Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiGoin' to the Chapel: A Quick Trip to Gay and Lesbian Marriages
If Rhode Island were to legalize gay marriage, it might make a ripple but with scarcely one million residents, a paucity of religious fanatics and a sterling tradition of religious tolerance starting with founder Roger Williams, the fuss over it would die off pretty quickly. Nevertheless, RI has not yet done so. With Massachusetts on our border, I believe that it's only a matter of time, particularly since our attorney general, Patrick C. Lynch, broke legal ground in 1987 by issuing a legal opinion recognizing as valid same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts.
Then there's California. Approximately 38,000,000 people live there; they comprise over 12.5% of America's population 303,824,646 (2008 est.) Now the California Supreme Court has ruled that gays and lesbians can marry. As the saying goes, when California speaks, people listen. A social earthquake there sends shock waves across the country. You can be sure that the lunatic fringe will be militant and armed, ready to force people back into the closet but how effective will they be against the rising tide?
In the eighties, I was involved in the gay and lesbian movement in California, organizing for changes in the law to end employment discrimination. Working with then state representative Art Agnos who sponsored AB-1, we succeeded in getting the bill approved by both houses of the legislature, only to have it vetoed by Gov. George Deukmejian: He said that there was no evidence of discrimination against gays and lesbians. It was a tough loss. We started the documentation project intended to collect evidence of discrimination so that he could not use that weak excuse again.
Then AIDS exploded on the scene. One of the leaders of the lesbigay movement, Clive Jones, created the first AIDS quilt and the movement took a turn as thousands of gay men lost their lives before the "cocktail" came into use that turned it into a chronic disease rather than one that killed all it touched.
Before President Bill Clinton took control of the White House in 1993, few in the community spoke seriously of gay marriage. In part, gay men were far more visible than lesbians, and they were -- at the time -- concerned less with that than with other aspects of being gay. For women, the lack of visibility had always been a mixed bag. Even the biblical proscriptions against homosexuality did not mention women: It seems that it never occurred to the authors of the Bible that women could be homosexual. There was also an element, among some in the community, of transgressiveness. Many gay people opposed gay marriage because they did not want to ape straight society. How much of that was self-protection, a rejection of what was clearly out of reach, cannot be measured.
Things changed during the 1990s because the Right ambushed Bill Clinton immediately upon his inauguration. They came at him with a question about legalizing gays in the military. While his initial response was that he would end discrimination against gays and lesbians, the opposition, led by Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), chairman of the powerful U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, was so vehement, that Clinton was forced back into the now infamous "Don't ask, don't tell" proscription. By July of that year, it was all over.
Gay and lesbian leaders, especially Clinton fund raiser David Mixner, were furious at Clinton for the retreat to the hypocritical stance that kept American Armed Service personnel in the closet. Bill Clinton, who tried to govern from the center, could please no one in this regard. The Right considered "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to be the first toe in the door for legalizing homosexuality; while the lesbigay movement thought him a gutless wonder for backing down.
In the late 1980s, Virginia Uribe, a lesbian high school teacher at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles inaugurated Project 10, meant to help and give refuge to gay and lesbian teenagers. Noting the high degree of suicide among them, she believed that she could save lives by giving them support in the setting that was most hostile to them, their own school. I was at the president of the California NOW Foundation and we had helped to fund Project 10's resource guide. I attended the hearing before the Los Angeles School Board over Project 10. It was the most poisonous assembly I have ever attended. All they were missing were crosses being burnt by men in white hoods.
Several fundamentalist preachers, including the Revolting Lou Shelton of the Christian Traditional Values Coalition, arrived early, flooding the hearing room with busloads of their adherents. Most of the pro-gay speakers had to wait in the adjacent courtyard, listening to the testimony over loudspeakers. The pros- and antis- took turns presenting their evidence. I was inside and appalled at the "testimony" offered by the antis-. They would read lurid descriptions of gay male couples and lesbians having sex. In those pre-Internet times, they must have had a grand time perusing pornographic magazines for just the right tidbit. Since fantasies of lesbians having sex have long been a part of straight male porn, and because there was so little in print by lesbians about sex at the time, one could surmise what some of their sources must be. Of course, read a description of anybody of any orientation having sex and it will sound pretty shocking. There must have been a great many bulging crotches at that hearing as they heard their fantasies read out loud into the public record. They did not succeed in shutting down Project 10 in spite of their religious fervor and prurient dramatic readings.
