Subject: GENERAL QUOTATIONS (please update on websites)
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 00:14:05 -0400 (EDT)

General Quotat
 John Boswell:  

"If religious strictures are used to justify oppression by people who
regularly disregard precepts of equal gravity from the same moral code, or if
prohibitions which restrain a disliked minority are upheld in their most
literal sense as absolutely inviolable while comparable precepts affecting
the majority are relaxed or reinterpreted, one must suspect something other
than religious belief as the motivating cause of the oppression." [1]   

"There is a sense in which gay people were the first to introduce romantic
love into the Christian system of thought, and following this, marriage as a
result of romantic love rather than biological necessity.  There is a great
irony in the fact that in the 20th century gay people should therefore be
made to feel that there is no place for them in that tradition..." [2]  

"One might view these unions as 'imitative of' heterosexual marriage, but it
would be more cautious to see them as modes of 'participating in' the
majority culture." [3]

 Karl Ulrichs, a German and probably the first gay political activist to ever
live wrote in 1869 of the church's refusal to sanction gay marriage:  

"That they have omitted doing this. . .is a sin of hitherto unsuspected
significance for the Church, a sin whose burden falls upon the Church itself.
 It criticizes the [gay person] with: 'You fulfill your. . .sexual
orientation sinfully.'  However, based upon that omission, he parries the
entire criticism with: 'You, however, carry the guilt of not making it
  possible for me to do so without sin'." [4]

 Ulrichs again:

"But to call the blind cry of the masses: 'Punish the [homosexual]!'
'awareness of the law' is nothing but a euphemism.  Two hundred forty years
ago they called out: 'Burn the sorcerer!' and at one time in Rome:
'Christians to the lions!'  Would you call those the 'awareness of the law'?
 In London they once established a committee for the delivery of wood to the
funeral piles 'to burn heretics'. . .Legislators should not subordinate
themselves to such an awareness of the law. . .We have ministers of justice,
not ministers of people's passions. " [5]  

 In his book A More perfect Union: Why Straight America Must Stand Up for Gay
Rights, Richard Mohr recounts the following true, not atypical story:  

"On their walk back from their neighborhood bar to the Victorian [house]
which, over the years, they have lovingly restored, Warren and Mark stop
along San Francisco's Polk Street to pick up milk for breakfast...Just for
kicks, some wealthy teens from the valley drive into town to 'bust some
fags.'  Warren dips into a convenience store, while Mark has a smoke outside.
 As Mark turns to acknowledge Warren's return, he is hit across the back of
the head with a baseball bat.  Mark's blood and vomit splash across Warren's
face.  At San Francisco General, Mark is dead on arrival.  Subsequently in
1987, a California appellate court holds that under no circumstance can a
relationship between two homosexuals--however emotionally significant,
stable, and exclusive--be legally considered a 'close relationship,' and so
Warren is barred from bringing any suit against the bashers for negligently
causing emotional distress, let alone for wrongful death." [6]

"They are married to each other in their own eyes, in God's eyes, in the eyes
of their church and community--in every eye but the law's." [7] 

"Courts have done backflips in order to uphold cases of the legal existence
of marriages even when the formal requirements (like age) and procedural
requirements (like solemnization) for entry into marriage have been absent or
blatantly violated.  They have done so to such an extent as to draw into
doubt the rule of law in this area.  The one spot, though, where they have
balked at allowing access to marriage is access for gays.  The courts have
used every legal contrivance to block the recognition of gay marriages." [8]

". . .in approaching the courts, gays need to acknowledge that there are some
cases and moral causes that are advanced for the sake of such important
values that they are causes and cases worth losing." [9]  "I suggest that,
for the foreseeable future, dignity rather than happiness or practicality
ought to be the ideal and polestar of gay politics." [10]
 
 The legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin explained how ideas once seen as
radical will come to be seen as obviously true:  

"They appeared in law school classrooms and law review articles, then as
lawyers' arguments in particular cases at law, then as judicial arguments in
dissenting opinions explaining why the majority opinion, reflecting the
orthodoxy of the time, was unsatisfactory, then as the opinions of the
majority in a growing number of cases, and then as propositions no longer
mentioned because they went without saying." [11]

 Legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart: 

"No doubt it is true that if deviations from conventional sexual morality are
tolerated by the law and come to be known, the conventional sexual morality
might change in a permissive direction.  But even if the conventional
morality did so change, the society in question would not have been destroyed
or 'subverted.'  We should compare such a development not to the violent
overthrow of government but to a peaceful Constitutional change in its form,
consistent not only with the preservation of a society but with its advance."
[12]

   Gay legal theorist William Eskridge:  

"We are gender rebels because that role has been thrust upon us by oppressive
dividing practices, including legal discriminations like the exclusion from
marriage.  If those dividing practices were to collapse, we might tend to
meld back into society's mainstream, which does not inevitably strike me as
baleful." [13]

In response to some gay activists who worry that marriage will somehow create
a class of "good" vs. "bad" gay men and lesbians:  

"I am underwhelmed by this argument." [14]

In response to the charge that gay men have much more to gain from marriage
than do lesbians, the gay legal philosopher William Eskridge responds:
 "Lesbians are often the plaintiffs in same-sex marriage lawsuits, and the
overwhelming majority of same-sex couples who have actually obtained marriage
licenses in the United States have been women, including women passing as men
and lesbians of color." [15]  Regarding these, Eskridge notes:  "Very few of
the same-sex marriages described in my survey were ever nullified by the
state after being exposed to public attention.  If heterosexual society were
being defrauded by these marriages, it rarely did anything about it." [16]

And finally:

"Once those repressed by dividing practices such as this one recognize that
their isolation is unnecessary as well as hurtful, they resist it.  And once
they resist, there is hell to pay until the system relents, which it ought to
do promptly." [17]

