Should Same-Sex Marriage Be the Goal?

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He may be right, but there are plenty of benefits to having state-sanctioned marriage: Partners can automatically inherit each other's estates; take out a joint insurance policy; share benefits from annuities; pension plans, and Social Security; jointly adopt a child; and take bereavement leave when a partner dies, to mention a few.  “Although many kinds of human pairings are possible, state-sanctioned marriage is, tautologically, the only one which binds couples together in the eyes of the law,” writes The Economist (Jan. 6, 1996).  “Far from being frills, these benefits and duties go to the very core of the marriage contract; no church or employer or 'commitment ceremony' can bestow them at one blow.”

Conservative critic Walter Berns in First Things (April 1996) unhappily concedes that the Hawaii decision will result in legalized same-sex marriage.  Besides his predictable concerns about the morality of such a sweeping change, he takes issue with the process: Seventy percent of Americans are opposed to same-sex marriage, he claims, yet the decision will be made not by elected representatives but by the judicial system.  And because of a practice called comity, whereby states agree to recognize all legal marriages that take place in other jurisdictions, the Hawaii decision will affect every state.  So, despite a recent rash of legislation in more than 20 states to explicitly prohibit same-sex marriage, if gay couples marry in Hawaii, they will also be legally married in the rest of the United States.  (Indeed, a similar movement is developing in Europe.  The Dutch Parliament in April asked the government to submit legislation permitting same-sex marriages.  These unions are already recognized in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.)

Whether or not gay and lesbian couples ultimately decide to exercise the right to marry, knowing that they can is important.  “Homosexuals need emotional and economic stability no less than heterosexuals,” writes The Economist, “and society surely benefits when they have it.”  With divorce rates the way they are, who knows if marriage actually creates any more emotional stability than the arrangements that have kept same-sex couples together all these years?  But surely there must be some psychological benefit to being given—literally and figuratively—”license” to marry.

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