But change was afoot. Just as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" led to an uneasy truce in the armed services, AIDS forced gay men out of the closet and Americans were forced to acknowledge their gay and lesbians children.
With the movie Philadelphia starring Tom Hanks as a gay man infected with AIDS; Antonio Banderas as his lover, and Denzel Washington as his homophobic turned sympathetic lawyer, America saw gay people for the first time not as suicidal, tragic, pathetic creatures, but as ordinary, hard-working Americans, loved by their families and doing useful work in the world.
It was in this context that the movement towards gay marriage began. Lesbians who had lost their children to hostile former husbands because the force of the law was weighted on the side of the traditional family, began to win custody of their own children; more gay men won custody of their children as well. The laws and the judges were changing. Baby could have two mommies; artificial insemination made child-bearing possible for women without men, making it possible for a woman to choose to be a lesbian and to be a parent. Gay and lesbian couples were allowed to adopt children, and the slow-moving giant of social service policy, admitted (at least in some places in America) that a child with two parents in any combination would be better off than in soul-destroying multiple foster placements or institutionalization. My sister, a social worker with San Francisco's Dependent Children's Services, says she has no qualms about placing a child with a gay or lesbian couple. Given the high degree of culpability for child molestation by straight men, giving a child to a gay or lesbian couple is a far safer bet.
So we come to the matter of gay and lesbian marriage. We who want change would do well to remember (but not surrender to) the notion that change comes slowly, and it is always one step forward, two steps back. As the great abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without struggle." Our history, with all its fits and starts, twists and turns, has finally made gay and lesbian marriage inevitable. It may be a long time before gay marriage is accepted in the conservative middle of the United States, but Massachusetts and California have started the ball rolling. There will be no going back.
Dr. Rosa Maria Pegueros is an associate professor of Latin American History and Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island.
17 Comments so far
Show AllI might also asked you if you now feel it was wrong of the courts to throw out the laws that prohibited interracial couples from marrying? Or when the courts ruled that laws forcing African-Americans to sit at the back of the bus were unconstitutional? There are lists of laws that nobody today would argue were constitutional that the courts threw out because society at the time was not ready for the changes. And the legislators who are dependent on the peoples votes would not have the intestinal fortitude to make changes. The judiciary mostly is not elected, but selected for life. So their jobs are not dependant on the voters. This allows them the security and independance to do the right things sometimes, when the people aren't ready to do the right thing.
Society has benefited tremendously when the courts advance the rights of a marginalized group.
I think I stated it fairly clearly. The judiciary is a separate branch of government whose job it is is to determine if laws passed by the legislature or propositions passed by the people are constitutional or not. That is how a court can overrule the proposition.
It was not a judicial whim of one person. It was the judicial ruling of 4 of those justices in how they interpret the constitution. It is their job to interpret it and render a proposition or law in accordance with it or contrary to it. That is what the judiciary is for. It allows a person or group of people who feel they have been or are being treated unfairly to seek a redress of grievances. Didn't you learn this stuff in high school? It is so shocking to me how people think the government works.
It's not what democracy is about, be we aren't a democracy contrary to popular opinion. We are a constitutional republic when it come to the judiciary, and a representative democracy when it comes to the legislature.
Courts can overrule laws and propositions. Both legislatures and 'the people' can overrule a court by passing amendments to make their position constitutional.
Those are the facts. It is right. How they ruled is right.
How does one judge outrule a ballot proposition?
Never mind what the proposition is.
You didn't like it when it was medical marijuana getting the axe by a judge over the will of the people and neither did I.
This practice of changing laws by judical whims is not what democracy is about. How does one guys opinion supercede all the voters in a state? It's not right, and you know it.
I don't think there's much debate in the GLBT community on whether sexual orientation is a choice. It obviously isn't. Nor do I think there's a debate amongst professionals (doctors, psycologists, etc), or even truly educated people. The only argument maintaining gay people choose to be gay are religionists who have an agenda. This would include professionals like James Dobson who are trying to manipulate scientific findings to support their dogma.
