Gay Marriage: The Arguments and the Motives

A personal essay in hypertext by Scott Bidstrup

"We cannot accept the view that Amendment 2's prohibition on specific legal protections does no more than
deprive homosexuals of special rights. To the contrary, the amendment imposes a special disability on those
persons alone. Homosexuals are forbidden the safeguards that others enjoy or may seek without constraint"

-Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in the decision
overturning Colorado's Amendment 2 referendum

Ask just about anyone. They'll all tell you they're in favor of equal rights for homosexuals. Just name the
situation, and ask. They'll all say, yes, gays should have the same rights in housing, jobs, public
accomodations, and should have equal access to government benefits, equal protection of the law, etcetera,
etcetera.

Then you get to gay marriage.

And that's when all this talk of equality stops dead cold.

More than half of all people in the United States oppose gay marriage, even though three fourths are
otherwise supportive of gay rights. This means that many of the same people who are even passionately in
favor of gay rights oppose gays on this one issue.

Why all the passion?

It's because there is a lot of misunderstanding about what homosexuality really is, as well as the erroneous
assumption that gay people enjoy the same civil rights protections as everyone else. There are also a lot of
stereotypes about gay relationships, and even a great deal of misunderstanding of what marriage itself is all
about and what its purpose is.

The purpose of this essay, then, is to clear up a few of these misunderstandings and discuss some of facts
surrounding gay relationships and marriage, gay and straight.

First, let's discuss what gay relationships are really all about. The stereotype has it that gays are
promiscuous, unable to form lasting relationships, and the relationships that do form are shallow and
uncommitted. And gays do have such relationships!

But the important fact to note is that just like in straight society, where such relationships also exist, they
are a small minority, and exist primarily among the very young. Indeed, one of the most frequent
complaints of older gay men is that it is almost impossible to find quality single men to get into a
relationship with, because they're already all 'taken!'

If you attend any gay event, such as a Pride festival or a PFLAG convention, you'll find this to be true. As
gays age and mature, just like their straight cohorts, they begin to appreciate and find their way into long-
term committed relationships.

The values that such gay couples exhibit in their daily lives are often indistinguishable from those of their
straight neighbors. They're loyal to their mates, are monogamous, devoted partners. They value and
participate in family life, are committed to making their neighborhoods and communities safer and better
places to live, and honor and abide by the law. Many make valuable contributions to their communities,
serving on school boards, volunteering in community charities, and trying to be good citizens. In doing so,

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they take full advantage of their relationship to make not only their own lives better, but those of their
neighbors as well.

A benefit to heterosexual society of gay marriage is the fact that the commitment of a marriage means the
participants are discouraged from promiscous sex. This has the advantage of slowing the spread of sexually
transmitted diseases, which know no sexual orientation and are equal opportunity destroyers.

These benefits of gay marriage have changed the attitudes of the majority of people in Denmark and other
countries where various forms of gay marriage have been legal for years. Polling results now show that
most people there now recognize that the benefits far outweigh the trivial costs, and that far from
threatening heterosexual marriage, gay marriage has actually strenghtened it.

So, having established the value of gay marriage, why are people so opposed to it?

Many of the reasons offered for opposing gay marriage are based on the assumption that gays have a choice
in who they can feel attracted to, and the reality is quite different. Many people actually believe that gays
could simply choose to be heterosexual if they wished. But the reality is that very few do have a choice --
any more than very few heterosexuals could choose which sex to find themselves attracted to.

Additionally, many people continue to believe the propaganda from right-wing religious organizations that
homosexuality is about nothing but sex, considering it to be merely a sexual perversion. The reality is that
homosexuality is multidimensional, and is much more about love and affection than it is about sex. And
this is what gay relationships are based on -- mutual attraction, love and affection. Sex, in a committed gay
relationship, is merely a means of expressing that love, just the same as it is for heterosexuals. Being gay is
much more profound than simply a sexual relationship; being gay is part of that person's core indentity, and
goes right the very center of his being. It's like being black in a society of whites, or a blonde European in a
nation of black-haired Asians. Yes, being gay is just that profound to the person who is. This is something
that few heterosexuals can understand unless they are part of a minority themselves.

