This interesting editorial pertains to our earlier thread on that issue;
couldn’t include it there because it would make no
sense, given the title of the thread. .
[Features]
Why Gay Marriage Isn’t Radical Enough
Stop the Wedding!
by Judith Levine
July 23 - 29, 2003
Excerpts
Because American marriage is inextricable from Christianity, it admits participants as Noah let animals onto the ark. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In 1972 the National Coalition of Gay Organizations demanded the “repeal of all legislative provisions that restrict the sex or number of persons entering into a marriage unit; and the extension of legal benefits to all persons who cohabit regardless of sex or numbers.” Would polygamy invite abuse of child brides, as feminists in Muslim countries and prosecutors in Mormon Utah charge? No. Group marriage could comprise any combination of genders. Guarantees of women’s and children’s rights and economic well-being would be more productive than outlawing multiple marriage.
Marriage is probably here for the duration. But new forms could clarify church-state separation, leaving the sacrament to the clergy but divesting them of civil authority. “The role of progressive activists is to insist that more real choices be available,” says Eskridge. That’s why New Jersey’s activists are aiming to include same-sex couples under marriage law and also create an alternative domestic partnership.
Vermont’s civil union, though it confers every state right of marriage, may be unequal because it is separate. But in other ways it’s excitingly progressive. It is stripped of marriage’s religious and sentimental history. It even lets in nonsexual pairs. As a concession to opponents claiming that queers would get “special rights” denied to “maiden aunts” and others barred from marriage by incest prohibitions, the drafters included a less extensive class of mutual rights and responsibilities for cohabiting kin, called “reciprocal benefits.” Perhaps unwittingly, the clause mitigates much of marriage’s sexual-regulatory function.
Nobody writes songs about registered partnerships. But a legal rhapsody of moral affirmation, lifted from an institution whose other job is to hand out opprobrium to deviants, is more like a hymn, and the state that writes it treads close to theocracy. The government must distribute its material and legal benefits equally. As for love, let the partners write their own vows.