I don't believe people who are entirely straight or entirely gay have any choice in the matter. They do have a choice in how to express it, but that is all. The only ones who have a choice are bisexuals. And technically, being attracted to both genders hasn't much to do with choice either.
I agree with FVHorn that the ruling couldn't have come at a worse time. I fear that the amendment will pass, undoing what the court did in legalizing gay marriage. The setback will be devastating to all of us. Prior to the ruling, 65% of California voters opposed gay marriage. I do not see how we can change the minds of 16% in 5 short months.
I hope that the fact that the ruling came from a court populated with Republican justices in a state with a Republican governor who says he will fight the amendment can have an affect on moderate Republicans and Independants. I hope that 8 years after the passage of prop 22, enough people will have grown enough to allow their fellow citizens equal treatement under the law... in the land of liberty and justice for all.
I hope that as Californians witness marriages take place over the next five months, that they will see that the sky has not fallen, that no cities have been turned to salt, and that their marriages aren't affected by it. I hope as they see the tears of joy from those getting married, that it may move them to 'do unto others as they would have done unto them.'
It's disheartening to hear people say that the supreme court gave the people the finger by ruling against the prop 22. People do not understand that the courts are an independant branch of government, and they don't exist to rubber stamp the will of the people if that will runs contrary to constitutional principle. That is their job. They are not obligated to uphold the will of the people if it isn't constitutional.
Kudos to the court in California for ruling the only right way to rule (and how the cowards in New York and Washington state would not rule). To gay Californians... enjoy the victory. Make sure you marry before November because I do not believe the right will last. The prejudices are just too strong. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't have much faith in people anymore.
Whole shelves of books have been written debating whether GLBT people come by their orientation as a result of "nature or nurture." The argument that we have no control, that it is in our genes or some kind of a mutation is the essentialist argument. That position has been buttressed by those who claim to have found a gene that accounts for homosexuality. The downside to that argument is the likelihood that is such a gene were to be isolated, people would abort possibly gay fetuses. (Boy, wouldn't that mess up the far Right's opposition to abortion: Abortion could become a sacrament after all!) One author argues that sexuality is not an either/or proposition but occurs on a spectrum where some people are more heterosexual and others more homosexual. That would account, in part, for those who consider themselves bisexual. In any case, it is a matter of much debate both in and out of the GLBT community.
IF sexual orientation 'is not a choice', as we are constantly told, then where in the world does free will factor into the equation, and why isn't anybody asking that very important question?
I think legalizing same-sex marriages in California is a good thing. What would be even better though is for marriage to be more federally controlled than state controlled. For the United States to make marriage laws dependent on the state level complicates matters for obvious reasons. If individuals are against same-sex marriage REALLY want to make an impact and send a message to California and Massachusetts, request that marriage be mandated at the federal level (Good luck with THAT scenario).
Here is my 2cents on the matter (and it is long). For one, in the USA, marriage is primarily a legal contract between TWO people of the OPPOSITE biological sexes for reasons pertaining to financial aspects of the two parties. The PRIMARY purpose of marriage is to alleviate the financial burdens of each party involved. Religion plays very little role in mariage law. Indeed, some marriages, even today, are not necessarily made because the two parties love each other. The reality is that there are financial benefits to being married vis a vis being single. I think those who are against gay marriage strictly on religious and traditional grounds is missing the point.
What is absolutely hilarious is that Christian Fundamentalists and most Republicans are against gay marriage because the Bible says that marriage is supposed to be "one man and one woman." This is a complete falsehood. The USA "traditional" marriage is NOTHING like Bible marriage! Far from it. Indeed, one man and many wives tended to be the typical marriage arrangement in ancient Hebrew society and the more wives a man had symbolized his social status in many cases. Also, the marriages were generally family arranged. For one man or one woman to up and say that he or she will marry someone without the input of the families involved was almost non-existent. In some cases, the husband and wife may not have even met each other until, quite literally, the wedding day.
My point is that it is the right thing and the fair thing to do to have gay marriage in the USA - especially with all the income and tax benefits involved with marriage. It does seem discriminatory to have marriage ONLY be "one man and one woman." Marriage is first and foremost a legal arrangement that makes life a little easier for both parties involved. In the USA, some married couples do not even live together. Some married couples have children and some choose not to (although, strictly from a legal standpoint, it truly IS better to have children within the married parties). Some married couples marry only for tax reasons and NOT because they love each other and plan on being togehter until death do they part(personally, I recommend that both parties at least LIKE and TRUST each other if only for going into a legal contract strictly for financial reasons).
