Columnist Ellen Goodman writes, "The state is on shaky ground when it tries to criminalize sexual relations of the consensual living arrangements of adults." In San Francisco, a giddy newly "married" lesbian celebrates, "Now were not second-class citizens; now we can have a loving relationship like every other married couple we know." Another opines, "Anybody who is in love and wants to spend the rest of their life together should be able to do it." [emphasis added in all]
These remarks reflect a common misconception: Samesex marriage will secure new liberties for homosexuals that have eluded them thus far. This will not happen because no personal liberty is being denied them. Gay couples can already do everything married people doexpress love, set up housekeeping, share home ownership, have sex, raise children, commingle property, receive inheritance, and spend the rest of their lives together. Its not criminal to do any of these things.
Homosexuals can even have a wedding. Yes, it's done all the time. Entire cottage industries have sprung up from Hollywood to the Big Apple serving the needsfrom wedding cakes to honeymoonsof same-sex lovers looking to tie the knot.
Gay marriage grants no new freedom, and denying marriage licenses to homosexuals does not restrict any liberty. Nothing stops anyoneof any age, race, gender, class, or sexual preferencefrom making lifelong loving commitments to each other, pledging their troth until death do them part. They may lack certain entitlements, but not freedoms.
Denying marriage doesn't restrict anyone. It merely withholds social approval from a lifestyle and set of behaviors that homosexuals have complete freedom to pursue without it. A marriage license doesnt give liberty; it gives respect.
And respect is precisely what homosexual activists long for, as one newly licensed lesbian spouse makes clear: "It was a moving experience after a truly lifelong commitment, to have a government entity say, Your relationship is valid and important in the eyes of the law." Another admits, "This is about other people recognizing what we have already recognized with each other for a long time." And another: "I didnt start out feeling this way, but that piece of paper, its just so important I cant even put it into words. Its so important to have society support you
.Its about society saying youre recognized as a couple."
Ironically, heterosexuals have been living together for years enjoying every liberty of matrimony without the "piece of paper." Suddenly that meaningless piece of paper means everything to homosexuals. Why? Not because it confers liberty, but because it confers legitimacy. Note this telling passage from Time magazines "Will Gay Marriage be Legal?"
Ultimately, of course, the battle for gay marriage has always been about more than winning the second-driver discount at the Avis counter. In fact, the individual who has done most to push same-sex marriagea brilliant 43-year-old lawyer-activist named Evan Wolfsondoesnt even have a boyfriend. He and the others who brought the marriage lawsuits of the past decade want nothing less than full social equality, total validationnot just the right to inherit a mother-in-laws Cadillac. As Andrew Sullivan, the (also persistently single) intellectual force behind gay marriage, has written, "Including homosexuals within marriage would be a means of conferring the highest form social approval imaginable." [emphasis added]
Same-sex marriage is not about civil rights. Its about validation and social respect. It is a radical attempt at civil engineering using government muscle to strong-arm the people into accommodating a lifestyle many find deeply offensive, contrary to nature, socially destructive, and morally repugnant. Columnist Jeff Jacoby summed it up this way in The Boston Globe:
The marriage radicals
have not been deprived of the right to marryonly of the right to insist that a single-sex union is a "marriage." They cloak their demands in the language of civil rights because it sounds so much better than the truth: They don't want to accept or reject marriage on the same terms that it is available to everyone else. They want it on entirely new terms. They want it to be given a meaning it has never before had, and they prefer that it be done undemocraticallyby judicial fiat, for example, or by mayors flouting the law. Whatever else that may be, it isn't civil rights.
