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Related Columnists Greenberg: Leave 'marriage' to the churches Monahan: Alternative lifestyle does not require marriage Holmes: Faith, love and marriage letter: Marriage, the purloined word Lambert: Marriage is a relatively young institution

Everett: No civil reason to oppose gay marriage
By Peter Everett / Guest Columnist
Sunday, March 28, 2004

Perhaps I am out of the mainstream in today's Massachusetts, but to borrow from H.L. Mencken's definition of Puritanism, I don't lie awake at night fretting that somewhere, some gay people are getting married. I have been told by talk radio that this development will somehow threaten or cheapen my own opposite-sex marriage. I have been told by Speaker Finneran that letting the current civil-rights ruling by the SJC stand could lead to "chaos."
     Since marriage is probably the single greatest barrier to chaos our culture has invented (think about it), I frankly don't see how extending its blessings to same-sex couples could be anything but stabilizing.
     Some churches don't accept same-sex marriage on theological grounds. That is their right, recognized by the First Amendment. However, marriage as a civil and legal institution is beyond the reach of any church, and has been recognized for decades as a civil right, under the same First Amendment that protects the refusal of churches to participate in them.
     Every non-theological argument advanced against the SJC's perfectly straightforward civil-rights ruling that protects same-sex marriages is either demonstrably wrong, or equally potent as an argument against traditional marriage. Here are a few of them.
     

The extension of marriage to same-sex couples may be well and good, but only if it is decided democratically, not by a 4-3 SJC vote.
     Since when are civil rights decided by majority rules? Aren't civil rights about protecting individual and minority rights? (The individual is the ultimate minority, after all). If the civil right to marry is contingent upon a vote, perhaps we should put all marriages to a vote. I can think of a lot of people who wish Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt were still single. I'm also not sure if letting Southern states vote on slavery in 1865 would have produced the best outcome.
     

Same-sex marriages are an "extreme," and "radical" departure from marriage as it has existed for thousands of years.
     The problem with this appeal to tradition is that today's heterosexual marriages are already extreme, radical departures from the "traditional" marriage of two generations ago, let alone two millennia. The functioning of my very typical marriage and household is much more similar to the legally unrecognized marriages of my gay friends and family members than it is to the marriages of my grandparents in the 1920s.
     

We should amend the Massachusetts Constitution so that marriage is reserved for opposite sex couples, with legally equivalent "civil unions" for same-sex couples.
     Oh, I see, separate but equal. Haven't we been down this road before? Can you say, "Brown vs. Board of Education"? Maybe it's just me, but pasting that kind of amendment on the oldest functioning constitution on the planet, a forerunner of the United States Constitution, strikes me as vandalism.
     

Same-sex couples will enter "marriages of convenience" in order to garner the benefit of inheritance, insurance, immigration or income tax.
     Do they imagine that only homosexuals are clever enough to take advantage of a sham marriage? And if it is a sham marriage anyway, what's to prevent these diabolically clever homosexuals from finding an opposite sex accomplice? Have they already? Oh, my goodness!
     

Gay marriage is a step on the "slippery slope" toward the destruction of marriage as an institution.
     The extension of a civil right to new parts of society generally strengthens that right, rather than weakening it. Why would same-sex marriage be an exception? Eliminating state bans on interracial marriage strengthened marriage as an institution. The extension of the vote to women strengthened democracy. Extending property rights and the right to contract to new segments of society has uniformly strengthened the economy.
     And speaking of the economy, the legal recognition of marriage is our main mechanism for holding one person financially accountable to another, and is responsible for keeping thousands of Massachusetts residents off the welfare rolls. Isn't it ironic that the same political groups who decry the lack of marriage among welfare recipients are the first to gnash their teeth against the idea of same-sex marriages?
     In short, there is no downside to extending the civil institution of marriage to couples of any sex, and even if there were, the legislature has no right to prevent it.

( Peter C. Everett, a 1994 Libertarian candidate for Secretary of the commonwealth, is now a medical student at Boston University. )

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