March 21, 2013
Column #1,647
(first of two parts)
Marriage Before the Supreme Court
By Mike McManus America has been debating the definition of
marriage with greater and greater intensity over the past
decade.
“The traditional conception - which has prevailed throughout
recorded history…holds that marriage is by its nature a gendered
institution. Its central purpose – its raison d’etre – is to
channel potentially procreative sexual relationships into
enduring, stable unions for the sake of responsibly producing
and raising the next generation.”
That’s how the Alliance Defending Freedom summarized its support
for California’s Proposition 8 in a brief before the Supreme
Court. After a long fight in 2008, Californians supported Prop
8’s Amendment to the state’s Constitution, stating “Only
marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in
California.”
Opponents of Prop 8 argued in their brief for a genderless
conception of marriage that essentially is unconcerned with
children. They declared marriage is designed to recognize and
promote the “liberty, privacy, association…commitment” and
“love” of adult couples.
They noted that when the California Supreme Court invalidated an
earlier statute limiting marriage to a man and a woman on May
15, 2008 that “more than 18,000 same-sex couples were married.”
When Prop 8 was passed November, 2008 it “relegated same-sex
couples” to seeking “domestic partnerships” with “nearly all the
substantive rights and obligations of a married couple, but are
denied the venerated label of `marriage.’ and all of the
respect, recognition and public acceptance that goes with that
institution.”
That redefining of marriage is gaining rapid acceptance. Three
states voted for same-sex marriage in November, including Maine,
where voters reversed a referendum that had rejected the
redefinition of marriage just three years earlier.
Indeed, a Washington Post-ABC News poll reported this week that
58% of Americans support same-sex marriage. As recently as 2010
most Americans opposed it and in 2006, the public opposed it by
58% to 36% - the mirror opposite of this week’s poll. Fully 81%
of adults between ages of 18 and 29 support such unions.
Most Republicans continue to oppose it, but among Republicans
under age 50 a slim majority back same-sex unions. The
Republican Party’s 2012 platform called for a constitutional
amendment to ban same-sex marriage. However, on Monday,
Republican leaders acknowledged a “generational difference
within the conservative movement about issues involving the
treatment and the rights of gays.”
On the very day that Republican leaders urged embracing
different points of view, Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman
announced support for same-sex marriage, a change of position
two years after learning his son is gay.
However, four-fifths of the states – 41 states - have upheld the
traditional definition that marriage is the union of one man and
one woman in state law, 32 of which have put it in their state
constitutions.
Yet nine states have elected to engage in the social experiment
of genderless marriage, giving gays and lesbians the right to
marry.
Given that new reality, “We need the Supreme Court not to impose
same-sex marriage on the country, but to allow Americans to
continue to debate this issue as they have been doing through
our democratic process,” argued Austin Nimocks, senior counsel
for the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Forty years ago, there was a similar debate underway in America
about abortion. Three states had declared abortion to be legal –
New York, Washington and Alaska and 14 others adopted laws
allowing abortion under certain circumstances. It was being
debated in many state legislatures.
However, the Supreme Court cut off the debate by ruling in Roe
v. Wade that abortion was legal in all 50 states. Similarly, the
Supreme Court could rule that “the right to marry is fundamental
for both heterosexuals and for gay men and lesbians,” as one
brief put it.
Would it have been better for the nation, if the court had
allowed the abortion debate to continue, with each state coming
to its own conclusions about an issue on which reasonable people
who are passionately pro-life or pro-choice could have debated
the issue democratically rather than having the Supreme Court
declare a right to an abortion that can be found nowhere in the
Constitution?
Similarly, the central marriage question being debated next week
at the Supreme Court is who should decide the winner of this
issue? Nimrock argues, “We don’t need the Supreme Court to offer
a 50-state solution on marriage. The citizens of this country
are well equipped to debate marriage policy through their
democratic institutions. We are just beginning the debate in
this country about the meaning and importance of marriage.”
I fervently believe that traditional marriage is essential to
protect children. The best that can be hoped for is that the
court will allow each state to come to its own conclusions. |
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