Tying the Gordian knot - same-sex marriage - Column

Progressive, The, Jan, 1997 by Anne-Marie Cusac

I met my friend Tandy two-and-a-half years ago at a small wedding. As two out lesbians at a mostly heterosexual event, Tandy and I sat and commiserated during the reception. Did this, she wanted to know--nodding toward our newly married buddy, the few close friends she had invited, the piles of strawberries and pineapples. and the bowls of champagne punch--make me want a wedding?

"Not really," I stammered. I had been moved by the ceremony, but Tandy's question took me aback. I had defined myself as outside marriage for years, ever since I started to understand that I was gay and broke a heterosexual engagement because, as I explained to my parents, "It just doesn't feel right." And I found it difficult to think of my own hypothetical wedding to a woman. "Marriage" to me had meant obligatory heterosexuality, loss, and a threat to self-honesty. I had always thought that, if I married, I would no longer know who I was.

Tandy told me the wedding was making her wistful. She envied the ritual; she would have valued the chance to celebrate her love with ceremony and a gathering of her friends and family.

Although some Unitarians and Quakers allow gay unions, general social recognition is something that lesbians and gay men in long-term commitments do not have. Some gay people are intent on changing that and are rejoicing at a decision by Kevin Chang, a circuit-court judge in Honolulu. Chang ruled that the state of Hawaii had failed to show any compelling reason for denying gays and lesbians the right to marry. Tandy sent me an e-mail. "Just in case you haven't heard," it began.

I had heard. Though I have my misgivings about marriage, the news was exhilarating. The idea of full equality under the law gives me a thrill.

For the second time in a year, I found myself hopping in a circle in response to a news event. The other time was when the Supreme Court overturned Colorado's Amendment Two, which had attempted to deny civil-rights protections to gays and lesbians.

When remarkable things like these two court decisions happen, we gay people start buzzing. The once impossible starts to seem possible. One friend observed that, although it was logical to her that a ban on same-sex marriage was discriminatory, it was hard to believe that the Hawaiian courts shared her logic.

By denying us the right to marry, the government effectively denies us a whole list of benefits: family-insurance coverage, tax breaks, special rates on joint credit and banking accounts, the ability to visit an ailing partner in the intensive-care ward or emergency room, child custody, and inheritance and immigration privileges--the kinds of rights many people take for granted. For gays and lesbians, this feels a lot like discrimination.

For gay people with children, the risks are great. Lesbian mother Mary Ward recently lost custody of her daughter to her former husband, a convicted murderer. The judge thought Ward's sexuality might damage her child. In other cases, judges have justified removing children from their gay parents' homes because the social stigma attached to homosexuality might hurt the children--thus perpetuating that stigma, not to mention causing permanent damage to the children involved.

In Hawaii, Chang's ruling was definitive on the subject of same-sex parenting. Gays and lesbians are just as capable of being good parents as are heterosexuals, he said. And he pointed out that even one of the state's witnesses had acknowledged that lesbians and gays "are doing a good job" raising children, and "the kids are turning out just fine." His decision may set a precedent for future custody disputes.

For me, the Hawaii decision has made the thought of legal marriage to a woman a little less hypothetical. So I have started to think about what same-sex marriage might mean. What is it that I could hope for from a ritual that is so wrapped in suffocating cultural meanings?

I have a pretty rich life without marriage. I am one of those proud lesbians who has no problem knowing that her love is legitimate. So I do not agree with the former New Republic editor, Andrew Sullivan, who sees marriage as a tool for assimilating gay people into a straight world.

Marriage still has a lot of unappealing connotations for me. For centuries, marriage was a means of securing property and legitimizing ownership. Women were considered property. Because of its history, and because in the United States marriage even today remains strongly identified with financial security, I am wary. Is it possible to have an equal relationship within a civil marriage? It's difficult enough without one.

But if marriage were a different thing, maybe I would want it--if it meant things like equality, cooperation, respect.

The politicians who sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act, and the assorted anti-same-sex-marriage laws at the state level, fear just this--that gay people will change what marriage means. However silly some of their fears, they are partly justified. Some of us do want to change marriage. We want to make it better.