The Arguments Against Gay Marriage

Well, of course there are a lot of reasons being offered these days for opposing gay marriage, and they are
usually variations on a few well-established themes. Interestingly, a court in Hawaii has recently heard
them all. And it found, after due deliberation, that they didn't hold water.

Here's a summary:

Marriage is an institution between one man and one woman. Well, that's the most often heard argument,
one even codified in a recently passed U.S. federal law. Yet it is easily the weakest. Who says what
marriage is and by whom it is to be defined? The married? The marriable? Isn't that kind of like allowing a
banker to decide who is going to own the money in stored in his vaults? It seems to me that justice demands
that if the straight community cannot show a compelling reason to deny the institution of marriage to gay
people, it shouldn't be denied. And such simple, nebulous declarations, with no real moral argument behind
them, are hardly compelling reasons. They're really more like an expression of prejudice than any kind of a
real argument. The concept of not denying people their rights unless you can show a compelling reason to
deny them is the very basis of the American ideal of human rights.

Same-sex couples aren't the optimum environment in which to raise children. That's an interesting one,
in light of who society does allow to get married and bring children into their marriage. Check it out:
murderers, convicted felons of all sorts, even known child molesters are all allowed to freely marry and
procreate, and do so every day, with hardly a second thought, much less a protest, by these same critics. So
if children are truly the priority here, why is this allowed? The fact is that many gay couples raise children,
adopted and occasionally their own from failed attempts at heterosexual marriages. Lots and lots of

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scientific studies have shown that the outcomes of the children raised in the homes of gay and lesbian
couples are just as good as those of straight couples. The differences have been shown again and again to
be insignificant. Psychologists tell us that what makes the difference is the love and commitment of the
parents, not their gender. The studies are very clear about that. And gay people are as capable of loving
children as fully as anyone else.

Gay relationships are immoral. Says who? The Bible? Somehow, I always thought that freedom of
religion implied the right to freedom from religion as well. The Bible has absolutely no standing in
American law, as was made clear by the intent of the First Amendment (and as was very explicitly stated by
the founding fathers in their first treaty, the Treaty of Tripoli, in 1791) and because it doesn't, no one has the
right to impose rules anyone else simply because of something they percieve to be a moral injunction
mandated by the Bible. Not all world religions have a problem with homosexuality; many sects of
Buddhism, for example, celebrate gay relationships freely and would like to have the authority to make
them legal marriages. In that sense, their religious freedom is being infringed. If one believes in religious
freedom, the recognition that opposition to gay marriage is based on religious arguments is reason enough
to discount this argument.

Marriages are for procreation and ensuring the continuation of the species. The proponents of this
argument are really hard pressed to explain, if that's the case, why infertile couples are allowed to marry. I,
for one, would love to be there when the proponent of such an argument is to explain to his post-
menopausal mother or impotent father that since they cannot procreate, they must now surrender their
wedding rings and sleep in separate bedrooms. That would be fun to watch! Again, such an argument fails
to persuade based on the kinds of marriages society does allow routinely, without even a second thought,
and why it really allows them - marriage is about love, sharing and commitment; procreation is, when it
comes right down to it, in reality a purely secondary function.

The proponents of the procreation and continuation-of-the-species argument are going to have a really hard
time persuading me that the human species is in any real danger of dying out anytime soon through lack of
reproductive success.

If ten percent of all the human race that is gay were to suddenly, totally refrain from procreation, I think it
is safe to say that the world would probably be significantly better off. One of the world's most serious
problems is overpopulation and the increasing anarchy and human misery that is resulting from it. Seems to
me that gays would be doing the world a really big favor by not bringing more hungry mouths into a world
that is already critically overburdened ecologically by the sheer number of humans it must support. So what
is the useful purpose to be served in mindlessly encouraging yet more human reproduction?

