Subscribe to Breaking NewsRuby-Sachs: A Pragmatic Argument for Approaching Gay Marriage
There is a lot of time and money spent on defining the word marriage. Does it mean family? Procreation? Stability? Commitment? But in a legal sense, marriage is a basket of rights. Some of these rights are pretty mundane (like once you’re married you have the right to require your spouse to refrain from marrying anyone else without first getting a divorce), but others are significant (benefits, tax deductions, property rights etc.).
In the debate about gay marriage, a lot of attention is paid to civil unions vs. marriage and, while I agree with Jenna that creating inequalities in law – even if the two terms fundamentally stand for the same thing – creates untenable violations of the rights of LGBT people, I am a pragmatist at heart.
In Canada, the fight for same-sex marriage was not won with a grand challenge and call for equality (although that was going on in the background with much help from civil society organizations). The first big gay marriage win was a case about a woman whose partner, after years of living together, kicked her out of the matrimonial home, changed the locks and unilaterally took her name off their joint business. She went to the courts for the same divorce rights as her straight friends.
And won.
In that decision, no one mentioned “gay marriage.”
Meanwhile, groups around the country, especially unions like the Canadian Auto Workers, were fighting for same-sex benefits at private employers. Soon, the courts were forced to determine that under the equality provisions, the word spouse (both common law and married) had to include same-sex couples.
That led to a debate about civil unions and, only after the government had supported a separate but equal regime, was there a decision requiring the same legal term for both straight and same-sex relationships.
What this history tells us is that these little battles that have been playing out in states across the country are important. And the battles we fight everyday to have employers recognize our relationships without a government mandate are also essential.
But no government, not even Obama, will leap into equality without being forced to do so. And while I believe in activism by the courts, maybe we all have to settle for a piecemeal struggle for the rights in the marriage basket. That is what the new DOMA challenge is about.
I am infuriated by calls for separate but equal and am frustrated by the inaction of the current administration. But that part of me that understands politics and history recognizes that rights may have to be won one by one before real equality can be achieved.
Jonathan Said: “Look at two of the most well know figures from the Black Civil Rights struggle. Dr. King and Malcom X..
Different tactics. Same goal. Both necessary in my opinion.”
Jonathan makes an excellent point. Without Malcom X, the racists of their time would have had no reason to seek the peaceful alternative offered by Dr. King. Dr. King’s movement had, in fact, slowed and was in danger of falling apart. In my opinion, even tho I don’t agree with his philosophy 100%, Malcom X deserves as much credit and recognition as Dr. King for the success of the Civil Rights Movement. We tend to forget that some of our most honored heroes were also some of our most violent, and it was because of that violence and aggression that much progress was made.
Firstly,lets take the word marriage from the straights and use it to mean any co-habitating gay or lesbian couple. No dancing around,no life partner,no special friend, no room-mate! Use it and use it frequently until they are used to hearing it from our lips and get the media to use it in quotes from us,we are in print daily in local stories and national news. Make it as inappropriate to use partner as it is to use colored to describe someone with darker skin. Secondly use our money to deny them what they want. I had a woman come in to my shop asking for money for a local charity and I informed her that my gay money stayed in the gay community until we acheived full and equal rights with the straight majority. I had until recently given generously to this and other causes. No more. I live in Florida and they took away the opportunity to have even domestic partnerships here last November. The only thing that I have to take from them is my contributions to their pet causes. But let them know why,forcefully and with the determination that their hate has come to fruition. hope this spurs some ideas for the rest of you and would love to hear how others deal with this issue on a day to day basis.
I’m one of those that tend to agree with pragmatics over ideology. As the Canadian example points out, separate but equal is a stepping stone in many democratic societies. Is it fundamentally unfair? Yes, on an ideological level it certainly is. Does it stand up in court? Not for long.
I think that if we fight for pragmatic compromise, our enemies will be foolish enough to push us into court, where ideology will triumph: separate but equal is NOT AN ACCEPTABLE SITUATION IN AMERICA ANY LONGER. If we obtain separate but equal status via civil union, we enter into a legal situation that no court can uphold for long.
This may seem overly optimistic, but it has a proven track record as Ruby-Sachs points out.
I honestly don’t care what our unions are called: word-choice is not what we’re fighting for; equal rights are. If civil unions are granted all the rights of marriage under federal law, the words will become synonyms. If the rights granted to civil unions are unequal, as they will be if that should be the path the nation follows, the courts will have a much harder time defending that inequality.
As Americans, we seem to hate pragmatism. We view it as compromise with the devil, which really rankles our penchant for black and white thinking (you’re either with us or against us: how well did that work?). As the Canadian case shows, however, it is often this uneasy compromise that spurs REAL equality. Courts don’t like pragmatism, they seek ideological purity. Though we all know that separate but equal is fully unAmerican, we forget that it is frowned on my judges as well. Unless full equality can be proved in court, which it can’t, “separate but” cannot hold water.
I guess we have to figure out whether separate but equal is a trojan horse for further freedom, or whether it is a roadblock on the way to obtaining what we deserve. Given the tawdry history of separate but equal, I believe that it would be the perfect way to get the courts to rule in our favor.
I might be wrong. But at least there’s precedent, which is what we’re sorely lacking in many of our legal battles. To establish unassailable precedent, pragmatism (in terminology) might be the way to go.