America's Ongoing "Separate and Unequal"

Now that the California Supreme Court has ruled that gays and lesbians are entitled to the same marriage rights as heterosexuals, the golden state's residents can expect a debate about the meaning and purpose of the "m" word. The court's ruling is set to take effect in thirty days if no stay is granted, but opponents of same-sex marriage have collected over a million signatures for a November ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to bar gays from getting married.

The principle of equal rights for gay and lesbian partnerships has steadily gained steam in recent years, and all three major White House contenders, including the presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, say they favor giving gay couples similar rights to their straight counterparts. Yet all three stop short of letting gays use the "m" word, arguing that marriage itself has special significance that should be reserved for heterosexual pairings. Gay unions, they say, should be called something different.

In Britain, where I lived with my boyfriend last year, gays and lesbians enjoy "civil partnerships," a category which grants us all the same material benefits as married heterosexuals. This means, among other things, that I can gain permanent residence in the European Union by virtue of my relationship with my English partner. America, the birthplace of freedom and the source of that bold and noble assertion that we are all "created equal," offers no such right, and in fact barred that right proactively just twelve years ago: no matter how many states allow same-sex marriage, the 1996 "Defense of Marriage Act" makes sure the feds do not recognize a gay marriage. Americans would rather send me away or tear my relationship apart than grant that my six-year partnership has equal worth to those of my two brothers.

Gays and lesbians in Britain don't seem much bothered by the separate status of their partnerships. Now that they've won the right to civil partnerships, there is almost no movement for gays to take the next step and insist on the right to be "married" like everyone else, instead of "civil-partnered." And when I lived there, I adopted a similar satisfaction, feeling that the dignity of my relationship was respected and no further push was needed.

Back home, I feel differently. This is largely because, despite rhetoric promising full equality, state-based civil partnerships simply don't provide me what I need to live here happily with my partner. As a freelancer, my boyfriend would have a tough time getting a visa--whereas if he were simply a different sex, we could be married and he could be a U.S. resident in no time. And it's not just immigration that gets the shaft. A New Jersey commission issued a report in February finding that the state's civil union laws fall far short of providing the true equality its proponents promised.

But the practical shortcomings of civil partnerships also help explain a second reason why I feel differently about the "m" word for gays in the U.S. Here, perhaps more than anywhere, words are not merely symbolic. Unlike Britain, which still has titles and a Queen, our nation was born of rhetoric that contained an idea--one that explicitly swore off the value of blood, birth and the past, and embraced the proposition that all have equal dignity. When African-Americans refused to sit at the back of the bus in the Jim Crow South, it wasn't because walking a few extra steps was a material deprivation, but because it said to the world that they were second-class citizens.

This is why the Supreme Court declared in 1954 that separate is "inherently unequal." A law that denies a group of citizens equal access to a public institution serves no other purpose than to declare that group to be lesser. And this is why it is nonsense to say gays and lesbians can enjoy equality before the law while they are barred from taking their place in one of the most fundamental institutions in American life--the one and only "marriage."

Opponents of same-sex marriage are seeking a stay of the court's decision on the basis that it would be "confusing" for the status of gay unions to be called "marriage" for several months only to be reversed in a November ballot initiative. But if confusion is what we're trying to avoid, the obvious solution is to retain a single institution that's had enduring--if evolving--meaning for millennia, and to extend it to gays and lesbians. That way, my boyfriend and I won't have to explain to people every day just what our status is, and we won't have to wonder, even to each another, what our partnership really means.

There is one other key difference between Europe and America: ours is a federalist system, in which power is shared among states and the federal government. This, too, is a reminder of why the "m" word is not merely symbolic here, and why state civil unions will never fit the bill. The words we use are a measurement of how our society feels about the value of what's being named. Until the federal government repeals the odious provision of the "defense of marriage act" that bars recognition of my partnership--even when the people of my state want it otherwise--I'll be reminded every day my boyfriend is not here with me just what my country thinks of the value of our relationship, and of the dignity and meaning of our deepest emotions.

Nathaniel Frank, who will publish a book on gays in the military next year, is senior research fellow at the Palm Center, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Comments

[KevinVT]

We could start by supporting the Uniting American Families Act. Then repeal DOMA.

[nypoet22]

i for one think ALL marriages should be illegal, gay and straight alike. civil union should be the new term to describe the legal rights of EVERYONE who wants to impart those rights to another, while the word marriage should return to the realm of religious or spiritual union. Previous "marriage" contracts should be recognized as civil unions, but no further contracts of marriage should be issued to anyone, by any government official, regardless of sexual orientation.