Same-sex marriage would threaten the institution of marriage. Well, that one's contradictory right on
the face of it. Threaten marriage? By allowing people to marry? That doesn't sound very logical to me. If
you allow gay people to marry each other, you no longer encourage them to marry people to whom they
feel little attraction, with whom they most often cannot relate adequately sexually, bringing innocent
children into already critically stressed marriages. By allowing gay marriage, you would reduce the number
of opposite-sex marriages that end up in the divorce courts. If it is the stability of the institution of
heterosexual marriage that worries you, then consider that no one would require you or anyone else to
participate in a gay marriage. You would still have freedom of choice, of choosing which kind of marriage
to participate in -- something more than what you have now. And speaking of divorce -- to argue that the
institution of marriage is worth preserving at the cost of requiring involuntary participants to remain in it is
a better argument for reforming divorce laws than proscribing gay marriage.

Marriage is traditionally a heterosexual institution. This is morally the weakest argument. Slavery was
also a traditional institution, based on traditions that went back to the very beginnings of human history -
further back, even, than marriage as we know it. But by the 19th century, humanity had generally
recognized the evils of that institution, and has since made a serious effort to abolish it. Why not recognize

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the truth -- that there is no moral ground on which to support the tradition of marriage as a strictly
heterosexual institution, and remove the restriction?

Same-sex marriage is an untried social experiment. The American critics of same-sex marriage betray
their provincialism with this argument. The fact is that a form of gay marriage has been legal in Denmark
since 1989 (full marriage rights except for adoption rights and church weddings, and a proposal now exists
in the Danish parliament to allow both of those rights as well), and most of the rest of Scandinavia from not
long after. Full marriage rights have existed in many Dutch cities for several years, and it was recently
made legal nationwide, including the word "marriage" to describe it. In other words, we have a long-
running "experiment" to examine for its results -- which have uniformly been positive. Opposition to the
Danish law was led by the clergy (much the same as in the States). A survey conducted at the time revealed
that 72 percent of Danish clergy were opposed to the law. It was passed anyway, and the change in the
attitude of the clergy there has been dramatic -- a survey conducted in 1995 indicated that 89 percent of the
Danish clergy now admit that the law is a good one and has had many beneficial effects, including a
reduction in suicide, a reduction in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and in promiscuity and
infidelity among gays. Far from leading to the "destruction of Western civilization" as some critics
(including the Southern Baptist, Mormon and Catholic churches among others) have warned, the result of
the "experiment" has actually been civilizing and strengthening, not just to the institution of marriage, but
to society as a whole. So perhaps we should accept the fact that someone else has already done the
"experiment" and accept the results as positive. The fact that many churches are not willing to accept this
evidence says more about the churches than it does about gay marriage.

Same-sex marriage would start us down a "slippery slope" towards legalized incest, bestial marriage,
polygamy and all kinds of other horrible consequences. A classic example of the reductio ad absurdum
fallacy, it is calculated to create fear in the mind of anyone hearing the argument. It is, of course, absolutely
without any merit based on experience. If the argument were true, wouldn't that have already happened in
countries where forms of legalized gay marriage already exist? Wouldn't they have 'slid' towards legalized
incest and bestial marriage? The reality is that a form of gay marriage has been legal in Scandinavian
countries for over many years, and no such legalization has happened, nor has there been a clamor for it.
It's a classic scare tactic - making the end scenario so scary and so horrible that the first step should never
be taken. Such are the tactics of the fear and hatemongers.

If concern over the "slippery slope" were the real motive behind this argument, the advocate of this line of
reasoning would be equally vocal about the fact that today, even as you read this, convicted murderers,
child molesters, known pedophiles, drug pushers, pimps, black market arms dealers, etc., are quite free to
marry, and are doing so. Where's the outrage? Of course there isn't any, and that lack of outrage betrays
their real motives. This is an anti-gay issue and not a pro marriage issue.

