It’s been a busy day, and I haven’t yet had time to read the Goodridge decision. I haven’t felt like reading much commentary on it, because the arguments pro and con have been laid out endlessly over the last few months. I’d say they’ve been “debated,” except there’s been no true debate on the issue — conservatives have not even been hearing our arguments in support of giving legal protection and security to the relationship of loving couples. For them it’s all about this institution of marriage itself, as if marriage is some damsel in distress being beset upon by wild Zima-drinking boars.
I’ve already written about conservatism and about backlashes. There’s going to be a conservative backlash — it happened in Hawaii, and it will possibly happen again, although apparently the Massachusetts constitution can’t be amended until 2006. That leaves a small window — starting in six months and ending in (November?) 2006 — in which gay couples can get married in Massachusetts and perhaps show the rest of the country that it will not bring down fire and brimstone on the rest of the nation. That is, if the rest of the country is willing to open its eyes, and I’m doubtful that will happen.
I’m not feeling the same elation I felt when Lawrence v. Texas came down in June. That was a clear-cut decision that undid a horrible wrong, Bowers v. Hardwick. Sodomy is now legal across the country, period. The marriage issue, on the other hand, is not clear-cut or simplistic: it brings up property rights, child-rearing, taxes, the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Sodomy is at least distinguishable from vaginal intercourse. The gays want sodomy? Fine, let them have sodomy. But the gays want marriage? Marriage is ours, the conservatives say.
It would all be much simpler if we just called gay marriage something different from “marriage.” It’s the word that does it. Unfortunately, most people are too stupid to tease apart the various strands of the arguments and realize how little a threat legalized gay unions are.
If this country ever gets universal health care coverage, I think every American should be ordered to undergo psychotherapy; every American should be forced to confront his or her fears, to verbalize them, to realize what it is that they’re really afraid of. So many of our problems would go away.
