Against Gay Marriage?

I’d like to respond Byron Edgington’s “Case Against Gay Marriage” from our last issue. Why have I waited so long? I didn’t read it until nearly two weeks after the issue went live. My job at Wilde Oats mostly has to do with the fiction: acknowledging submissions, reading them, sending out acceptance or rejection notices, and editing a few. I also write an occasional review or a rant. As managing editor, I delegate responsibilities to the other members of the team and nag them to keep on task. The rest of the stuff I don’t see until it’s up. Well, after those two weeks, the holidays were upon us, so I made a mental note to write something about the article for the WO blog. Then I forgot. Now I’ve remembered.

Edgington doesn’t make a case against gay marriage; he makes a case against marriage, period. More accurately, he makes a case against contemporary attitudes toward one’s own marriage and people’s commitment to commitment. He makes it very clear that he feels gay couples should be allowed to do anything heterosexual couples can. The question he poses is: “Why would they want to?”

That married couples enjoy a large number of financial benefits and legal protections is only part of the answer. Laws can be changed to grant the same privileges to civil unions. They haven’t, but they could be. The fact remains that, in the United States at least, heterosexual couples rarely enter into a civil union—they get married or they “shack up”. Gay couples may only choose the latter. Moreover, the very term civil union implies that marriage is a religious bond as opposed to a legal one.

In demanding the right to marry, same-sex couples are not only asking for equal treatment; they are making a statement. They’re letting the bigots know they are not promiscuous bed-hoppers who cruise the bars looking for their “trick du jour”. Legalizing same-sex marriage would constitute an official recognition of their integrity and their worth as human beings. It would mean the acceptance of the validity of their relationship. I know many unmarried gay couples who introduce their partners as “my hubby”.

Edgington suggests that qualifying a marriage as “same-sex” is of itself demeaning. But the qualifier will only stay as long as marriage is limited to one man and one woman. How can one propose a law legalizing marriage? It’s already legal. The initiative I voted against last November laid out a definition of marriage that excluded same-sex couples, but nowhere was the word itself used.  Nowhere where two people of the same gender can marry puts “same-sex” on the license; no one ever says, “I’d like you to meet my same-sex husband.” And until marriage is a nationwide right, “civil union” will implicitly contain that qualifier.

Now, if it were ever proposed that gays be required to marry, I’d fight against it tooth and nail.