Granting gays the right to marry is a "special" right. Since ninety percent of the population already
have the right to marry the informed, consenting adult of their choice, and would even consider that right a
fundamental, constitutionally protected right, since when does extending it to the remaining ten percent
constitute a "special" right to that remaining ten percent? As Justice Kennedy observed in his opinion
overturning Colorado's infamous Amendment 2 (Roemer vs. Evans), many gay and lesbian Americans are,
under current law, denied civil rights protections that others either don't need or assume that everyone else
along with themselves, already have. The problem with all that special rights talk is that it proceeds from
that very assumption, that because of all the civil rights laws in this country that everyone is already equal,
so therefore any rights gay people are being granted must therefore be special. That is most assuredly not
the case, especially regarding marriage and all the legal protections that go along with it.

Sodomy should be illegal and was until very recently. Ah, the ol' sodomy law argument! Why was
sodomy illegal in so many states for so long? Because conservative religionists (at whose behest those laws
were enacted in the first place) historically blocked or vigorously resisted attempts to repeal them in every
state, and were horrified when the U.S. Supreme Court recently overturned the ones that remained.

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Indeed, those laws were very rarely enforced (though it did happen), yet there was very stiff and angry
opposition to their repeal. Why? Because they were a great tool for a homophobe to use as a basis for
legalized discrimination. "Why should I rent an apartment to you, an unconvicted felon?" "I can't have an
admitted criminal on my staff." "You're an unconvicted felon. I want you out of my restarurant and off my
property." "I don't want you around my children. You're a sex offender!" These were very real, actual
arguments that were used frequently as a basis for legalized discrimination, using largely unenforced
sodomy laws. So even though this particular moral crusade of the religionists using the power of the police
has ended, at least for now, the sodomy laws that made them possible are still being pushed, and pushed
hard. Crass politicians, including even president George W. Bush, see votes in homophobia, and continue to
push for sodomy law reinstatement as a means of securing those votes. And such laws, which have
thoroughly discriminatory effects by intention, will likely will be advocated for as long as politicians see
votes in allowing conservative religionists to impose their morality on others, regardless of the violence this
does to the intent of the Bill of Rights.

Heterosexuals would never stand for such intrusion into their private sex lives, of course, but the
homophobes among them seem to see nothing wrong in using the power of the state to enforce their
prejudices. State court systems, however, long ago began to see the violation of the Fourth Amendment in
such laws, and nearly as many state sodomy laws were overturned as unconstitutional by state supreme
courts as were repealed by state legislatures, before the recent U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence vs. Texas
decision which very pointedly overturned all that remained.

Gay marriage would mean forcing businesses to provide benefits to same-sex couples on the same
basis as opposite-sex couples. While this may or may not be true (based primarily on state labor laws), the
reality is that many businesses already do offer these benefits to gay couples, and for sound business
reasons. And experience has shown that when they do, the effect on their costs for offering these benefits is
minimal - very rarely does the cost of benefits offered to gay couples cause the business' benefits costs to
rise by more than 1.5%. This trivial cost is usually far more than offset by the fact that the company is seen
as being progressive for having offered these benefits - making its stock much more attractive to socially
progressive mutual funds and rights-conscious pension funds and individual investors, and thus increasing
upwards pressure on its price. This is why so many corporations, including most of the Fortune 500,
already offer these benefits without being required to do so - it's just good business sense.

Gay marriage would force churches to marry gay couples when they have a moral objection to doing
so. This argument, usually advanced by churches that oppose gay marriage, is simply not true. There is
nothing in any marriage law, existing or proposed, anywhere in the United States, that does or would have
the effect of requiring any church to marry any couple they do not wish to marry. Churches already can
refuse any couple they wish, and for any reason that suits them, which many often do, and that would not
change. Some churches continue to refuse to marry interracial couples, others interreligious couples, and a
few refuse couples with large age disparities and for numerous other reasons. Gay marriage would not
change any church's right to refuse to sanctify any marriage entirely as they wish - it would simply offer
churches the opportunity to legally marry gay couples if they wish, as some have expressed the desire to do
- the freedom of religion would actually be expanded, not contracted.

