It’s Not a Gay Thing...

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values and Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy are leading spokespeople for the secular claim that supporting any family form other than heterosexual marriage endangers the social fabric. By blaming poverty, crime, drug abuse, and education failure on family diversity, they point the finger at unmarried mothers and absolve government of the responsibility for wage stagnation, income inequality, poor schools, sex and race discrimination, and inadequate child care and health care. Legal groups such as the Alliance Defense Fund and Liberty Counsel represent these positions in litigation. The mission of Liberty Counsel is “restoring the culture one case at a time by advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and the traditional family.”

The “marriage equality” movement advocates for gay and lesbian couples to be able to marry. Attorney Evan Wolfson heads a national organization, Freedom to Marry, that has the support of numerous partner organizations, gay and nongay, at the national, state, and local levels. Two national groups, the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, work to advance many LGBT rights issues and devote some of their resources to marriage-related organizing and advocacy. Four legal groups that challenge discrimination against LGBT people in all areas, including employment, schools, immigration, the military, and family law, have had primary responsibility for the litigation contesting restrictions on access to marriage: Lambda Legal (formerly known as Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund); Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the Boston-based group that won the right to marriage equality in Massachusetts; the American Civil Liberties Union Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project; and the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Both these movements focus on marriage. Neither starts by identifying what all families need and then seeking just laws and policies to meet those needs. The marriage movement’s leading spokespeople argue that the intrinsic purpose of marriage is uniting a man and a woman to raise their biological children. They oppose marriage for same-sex couples and want marriage to have a special legal status.

The marriage-equality movement wants the benefits of marriage granted to a larger group: same-sex partners. With few exceptions, advocates for gay and lesbian access to marriage do not say that “special rights” should be reserved for those who marry. But the marriage-equality movement is a movement for gay civil rights, not for valuing all families. As a civil rights movement, it seeks access to marriage as it now exists.

The movement’s most consistent claim is that exclusion from marriage harms same-sex couples in tangible ways. But people in any relationship other than marriage suffer, sometimes to a level of economic or emotional devastation. The law is not uniquely unfair for gay and lesbian couples. Access to marriage will provide some gay men and lesbians with the economic support and peace of mind that come from knowing that all your family members have adequate health insurance, that a loved one can make medical decisions for you if you are ill, that your economic interdependence will be recognized at retirement or death, and that your children can be proud of the family they have. But other LGBT people, as well as those whose form of family, for whatever reason, is not marriage, will still be without those supports that every family deserves.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print