In the USA a couple can divorce for ANY reason - provided one party has the money which generally is several thousand dollars. A divorce can happen for the same reason that a marriage happens. There could be no rhyme or reason for some couples to marry and divorce. Some couples marry and divorce for kicks, for the fun of it, one or both parties feel like it etcetera. It is the ultra-right and Christian Fundamentalists that are making gay marriage more of a religious issue than it should be. If the ultra-right and Christian Fundamentalists want to "protect the sanctity of marriage" work on making petitioning divorces more difficult to do. That would be something that I could agree with them on, since I believe that marriage a very serious matter that needs careful consideration. For example, I would not marry someone I could not trust. Just leave gay people alone ultra-right wing people. Maybe do what I suggested instead, push for legislation in the USA that make divorce more difficult.
Dr. Pegueros writes, "...artificial insemination made child-bearing possible for women without men, making it possible for a woman to choose to be a lesbian and to be a parent."
CHOOSE to be a lesbian? -- is this a typo, or perhaps a Freudian slip? After years of being bombarded with messages from GLBTs that sexual orientation is NOT a CHOICE, I'm confused.
And so many think I'm SILLY for pointing out that John and Cindy McCain must be attacked relentlessly in front of social conservatives for their massive beer business that is sinful and shameful in the doctrines of the same church people (perhaps except Catholics) who will turn out to vote for Republicans and against gay marriage.
For Catholics, we are to point out McCain's habitual foul mouth, pride of skirt-chasing youth, and adultery in changing wives.
You all now know that corporations are going to try to retain control of the country on California and gay marriage. THERE ARE moral issues against McCain for some percentage of HONEST Christians and you (we) had better not be ignoring them. I assure you, after all, that Republicans will not ignore any single thing that will give them even the slightest advantage. Giving McCain a pass on beer is nuts, and dangerous too.
Also no mention of the Hawaii struggle for gay marriage which consumed that state during the early 90s. It ended with a constitutional amendment. It set the stage for the Vermont struggle that ended in civil unions.
What a BAD move to announce the California decision before the Nomvember election. I fear the Republican justices on the California Supreme Court have cynically voted for gay marriage rights in order to activate the right-wing electorate. There were 1.1 million signatures waiting for an anti-gay amendment to be put on the November ballot as soon as their decision was announced.
If such an amendment is on the ballot, this will turn out right-wingnuts and religious fundamentalists en masse (specifically directed by their religious leaders and radio talkshow propagandists), that vote Republican on social-religious issues alone, who would have probably been sitting on their hands this election.
Here we go again. The exact same anti-gay-marriage strategy that was a winner for the Republicans in 2004. Rally the base with hate. Smear the gays and win. Typical Rove maneuver. How did Americans get so dumb?
NH has gay marriage in all but name (civil union, my partner and I had ours on March 6) and it came about with a Democratic-controlled legislature and a Democratic governor, without a civil suit preceding the legislation. The gay men and women in NH would have preferred that it were called what it is but since it comes with all the State rights, responsibilities, and benefits of marriage, we accepted it (for civil union divorce, see NH divorce laws). Social change is slow, and perhaps semantic change slower, but it's coming (or already here) and it's unstoppable.
I disagree with the implication that the push for gay marriage only started in the post-Clinton era.
Within faith communities the push for same-gender marriage started by the mid-1980s. I attended a Quaker gay wedding in Pennsylvania in perhaps 1986, not the first one by any means, and the conversation about it had begun in the early 1970s.
Note from R. Pegueros:
"1987" is a huge typo. It should have read "2007." (Gremlins in my computer??)
Pointing out to elected officials that the sky has not fallen due to gay marriages here in Massachusetts would be a good place to start. I wish gay marriages was an option when I was younger. An option, not a requirement. Here's hoping Rhode Island will join us!
Um...there were no gay marriages in Massachusetts in 1987...typo or misinformed author?
Not a single mention of Vermont where U.S. civil unions first were legislated into law in the year 2000. Not quite marriage for gay and lesbian folk, but close. Vermont is not far behind MA and CA in full marriage. Soon.