The real reasons people oppose gay marriage

So far, we've examined the reasons everyone talks about for opposing gay marriage. Now, let's examine
now the real reasons, deep down inside, that people oppose it, hate it, even fear it:

Just not comfortable with the idea. The fact the people aren't comfortable with the idea stems primarily
from the fact that for many years, society has promoted the idea that a marriage between members of the
same sex is ludicrous, mainly because of the objections raised above. But if those objections don't make
sense, neither does the idea that gay marriage is necessarily ludicrous. Societies have long recognized that
allowing civil rights to certain groups may offend some, and at times, even the majority. But that is why
constitutional government was established -- to ensure that powerless, unpopular minorities are still

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protected from the tyranny of the majority. Simple discomfort with a proposal is no reasonable basis for not
allowing it - how many Southern whites were once uncomfortable with allowing blacks to ride in the front
of the bus, or allowing black children to attend the same schools as their own, or drink at the same drinking
fountain? Half a century ago, those ideas were just as unthinkable - yet nowadays, hardly anybody sees
them as a problem, seeing the fears as nothing more than racism, pure and simple.

It offends everything religion stands for. Whose religion? Many mainstream Christian denominations, to
be sure, and definitely most branches of Islam and Orthodox Judaism, but outside those, most religions are
unopposed to gay marriage, and many actually favor it. When the Mormon church arrogantly claimed to
represent all religions in the Baehr vs. Lewin trial in Hawaii, the principal Buddhist sect in that state made it
very clear that the Mormon church didn't represent them, and made it very clear that they support the right
of gay couples to marry. That particular Buddhist sect claims many more members in Hawaii than does the
Mormon church. In a society that claims to offer religious freedom, the use of the power of the state to
enforce private religious sensibilities is an affront to all who would claim the right to worship according to
the dictates of their own conscience.

Marriage is a sacred institution. This is, of course, related to the motive above. But it is really subtly
different. It's based on the assumption that the state has the responsibility to "sanctify" marriages - a
fundamentally religious idea. Here we're dealing with people trying to enforce their religious doctrines on
someone else, but by doing it through weakening the separation of church and state, by undermining the
Bill of Rights. Not that there's anything new about this, of course. But the attempt itself runs against the
grain of everything the First Amendment stands for - one does not truly have freedom of religion if one
does not have the right to freedom from religion as well. It would seem to me that anyone who feels that the
sanctity of their marriage is threatened by a gay couple down the street having the right to marry, is mighty
insecure about their religion and their marriage anyway.

Gay sex is unnatural. This argument, often encoded in the very name of sodomy statutes ("crime against
nature"), betrays a considerable ignorance of behavior in the animal kingdom. The fact is that among the
approximately 1500 animal species whose behavior has been extensively studied, homosexual behavior in
animals has been described in at least 450 of those species. It runs the gamut, too, ranging from occasional
displays of affection to life-long pair bonding including sex and even adopting and raising orphans, going
so far as the rejection by force of potential heterosexual partners, even when in heat. The reality is that it is
so common that it begs an explanation, and sociobiologists have proposed a wide variety of explanations to
account for it. The fact that it is so common also means that it clearly has evolutionary significance, which
applies as much to humans as it does to other animal species.