[ResidentChimp]

I wish someone would explain to me why civil union is not good enough? My wife and I got married that way.

[antaeus]

Frankly, I would be satisfied with that, but the 50 states won't shake off their stunned torpor over this long enough to get it settled.

And when you have some extremists who won't even give into unions, then the push for marriage grows even stronger.

[HypocrisyAlarm]

As long as the government denies one group a kind of rights it grants another group, the government fails to provide the equal protection promised in the fourteenth amendment. You and your partner (differing genders, I assume) CHOSE civil union while having the OPTION to marry. For GLBT persons, the marriage option does not exist. Ergo, UNEQUAL protection under the law.

[JasonEverettMiller]

We should make all "marriages" civil unions as far as the law is concerned.

Strike the word "marriage" from the lexicon of federal statute, thus granting all "permanent" relationships between two consenting adults the same rights with the same name.

I say all of us who don't give a damn what it is called just let all the religiously-minded keep the word marriage.

[Jaidit]

No, you have a "civil marriage." You are as married as the couple who had a big religious ceremony. And that's what same-sex couples want: the same legally recognized union that opposite-sex couples get.

[antaeus]

We all saw the images in school of the screaming lunatics in front of Little Rock Central High from 1957, when the school was forced to accept black students. Those protesters brought up the Bible, tradition, culture, and dire predictions. Fifty years later history has confirmed them as idiots.

Why are there some here who seem intent on making themselves the idiots of the next 50 years?

[Bobrobert]

:-)

Kinda like religion.

Will never get a majority for it.

Might get enough apathy to get it to stick, might not.

:-)

[Comanchero]

Eight years ago, 4,618,673 California voters--61 percent of those casting ballots--approved an initiative that stated: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Last Thursday, four of the seven justices of the California supreme court struck down that law, ruling that it violates the "fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship."

This is called LIBERAL JUDICIAL ACTIVISM for the ignorant and those who think that pre-empting the express WILL of the peope in Calif. and Mass. is just fine!

This is what the "Demoncrat "party now stands for since it has been hijacked by extremist. No this isn't you fathers Democrat party but the new Demoncrat secular regressives like Alibama have created!

[antaeus]

Why do you think that jurists who have spent lifetimes serving the laws of United States of America would allow themselves to be political pawns?

The Republican governor of CA does not support a proposed constitutional amendment in CA that would outlaw same-sex marriage. Is he some kind of Democratic pawn?

Finally, how in the world do you imagine that every CA state initiative--and there have been a few--automatically passes constitutional muster? The public, who are not legal experts on the whole, are easy prey to marketing campaigns that package and sell these initiatives, often with insufficient attention to likely legal challenges.

How many of you need to learn that just because a number--any number!--of citizens votes for something does not automatically make it legal?

The standard for legality is judicial review.

[Bobrobert]

Roflmao.

It is legal until the court makes it illegal.

Checks and balances - a wonderful system.

Just because the judge says it is illegal only works until the law is rewritten to satisfy the judges ego.

Gay rights have one problem... most people don't think they deserve special rights.

Some think that polygamy should be allowed - most people don't think they deserve special rights.

Life goes on.

[HypocrisyAlarm]

The framers created the courts, in part, to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. You appear to be part and parcel of a tyrannical majority.

Further, your name-calling (to say nothing of faulty spelling) diminishes any impact your comment might have.

Lastly, not all the justices voting to strike are "liberals".

[mikegoodyearaz85338]

I know the framers of the California Constitution meant to establish a fundemental right for homosexuals to marry. A simple review of the history of human society, the teachings of the predominate religions of the world and the early years of the great state of California are full of examples of homosexual marriages.

[oafishcad]

The fact that a majority of Californians decided to vote themselves special rights and to vote another group of Californians into second class status doesn't mean they have the right to do so. As for the "Liberal Judicial Activism" bull, the justices were Republicans appointed by Republican Governors. They just know the majority has no right to deny gays equality any more than the majority had the right to deny persons of different races the right to marry.

[Rrhain]

So if 61% of the voters decided that you could sell your children into slavery, then it would be "judicial activism" for the Courts to declare that such was a violation of the 13th Amendment ("Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.")

Good to know, good to know. Guess I should start a petition drive to allow for you to be put into slavery. If it passes, you admit that you have no recourse.

