From: Martha Barnette <75300.3140@CompuServe.COM> Date: Sat, 14 Dec 1996 08:37:09 -0800 Subject: *M-EDIT*: Pro-marriage op-ed The largest newspaper in Kentucky, the Louisville *Courier-Journal*, today published the following op-ed by me in response to that breathtakingly stupid Cal Thomas column. Yeeha. The newspaper has statewide distribution as well as in Southern Indiana. Please feel free to distribute, reprint, clip, quote, crib, whatever. And thanks to everyone for the continued inspiration and information provided by this list. Letters to the Editor Email: cjletter@louisvil.gannett.com Fax: (502) 582-4290 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- GAY MEN AND LESBIANS: NO THREAT TO INSTITUTION OF CIVIL MARRIAGE by Martha Barnette Ms. Barnette is a Louisville freelance writer and former *Courier-Journal* editorial writer. She is also co-chairwoman of the Louisville-based Fairness Campaign's civil marriage team. Well, well. So Circuit Court Judge Kevin Chang last week ordered the state of Hawaii to issue civil marriage licenses to same-gender couples. A few hours later, at the request of the state, the judge ordered a stay of that ruling pending appeal. Now quick, tell me: During those hours when gay marriage was technically legal in one state of the Union, did you hear a collective CLUNK as wedding rings suddenly loosened and fell off the fingers of married people nationwide? Did your phone ring off the hook with engaged couples calling to say they'd cancelled their wedding plans because marriage had been "redefined"? Were husbands and wives everywhere smacking their foreheads and declaring, like the old V-8 commercial, "Gee, I coulda had a gay marriage!" -- before rushing out to file for divorce? Of course not. No, despite all the hand-wringing, doomsaying, and downright silly scare tactics from the fanatical right, the reality is that making the civil institution of marriage accessible to gay and lesbian citizens won't hurt it in the least -- certainly no more than any of the countless other changes civil marriage has undergone through the centuries. Thank goodness, for example, that marriage laws have changed since the days when a wife was legally her husband's property and prohibited from owning property herself. And let's hear it for the Supreme Court decision that a mere 30 years ago struck down unjust state laws restricting marriage to members of the same race. (At that time, by the way, polls showed a majority of Americans opposed to that decision. Yet surely no sensible person would argue today that making the civil institution of marriage accessible to interracial couples caused its "breakdown.") On this page last week, columnist Cal Thomas denounced the Hawaii ruling with fiery religious rhetoric, conveniently forgetting that pesky little legal principle known as "separation of church and state." Maybe he was hoping people wouldn't realize the difference between civil marriage, which is the business of the government, and holy matrimony, which is the business of the church. He apparently also hoped no one would notice that if the government issued civil marriage licenses to same-gender couples, no church would ever be forced to bless such unions (even though many already do). Amazingly, Thomas admitted that his "greatest legal argument" for discriminating against gay people is his highly questionable notion that human beings "can and do change" something as fundamental as their sexual orientation. Are we to assume, then, that Thomas himself could be gay if he only tried hard enough? Would he also support discrimination against those with different religious beliefs, because -- as many conservative Christians hope to prove with their convert-the-Jews crusade -- people "can and do change" their religion? Inexplicably, Thomas even went on to boast: "My files bulge with stories of those who once engaged in sex with people of the same gender, but no longer do." Well, I certainly can't say I've collected bulging files on other people's sex lives. But I do find it telling that for folks like him, this debate inevitably boils down to a preoccupation with what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought that this most intimate aspect of a couple's life wasn't anyone else's business -- and certainly not the government's. In fact, you'd think that of all people, a die-hard conservative like Thomas would be the first to oppose federal intervention in one of the most fundamental and personal decisions that taxpaying, law-abiding adults can make: the choice of whom to marry. Happily, the state of Hawaii didn't do any better than Cal Thomas at coming up with a single compelling reason to deny civil rights to same-gender couples, despite having three years to do so. Lacking any other convincing arguments, the state tried to focus on gay parenting -- only to see its strategy backfire when its own experts admitted the overwhelming evidence indicates that not only do gay people make good parents, but letting those couples marry would benefit their children, who now number well into the millions. Sure, the Hawaii case did a lot of things: It demonstrated that taxpaying, law-abiding citizens are routinely and unfairly denied fundamental legal rights that would help them care for each other and their families at some of the most difficult times in any family's life -- in hospitals, funeral homes, courtrooms, immigration offices, and on the job. It showed that policies of special rights for heterosexuals amount to blatant discrimination by the government. And it shattered myths and stereotypes about the reality of gay people's lives. What the judge's ruling didn't do, however, was harm the institution of marriage. (I also doubt that, as evangelist Pat Robertson reportedly ranted the next day, this decision has left our country newly vulnerable to attacks from "suitcase-sized nuclear bombs" and "biological warfare".) In fact, if more Americans can take on the legal rights and responsibilities of looking after each other for a lifetime -- if more of us have the chance to participate in the full rights of citizenship -- then the institution of marriage, and our nation as a whole, will surely be that much stronger for it.