 Philosopher Christine Pierce:  "I do not worry. . .that pursuing a goal such
as marriage will result in assimilation or invisibility. . .I think it is a
far greater worry that the current invisibility as family is threatening to
destroy any kind of a decent life for lesbians and gay men in the United
States." [18] 

 Law Professor David Chambers:  "I do not claim that, if a new legal code of
human or family relationships were developed completely afresh, governments
should continue to sanctify the two-person enduring union over every other
relationship in precisely the same manner they do today.  Rather, my claim is
that, after thousands of years of human history, the union of two persons
together in a relationship called 'marriage' is almost certainly here to
stay, that the special rules for married people serve legitimate purposes,
and that gay men and lesbians should not shrink from embracing them, nor
should politicians shrink from extending them." [19]

 Legal theorist Scott Kozuma on domestic partnership as a substitute for
marriage:  "It seems the primary problem with these [domestic partnership]
arrangements would be the creation of a 'separate but equal' legal status for
homosexual couples, a concept doomed to fail miserably." [20]

 "It is also argued that a same-sex marriage is impossible since marriage
means a 'special relationship between a man and a woman.'  This position is
so circular that I'm tempted to trace around it and draw a frowny-face in the
middle." [21]

 "Conservatives say they abhor gay marriage because they value marriage.  The
truth is they abhor gay marriage because they abhor gays." [22]

 "One of the greatest ironies of the current national discussion about the
desire of same sex couples to have their marriages legally recognized is how
badly some non-gay people are behaving in the face of the desire by same-sex
couples to behave well." [23]

 Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:  "Homosexuals have no constitutional
rights." [24]

 "You can expect the Supreme Court to eventually legalize same-sex marriage,
conservative legal scholar Robert H. Bork predicted at a Republican gabfest
conducted in Miami over New Year's weekend." [25]

 "On Valentines's Day, my three-year-old son, Fritz, came home from Nursery
School with a slew of Valentine's in his lunch box.  At the kitchen table, we
opened them and read them together.  At the bottom of the pile was a
beautiful Pocohantas Valentine from Fritz's good friend, Erin.  On the back,
Erin, who's already writing simple sentences, had scrawled -- 'Will you marry
me?'  I thought this was adorable -- his first proposal.  Fritz smiled,
thought for a minute, and said, 'When I grow up, I want to marry Erin -- or
Zack.'  Zack is an 11-year-old boy who comes over after school once or twice
a week and babysits the kids while I'm upstairs working.  He happened to be
there that day, and heard what Fritz said.  His response -- 'Gee Fritz,
that's nice!'" [26]

NOTES

ENDNOTES********************************

[1]. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, by John Boswell,
Yale, 1980, pg. 7.

[2]. The Fifth Annual Michael Harding Memorial Address:  Rediscovering Gay
History, by John Boswell, transcript by Gay Christian Movement, 1982, pg. 21.

[3]. Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, by John  Boswell, Villard, 1994,
pg. 82.

[4]. The Riddle of 'Man-Manly' Love, by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, trans. by
Michael Lombardi Nash, 1994, pg. 563.  (Originally published 1864-1879.)

[5]. Ibid., pg. 540. 

[6]. A More perfect Union: Why Straight America Must Stand Up for Gay Rights,
by Richard Mohr, Beacon, 1994, pp. 33-34.

[7]. Ibid., pp. 52-53.

[8]. Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Law, by Richard Mohr,
Columbia, 1988, pg. 252.

[9]. Ibid., pg. 86.

[10]. Ibid., pg. 94.

[11]. Law's Empire, by Ronald Dworkin, Harvard University, 1986, pg. 137.

[12]. Law, Liberty, and Morality, by H.L.A. Hart, Stanford University, 1963,
pg. 52.

[13]. "A History of Same-Sex Marriage," by William Eskridge, in Virginia Law
Review, Vol. 79 (1993), pg. 1490.

[14]. Ibid., pg. 1492.

[15]. Ibid., pg. 1492.

[16]. The Case for Same-Sex Marriage, by William Eskridge, Free Press, 1996,
pg. 93.

[17]. Eskridge ("History. . ."), pg. 1507.

[18]. "Gay Marriage," by Christine Pierce, in Journal of Social Philosophy,
Vol. 26: 2, pg. 14 (Fall 1995).

[19]. "What If?  The Legal Consequences of Marriage and the Legal Needs of
Lesbian and Gay Male Couples," by David Chambers, in Michigan Law Review,
Vol. 95: 394-491 (November 1996), pg. 448.

[20]. "Baehr v. Lewin and Same-Sex Marriage: The Continued Struggle for
Social, Political, and Human Legitimacy," by Scott Kozuma, in Willamette Law
Review, Vol. 30: 893 (1994) [Footnote No. 12].

[21]. "Entering Same-Sex Marriages Should Be Right of All," by David
Barranco, in The Daily Texan, January 25, 1996.

[22]. "Unspeakable Unions? -- The Flimsy Case Against Gay Marriage," by
Stephen Chapman, in The Chicago Tribune, January 25, 1996.

[23]. "Same-sex Union Opponents Offer Only Shallow Rhetoric" (Letter to the
Editor), by John Wilkinson, in Tacoma News Tribune, January 5, 1996.

[24]. "Supreme Court Argument on Amendment 2 Surprises Gay Advocates as
Kennedy Questions Constitutionality," by Arthur Leonard, in Lesbian/Gay Law
Notes, November 1995, pg. 1.

[25]. The Advocate, February 6, 1996, pgs. 14, 16.

[26]. "Everything Possible," by Tim Fisher, in Gay and Lesbian Parents
Coalition International Newsletter, April, 1996.  

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