[xdevildawg4u]

Nathanial, I think you ALMOST got it right. Marriage is not equal to marriage here and we will never be REALLY equal until we have access to the same institutions. You got that part right. Where you got it wrong was in your bending over backwards to make it seem like this fact isn't applicable or true in the UK. The fact of the matter is, Civil Partnerships every bit as second class and separate but equal LEGALLY, but not socially or culturally. in the UK as they are in America.

It's really sad and a shame that gay people in the UK have become satisfied with their "other", second class status. Yes you get the same rights but NO ONE really thinks that "this is my husband/wife/spouse" is equal to "this is my civil partner", NO ONE really thinks that "I'm getting civilally partnered in June" is equal to "I'm getting married in June".

Gay people in this country and abroad do themselves a disservice when they pretend that a second class status, even if it is a second class social or cultural rather than legal status, is equality.

I commend the HUGE and awesome step that the UK has taken toward complete equality but they have not arrived and it's ashame that Brits (and you) have become comfortable with ALMOST "good as you".

[booksnmore4you]

I've been wanting to marry two women but am treated unequally. It's terrible.

;-)

[NorthernCross]

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

[antaeus]

For over a century the U.S has had an official position against plural marriage because prevailing norms and wisdom deem those arrangements liable to exploitation and abuse. Don't believe me? Turn your TV on this week.

Same-sex marriage is increasingly seen as providing social stability and increasing the general good. Its restriction to two consenting adults makes it far more conservative and within current trends than the more outlandish scenarios offered up by people like man-on-dog Rick Santorum.

[Rrhain]

What does that have to do with same-sex marriage? Please explain how the sex of the participants has an effect on the number of participants?

[cylindar]

Hmm well, maybe Larry Craig can help you out? After all he is a politician and he is gay.

[JimR]

He has a very wide stance on the issue.

[Sciguy]

Face it - there has never been a single straight marriage that was threatened by gay marriage. However, there are a lot of "straight" politicians who have been "threatened" with (their own hidden) gayness, and there are a lot of so-called christians out there who would believe anything that their preachers tell them. Too bad the preachers never studied much of that tolerance stuff in their own bible.

I suppose I could learn to tolerate the straight folks who make it almost impossible for gay and lesbian folks to just live like everybody else... if only they weren't so damned annoying! (the straight "righteous ones are the annoying ones, not the gays and lesbians)

[Comanchero]

No, its just the children of hetrosexual couples that the homosexual community wants to re-educate that they may PREY on them!

[Sciguy]

I'm not too worried about kids being preyed on by gays, since it's never happened. However, I am rather worried about kids being PRAYED on by straight evangelicals, which happens every day (and twice on Sunday).

[DragonMama]

Nathaniel, my heart goes out to you. Being separated from the one(s) you love by geography is bad enough, but by politics is inexcusable. Civil Unions for all - calling it such does nothing to weaken my heterosexual legally-sanctioned relationship. Let the community of concern define what marriage is, be that a church or just the couple themselves. I want my federal tax forms to just ask if I'm in a civil union and the proper term for the other person in that union is the gender-neutral "spouse" IMO.

Best of luck to you and your beloved.

[peterg76]

Abolish marriage and everyone can be happy.

[NABNYC]

This is a Karl Rove issue, and every election year he gets his log cabin (gay) Republican friends to trot it out so the GOP can scare the right-wing Christians and make sure they get out and vote. Just in case, for example, they were otherwise not enthused about John McCain. And here we go again. Is there any particular reason for the sudden plethora of complaints, hysteria and demands, other than the fact that we've got another election coming? None.

Things will change in steps: first the civil union and then more states will recognize gay marriage and then, when the sky does not fall, it will become the law of the land. Slow, gradual progression seems to be working except when the Rove Republicans raise the hysteria every election year. Anyone who keeps pushing this issue will likely help get McCain elected.

As far as immigration goes, I would not say that dating or marriage should automatically give someone the right to live here. If you marry someone from another country, you assume the risk they may not be able to qualify to come here for many years.

Elect Obama and lots of Democrats to protect all our rights. Or keep pushing for gay marriage and get McCain and the neocons. This is a Rove issue and anyone pushing it today is helping the Republicans.

[Strywever]

Thank you for this very cogent argument. I sincerely appreciate the education!

[sk7326]

Well if you read the California ruling closely it says just that. That whatever heterosexuals have, it must be so for gay couples also. It acknowledges the stigma associated with different terms and seeks to address it. As far as the sectarian definition of marriage -- really that is a matter of social and religious progress. That will just take longer, sadly.