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June 18, 2008

The ACLU's Matt Coles Tells Us Why Marriage Matters

Why -- some people, including a lot of gay people, ask -- do LGBT people care so much about marriage? Marriage rates are down in the United States, and even further down in Western Europe. More and more people who marry once don't marry again after the first marriage ends, even if they find partners and spend the rest of their lives together.

Why are LGBT people so anxious to have something that the people who already have it don't seem to want so much anymore?

Part of the answer is that some LGBT people want to marry for the same reason lots of straight people do: committing yourself to trying (let's be honest) to build a life with someone else and having them commit to trying with you fills one of the deepest emotional needs many human beings have.

For some LGBT folks, only marriage will do because they take a pretty conventional view of commitment and relationships. That should come as no surprise; we're everywhere and that includes ideology and view of the world as well as geography.

And let's face it, for LGBT people right now, the statement you make when you marry is hardly conventional.

But for the crowds who danced on Castro Street the night of the decision, this isn't just about marriage -- maybe it isn't even mostly about marriage. The California Supreme Court understood. In what may be the most important passage in the Court's opinion, Chief Justice Ronald George wrote:

"Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual's sexual orientation -- like a person's race or gender -- does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights."

Discrimination requires a rationale. The rationale for treating gay people differently has always been that we were not capable of the kind of love and commitment that straight people share.

The fight over marriage puts the truth of that rationale squarely at issue. If the love we share and the commitments we make (which, as with straight people, vary widely) are not different, there is no rationale for excluding us from marriage. More critically, there is no rationale for excluding us from jobs, from parenting, even from the prom. A person's sexual orientation, as the Court said, will not be a legitimate reason to deny a person rights.

Who cares about that? Every gay person should. Everyone who has a gay friend or family member should. Every person who cares about the Constitution's promise of equal protection should.

Coles is the director of the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT & AIDS Project. 

Reader Comments

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  • Name: CHris Sullivan
    Date posted: 2008-06-18 5:41 PM
    Hometown: Chicago, IL

    Comment:

    Well, if you REALLY want to cut through all the B.S. - lets start with the fact that the Bible, like all the texts of the major world religions are mostly fables (and often poorly re-tooled versions far older fables) with a smattering of gerneralized historical facts (such and such lived at this time etc.) Add to this the milleniums worth of BRAINWASHING that countless billions of people have been SUBJECTED to since BIRTH and it is small wonder that people still believe such utter nonsense. Religion can have a healthy place in society to help people attempt to deal with life's difficult situations and such. When people start taking all the theatrics of organized religion so seriously - then we have terrorists and evangelical Christians - both cut from a similiar cloth - both essentially nuts.


  • Name: Jason
    Date posted: 2008-06-17 6:21 PM
    Hometown: Phoenix

    Comment:

    Let us cut the BS that states that, supposedly according to the Bible, marriage is supposedly "one man and one woman" because this is simply not accurate. The Evangelical Christian who has this opinion - I have this to say to him - YOU are a wolf in sheep's clothing at the expense of the GLBT culture! YOU lie to your God at the expense of GLBT people to the detriment of them as you advocate for GLBT sub-human status in the USA by claiming that it is not ok to be gay or lesbian or for an individual to have a sex-change while you have bacon and eggs and wear cotton polyster or denim while worshipping inside a church. Yeah...think about that one Christian while you throw stones living in glass houses and refusing to be a peacemaker at every moment of YOUR pathetic holy-roller life as you hold hateful signs with your intention of giving the GLBT community a headache via your ignorance.


  • Name: Jason
    Date posted: 2008-06-17 6:10 PM
    Hometown: Phoenix

    Comment:

    As far as the USA is concerned, marriage for gay couples is important because there is simply more financial benefits to being married than being single. How would heterosexual married couples feel if California or the USA itself makes it official that all tax and income benefits of married couples are henceforth null and void? Understanding that the purpose of this hypothetical law was to make financial matters legally fair for every citizen whether married or non-married? Gay couples deserve to be legally recognized as married if only for the reasons that married couples have financial benefits when compared to single people in the USA! Religion plays very little role in the matter - and it is high time fundamentalist Christians understand this! Indeed, the Bible states that Polygamy is the acceptable marriage arrangement - one has as much wives as a man can afford - AND teenagers may marry as well.


  • Name: Janet
    Date posted: 2008-06-17 12:38 PM
    Hometown: MN

    Comment:

    That is all well and good but why is that message not being put out to the general public? There needs to be a bigger push to get that message out. Tell them why it's important. But I would like to see more public information of our position from all the groups that are working for our equal rights. I also don't like the terms "gay rights or gay marriage" Explained more clearly that this right will not make churches bless these marriages unless they choose too. Some people think it will be forced on them and into their churches. More information needs to reach the general public what same sex couples do not have that they could if they were to marry. Most of the people I talk too have no idea of how we are hurt by not being married. Explain the difference between civil marriage and religious marriage to the general public.


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