines what is normative and what is not, and lesbian mothers just are not yet fitting into the norm. But I digress.
Hands down, DOMA is a problem for a great many reasons, but the perspective of marriage seems to be getting warped in this political battle. 'Marriage' is, technically, the religious ceremony in which a man and a woman are joined in a celebratory union, announcing mutual intention to be faithful to one another and to potentially produce children. Regardless of if that's how it operates in reality is a whole different can of worms, I'm simply saying that's how marriage is or perhaps more so, should be defined.
How, just how gay marriage is a threat to that is beyond my understanding. However with so much pressure to create a link between this heteronormative ritual and the LGBT community, it just seems to have molded into a new creature, a vicious one full of hate from both sides. DOMA sought to protect something considered sacred by religions and many peoples, yet instead I do believe planted the seeds of hatred in all those same people it tried to defend.
In my opinion, it comes down to this: who has the right to judge that a man and a man, or a woman and a woman cannot love or be with each other the same way a heterosexual married couple can be. However, look at it from the other side, who has the right to judge that religions based on a doctrine or belief that homosexuality is abnormal, and force on them ideologies that are not their own? In both cases, no one. When and if religions decide to change their ways and embrace gay marriage should be their decision. At the same time though, no one should be barring the love between two people.
For the longest time it's been my belief that one should treat others as one would like to be treated. If you do not wish to be imposed upon, do not impose yourself. That said, I also have this strange understanding that church is separated from state in the USA, so why is there this situation to begin with? If religions do not want to accept gay marriage, that is their business. But for a government to deny unions of people who want the same benefits and pitfalls that others receive? That's discrimination and cannot be, or at least should not be tolerated.
So if it were up to me, I wouldn't allow gays to marry in a religious sense unless that particular faith allowed it. And at the same time, the government would be obligated to perform a service, similar or not to that of religious ceremonies to give gay couples the same rights as straight couples. Calling each other husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, partners in life, domestic partners, love wranglers, or however else you'd like to put it, would be up to a registry system that would regard all partnership titles, by marriage or otherwise, to be treated equally. Perhaps I'm wrong, or simply idealistic, maybe just delusional or bitter, but I know that something here is terribly amiss on both sides of the fight. Is it such a crime to follow faith? And is it such a crime to love?
I'm a gay man with a long-term partner that I would love to marry, in a church, but I just can't bring myself to force people to bend their rules and their beliefs just for my sake. It's not to say I'm dispassionate about gay equality rights, I hope every day that DOMA will disappear and I will never step down from believing that I am a human being like any other, and just because I choose to love a man does not make me any lesser than I am. So if Christianity never accepts homosexuals, I'll be just as happy to rent a location and have a representative of the state do me the honors, just as happy that is, if DOMA is repealed and I can be allowed to have the same rights with my partner just like any heterosexual person does with theirs.
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