I was only twenty-two when I ran down to Staten Island’s tiny city hall and married my high-school sweetheart. Like the multitude of impulsive twenty-somethings who came before us, we married for a number of bad reasons and only one good one: we loved each other. But New York State didn’t ask, so we never had to tell anyone why we wanted to marry, only that we did. Two signatures and two vials of blood later we got our certificate — and the over 1,138 legal rights and benefits that came with.
The State was there as well, three years later, when we decided to get unmarried — and this time they were asking questions. Cruel and inhuman treatment? Abandonment for a period of one or more years? Adultery? Who did what to whom, and when: it was all material to our legal grounds for divorce. Because we had no children and had already willingly divided our assets, these questions seemed unnecessary and intrusive. Although I couldn’t appreciate it at the time, our divorce made visible the hundreds of federal and state laws designed to protect all the naive twenty-somethings, and hopelessly optimistic fourth-time-bethrothed, equally.
For better, or for worse. In widowhood, or child-custody court.
Provided they are heterosexual, of course.
Currently, there are about a dozen states in this country that grant licenses for civil unions or same-sex marriages, which convey roughly the same number of rights to gay couples as to straight, within that State. However, none of these marriages are federally recognized, and this is significant for a number of reasons.
This means that a couple legally married say, by the State of Connecticut, who share a home and 2.5 kids, and who dutifully pay their federal income taxes, would be viewed simply as really close friends when passing through a dozen other states on their way to vacation in the Grand Canyon — and so they’d better remember to pack the adoption papers along with the diapers. It means that our government will not pay Social Security benefits to the same-sex spouse of any enlisted person, grunt or officer, even if their partner of fifteen years dies while defending this country.
Is it just me, or does all this scream civil rights violations?
Especially when you consider that this legal landscape is neither an oversight, nor a murky interpretation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution, which manages potential conflicts between various states’ rules. In fact, the US Congress had to go out of its way to create this “marriage apartheid.” The 1996 law that unfairly singles out some American citizens based solely on sexual orientation is called The Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The law was inspired when several gay couples from Hawaii sued for the right to legally marry and it was signed into law by that hero of marital fidelity, Bill Clinton.
DOMA doesn’t prohibit individual states from allowing gay marriages — but it denies federal recognition of these marriages and grants each state the right to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages issued by other states. Keeping gay families unequal and separate. As one legal scholar has observed, DOMA
“create(s) a set of second-class marriages, valid under state law but void for all federal purposes. The exclusion of a class of valid state marriages from all federal recognition is ‘unprecedented in our jurisprudence”.*
And the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment will forever seal this separate status by defining marriage to be between one man and one woman.
We’ve been here before, although some refuse to see the parallels — it wasn’t until 1967 that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional every miscegenation law in the country.
While I’m sipping champagne and celebrating marriage number 2 tonight, I’ll be thinking about all my friends, and the many families in my neighborhood, waiting patiently for the right to toss that bouquet for the first time. Will this be the year, or the administration? Pessimistic, I’m sobered by the fact that South Africa legalized gay marriage in November 2006.
Lisa Duggan is the publisher of The MotherHood Magazine.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* The Gay Rights Question in Contemporary American Law by Andrew Koppleman
POST YOUR COMMENTS AT WWW.THEMOTHERHOODBLOG.COM.
|