Making love to another man betrays everything that is masculine. Well, I've known (and dated) plenty
of very masculine gay men in my day, including champion bull-riding rodeo cowboys and a Hell's Angel
biker type, who, if you suggested he is a limp-wristed fairy, would likely rip your head off and hand it to
you. There was a long-honored tradition of gay relationships among the tough and macho cowboys of the
Old West, and many diaries still exist detailing their loving and tender relationships out on the range, and
the many sacrifices they made for each other. Plenty of masculine, respected movies stars are gay - indeed,
Rock Hudson was considered the very archtype of a masculine man. Came as quite a shock to a lot of
macho-men to find out he was gay! So what's wrong with all these kinds of men expressing love for each
other? Why is that so horrible about it? A society that devalues love devalues that upon which civilized
society itself is based - love and commitment.

The core fear here is the fear of rape and a loss of control or status as a masculine man. This is instinctual
and goes right to the core of our being as primates. If you examine what happens in many animal species,
especially displays of dominance in other primate species, dominance displays often have sexual overtones.
When, for example, in many species of primates, a subordinate male is faced with aggression by a
dominant male, the dominant male will bite the subordinate, causing him to squeal in pain, drop the food or
the female and present his rump. This is an act of submission, and it is saying to the whole troupe that the
subordinate is just that - subordinate.

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This happens in humans just as it does in other primates. It is the cause of homosexual rape in prisons.
Homosexual intercourse in prisons is not an act of sex as much as it is an expression of dominance and a
means of control. Nearly all of the men who aggressively rape other men in a prison setting actually revert
to (often promiscuous) heterosexual sex once they're on the outside.

So is this something straight men should fear from gay men? Well, you can relax, all you straight guys.
You've nothing to worry about. The vast majority of gay men prefer sex in the same emotional setting most
of you do - as a part of the expression of mutual love, affection and commitment. We're not out to rape you
or force you into a subordinate position. The majority of gay men don't want sex with you because we're
looking for the same thing in a sexual relationship that you look for - the love and affection of a devoted
partner. Since we're not likely to get that from you, you're not desirable to us and you have nothing to fear
from us. The small minority of us (and it's a very small minority - less than 3%) who do enjoy sex with
straight men understand your fears and are not going to have sex with you unless it's clearly and completely
understood on both sides to be on a peer-to-peer basis and your requirement for full and complete consent
and need for discretion is honored.

The thought of gay sex is repulsive. Well, it will come as some surprise to a lot of heterosexuals to find
out that, to a lot of gays, the thought of heterosexual sex is repulsive! But does that mean the discomfort of
some gays to heterosexual couples should be a reason to deny heterosexuals the right to marry? I don't
think so, even though the thought of a man kissing a woman is rather repulsive to many homosexuals! Well
then, why should it work just one way? Besides, the same sexual practices that gays engage in are often
engaged in by heterosexual couples anyway - prompting the ever-popular gay T-shirt: "SO-DO-MY -- SO
DO MY neighbors, SO DO MY friends."

They might recruit. The fear of recruitment is baseless because it is based on a false premise - that gay
people recruit straight people to become gay. We don't. We don't recruit because we know from our own
experience that sexual orientation is inborn, and can't be changed. Indeed, the attempts by psychologists,
counselors and religious therapy and support groups to change sexual orientation have all uniformly met
with failure - the studies that have been done of these attempts at "therapeutic" intervention have never
been shown to have any statistically significant results in the manner intended, and most have been shown
to have emotionally damaging consequences. So the notion that someone can be changed from straight to
gay is just as unlikely. Yet there remains that deep, dark fear that somehow, someone might get "recruited."
And that baseless fear is often used by bigots to scare people into opposing gay rights in general, as well as
gay marriage.

The core cause of this fear is the result of the fact that many homophobes, including most virulent, violent
homophobes are themselves repressed sexually, often with same sex attractions. One of the recent studies
done at the University of Georgia among convicted killers of gay men has shown that the overwhelmingly
large percentage of them (more than 70%) exhibit sexual arousal when shown scenes of gay sex. The core
fear, then, for the homophobe is that he himself might be gay, and might be forced to face that fact. The
homophobia can be as internalized as it is externalized - bash the queer and you don't have to worry about
being aroused by him.

