If it's Sunday in Jacksonville, Fla., it isn't hard to find Darlene Maffett, her partner, and their two children -- just head over to St. Luke's Community Church. As the first gay-friendly African-American church in a city where 32 percent of all gay couples are raising children, the Maffetts call St. Luke's a second home. It's a liberating place, one where they can worship with families like themselves, instilling the Golden Rule lessons of respect, integrity, and commitment in their children.
Darlene and her partner long to demonstrate the depth of their love for each other in the most powerful way they know how -- by making a public commitment to care for and protect their family through marriage. But because government discrimination bars gay couples from legally marrying, it's hard for parents like Darlene to explain to their children why their family is not treated the same as others.
The Maffetts aren't alone. According to a recent New York Times front-page analysis of census data, the South is home to more gay parents than any other region in the nation. The study shows that the gay community is no cookie-cutter group, despite the best efforts of anti-gay opponents to paint it as such. The community is diverse economically, racially, and geographically. African Americans and Latinos, who are often rendered invisible in a national discourse that slights or ignores intersecting identities, were twice as likely as white same-sex couples to raise children. The study by The Williams Institute at UCLA also found that one in three lesbians are parents, while one in every five gay men are.
There is no question that gay families exist in every county, every state, every region in the United States. The big question now is whether we will end the ongoing state-sponsored discrimination against caring, committed couples like the Maffetts. Without marriage in Florida, one of a dozen states in the South with a discriminatory constitutional amendment on the books, these families are denied the basic tools and support they need most and are forced to live on a tenuous patchwork of protections -- or, more often, none at all.
These families are not only discriminated against by their home states, which exclude them from marriage and bar even lesser protections such as civil union and domestic partnership. They are also targeted for an additional layer of discrimination from the federal government: the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" or "DOMA."
"DOMA" harms married same-sex couples by withholding from them the more than one thousand federal responsibilities and protections of marriage accorded all other married couples -- including Social Security survivor benefits, tax fairness, access to health coverage, and recognition of family ties for immigration purposes. Equally destructive, DOMA divides married Americans into two classes, those with marriages the federal government likes, and those who are married to someone of whom the federal government disapproves. And DOMA discriminates against states, telling them that even if they end marriage discrimination, the couples they legally married will be carved into two groups.
When DOMA was stampeded into law back in 1996, no gay couples were married anywhere in the world; Congress was voting on a hypothetical. But today tens of thousands of real-life married couples are affected by DOMA's double-standard. Increasingly, Americans understand the unfairness of not only denying these couples the opportunity to make a public commitment to one another, but also depriving these families of a myriad of federal protections. DOMA serves no legitimate end: marriage is not "defined" or "defended" by who is denied it. Even former Republican Congressman Bob Barr, DOMA's original sponsor, and President Bill Clinton, who signed it into law, have acknowledged DOMA to be abusive and have each called for its repeal. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice continues to defend this law that President Obama has repeatedly said is discriminatory.
It's unfortunate because families from Massachusetts to Florida know first-hand that this type of government-sanctioned exclusion says that in the eyes of the law, gay relationships, parents and families are less worthy and deserve fewer protections and less respect. In short, it undermines the very values Darlene Maffett works tirelessly to instill in her children every day. Gay couples, like all human beings, love and want to declare love, want inclusion in the community, and the equal choices and possibilities that the government bestows on all other married couples and families. Valerie Williams, the Maffetts' pastor at St. Luke's, echoed this sentiment when describing her commitment to her partner Cindy:
We work hard to care for our friends and neighbors and we're diligent about paying our taxes. And despite our commitment to love each other 'til death does us part, our government excludes us from the protections and obligations that only marriage can provide.
The freedom to marry is important in building strong families and strong communities. Every day, the Williams' and Maffetts keep doing the hard work of marriage. Through day-to-day interactions and personal conversations with their friends, families and neighbors, they demonstrate their desire to protect their loved ones and the tangible harms inflicted by exclusion from marriage, helping others along their journey toward fairness. After meeting loving and devoted couples like Cindy and Valerie and Darlene and her partner and seeing their commitment to family, Americans can't help but ask, what business do federal, state and local governments have in putting obstacles in these family's paths as they seek to care for each other? It is time for states like Florida (and all the others that deny civil marriage to committed couples) and the federal government to end state-sponsored discrimination in marriage. In the United States, we don't have second-class citizens, and we shouldn't have second-class marriages.
Crossposted at www.freedomtomarry.org
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Guess what, Evan... you and the rest of Gay Marriage, Inc. completely shut out couples where one of the parties is transgender or intersexed!!
I live in Ohio, where I'm banned from changing the gender on my birth certificate. If I was attracted to men as a woman, I would be under Ohio's DOMA, because the state would see this as a "same-sex" marriage! But since I'm a lesbian, I can go and get married legally, because the state still sees me as male.
We will still encounter backward judges like Scalia who'll still say homosexuality is a choice, but they can't fight genetics! Just what IS the gender of someone who has extra or missing sex chromosomes, and who will they be able to marry? Every one of these DOMA laws say "one man and one woman", yet NONE of them codify what IS "man", and "woman"!
Ignoring the plight of transgender and intersex married couples or their being denied the right to marry, and completely ignoring us in leu of lesbian and gay couples is like taking a card deck missing two aces into a poker game!
It's time Gay Marriage, Inc. becomes fully inclusive!
As someone who is in a binational relationship, I can't wait for the day that DOMA is ruled unconstitutional. Sometime soon I hope ALL families will be treated equally under the law. FINALLY.
moreover, it's an implicit attack on non-theists (who overwhelmingly support gay rights) because it reinforces the big lie that religion and morality are linked. they are not. you don't need church to teach "golden rule" morality and atheists, nontheists, and secular folks who don't like labels are no less moral then godheads. in fact, they're usually more moral because they think about what's right and wrong for themselves instead of letting superstitious nonsense dictate their actions.
quit pandering. it's offensive to your allies and won't win you points with your enemies.
I am the father of seven adult children, adopted, biological and fostered --- I forget which are which. I am also single. I am also gay. If I had an agenda, it was simply to keep my kids fed and clothed, attending school and out of jail (the last was easy; the two times any of my kids had an encounter with the police, they were released into my custody --- I simply fell back on my own mother's book on child rearing, "Guilt Is the Answer." After a week or so of that treatment, they went and sinned no more.).
The other part of my gay agenda was finding time for a nap.
With the kids out of the house and no one but a cat to take care of, I MIGHT find it nice to have a husband, if there's one that would have me and he promises not to interfere with my naps. I think I'm old enough --- I turn 60 this Sunday --- to make my own decisions on whether I should marry or not. I don't need anyone to "defend" marriage for me. Time to repeal this stupid, discriminatory law, folks.
This whole right-wing paranoia in regards to some supposedly evil "gay agenda" is just ridiculous! We have lives just as they do. My "gay agenda" looks a lot like yours. My spouse's "gay agenda" is to get up before 4 AM, catch a bus to school, study hard, and then come home for a quick bite to eat and off to bed. On weekends we go to the library or internet cafe to post online (spouse does web testing for her classes, go home, eat dinner and go to bed, usually before 8 as she has to keep to an early schedule. Yeah, some really sinister "gay agenda", huh.
Oh the haters mean the public "gay agenda"? Still pretty tame. I want EQUAL rights: to have my marriage recognised in law and to see us get full equal rights in housing and jobs....for all GLBT people, transpeople included
I don't know which is worse --- being hated by the homophobes or the apathy of gay people who are willing to settle for separate-but-equal drinking fountains, metaphorically speaking.