The opposition to gay marriage stems ultimately from a deep-seated homophobia in American culture,
borne out of religious prejudice. While many Americans do not realize that that homophobia exists to the
extent that it does, it is a very real part of every gay person's life, just like racism is a very real part of every
black person's life. It is there, it is pervasive, and it has far more serious consequences for American society
than most Americans realize, not just for gay people, but for society in general.

Why This Is A Serious Civil Rights Issue

When gay people say that this is a civil rights issue, we are referring to matters of civil justice, which often
can be quite serious - and can have life-damaging, even life-threatening consequences.

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One of these is the fact that in most states, we cannot make medical decisions for our partners in an
emergency. Instead, the hospitals are usually forced by state laws to go to the families who may have been
estranged from us for decades, who are often hostile to us, and can and frequently do, totally ignore our
wishes regarding the treatment of our partners. If a hostile family wishes to exclude us from the hospital
room, they may legally do so in most states. It is even not uncommon for hostile families to make decisions
based on their hostility -- with results consciously intended to be as inimical to the interests of the patient as
possible! Is this fair?

Upon death, in many cases, even very carefully drawn wills and durable powers of attorney have proven to
not be enough if a family wishes to challenge a will, overturn a custody decision, or exclude us from a
funeral or deny us the right to visit a partner's hospital bed or grave. As survivors, estranged families can, in
nearly all states, even sieze a real estate property that a gay couple may have been buying together for
many years, quickly sell it at the largest possible loss, and stick the surviving partner with all the remaining
mortgage obligations on a property that partner no longer owns, leaving him out on the street, penniless.
There are hundreds of examples of this, even in many cases where the gay couple had been extremely
careful to do everything right under current law, in a determined effort to protect their rights. Is this fair?

If our partners are arrested, we can be compelled to testify against them or provide evidence against them,
which legally married couples are not forced to do. In court cases, a partner's testimony can be simply ruled
irrelevant as heresay by a hostile judge, having no more weight in law than the testimony of a complete
stranger. If a partner is jailed or imprisoned, visitation rights by the partner can, in most cases, can be
denied on the whim of a hostile family and the cooperation of a homophobic judge, unrestrained by any law
or precedent. Conjugal visits, a well-established right of heterosexual married couples in some settings, are
simply not available to gay couples. Is this fair?

These are far from being just theoretical issues; they happen with surprising frequency. Almost any older
gay couple can tell you numerous horror stories of friends and acquaintences who have been victimized in
such ways. One couple I know uses the following line in the "sig" lines on their email: "...partners and
lovers for 40 years, yet still strangers before the law." Why, as a supposedly advanced society, should we
continue to tolerate this kind of injustice?

These are all civil rights issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with the ecclesiastical origins of
marriage; they are matters that have become enshrined in state laws by legislation or court precedent over
the years in many ways that exclude us from the rights that legally married couples enjoy and even consider
their constitutional right. This is why we say it is very much a serious civil rights issue; it has nothing to do
with who performs the ceremony, whether it is performed in a church or courthouse or the local country
club, or whether an announcement about it is accepted for publication in the local newspaper.

Why Does Conservative Politics Find Gay Marriage So Deeply Threatening?

As George Lakoff, in his excellent book, "Moral Politics" points out, conservatism is based on a "strict
father" metaphor of morality, in which a wise father (church or political leader) sets the rules, and the
children (the people) are disciplined to comply, thereby gaining self discipline, and with it, autonomy and
self-sufficiency. For a complete understanding of this metaphor, which is beyond the scope of this essay, I
would refer readers to Lakoff's book, but inclusive in that metaphor is a set of moral boundaries established
by the "strict father," who is, in this case, the moral authorities of the church and the political system
working in concert. These moral boundaries exist in society, in the conservative's view, not just to keep
people on the straight and narrow path to autonomy and self sufficiency, but primarily to maintain social
order and discipline, and that is their primary purpose. Compliance to the established moral boundaries
implies acceptance of the legitimacy of the moral authority figures who established them, and it is this
acceptance of the legitimacy of this moral authority that is viewed as the very basis of social order. Hence
there is a deep investment in the legitimacy of the moral authority, often presumed to be none other than
God himself.

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Therefore, someone who moves off the sanctioned paths is doing something much more than just acting
immorally; he is rejecting the goals of the society in which he lives; he is calling into question the purposes
that govern most peoples' lives, but he is also doing something even much more threatening: By deviating
from the standard, ordained "path," he is showing people that other paths are possible, and that those other
paths may not neccessarily be unsafe to tread upon, nor is society harmed by his actions.

By so doing, he calls into question the legitimacy of the moral boundaries he has violated, and hence, the
competence and legitimacy of the moral authorities who established them. Since moral boundaries are the
very essence of conservative politics, the very basis of conservatism itself is brought under implied threat.

As serious as that is, the threat goes beyond even that: When the "deviant" treads his forbidden path, and
not only gets away with it, but ends up living a happy, fulfilled and contented life with no harm done to
himself or society, the conservative himself feels cheated, in having observed a set of boundaries which
have proven to be unneccessary and arbitrary. And in doing so, he feels cheated of his own freedom of
action, even if he had not himself bumped up against those particular boundaries. The conservative thereby
feels he is being implicitly invited to abandon those moral boundaries and join the "deviant" in accepting
increased freedom by rejecting moral authority. Fear that others may reject these apparently arbitrary moral
boundaries, and hence question those who decreed them, and cause society to fall apart, is the reason for
the conservatives' deep paranoia about the mythical "gay recruiting" and the equally mythical "gay
agenda." Hence, conservatives have a deep emotional investment in keeping gays repressed through the
maintenance of this particular set of moral boundaries, just as they did in maintaining their moral
boundaries underlying racial segregation in the Deep South a generation ago and slavery a century before
that.

How then should conservatism, as a political movement and a way of life, come to grips with the reality of
gay marriage? In precisely the same way that it has come to grips with its errors with regards to racial
segregation: own up to its mistake, and simply expand its moral boundaries to include gays and gay
marriage. Just as most older conservatives now acknowledge that they once erred in "keeping blacks in
their place," they should make the same acknowledgement for gays and their right to marry, and live happy,
open and contented lives in each other's arms, without fear or discrimination - that gays are just as entitled
to the equal protection of the law as anyone else, and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. constitution means
what it says and applies to gays as well. No "slippery slopes," no "slouching towards Gomorrah", no "end
of civilization as we know it"; just freedom, liberty and justice for all.

About The Author:

The author, Scott Bidstrup, is a free-lance writer and political activist who has been active in human rights
issues and in the gay rights movement, specializing in youth and marriage rights issues, since coming out as
a gay man in 1994. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, with a concentration in broadcasting
from Brigham Young University (1971) and is a retired microwave communications and satellite earth
station transmission engineer. He was born in the United States, but has lived in Nigeria and is currently
living in exile in Costa Rica. He maintains no political, professional or other affiliations or sponsorships,
and carefully maintains strict editorial independence in the editing and maintenance of this web site.

His essays on this web site, including this essay, have been frequently reprinted in magazines and in book
form in essay anthologies, and this particular essay, the most widely reprinted, is often used in formal logic
and critical thinking classes, both at high-school and college level, as a study text. The web site which the
author maintains of which this essay is a part is one of the oldest and most popular personal opinion web
sites on the Internet. It "went live" in early 1995, and over the years since it has become quite popular
among gay youth and their parents, as well as intellectual and political readers of the web; the site currently
gets about 150,000 page-reads per month in total.

This essay was first published on this web site in September, 1996 and first appeared in print in September
1998 in the anthology, "At Issue: Gay Marriage" (ISBN 156510692X).

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