The gay marriage amendment

November 29, 2003

The Washington Post has an interesting report today on the schism between two ideological groups supporting a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage [ "Opponents of Gay Marriage Divided":http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19925-2003Nov28.html ]. It’s characterized as a split between pragmatists, who are trying to craft an amendment they think is likely to pass, and idealists who are trying to craft an amendment that accurately reflects their condemnation of gay _sex_.

Group one would essentially make it illegal for States to call anything but a marriage between a man and a woman “marriage,” but it _would not_ try to prevent states from creating civil union laws like Vermont’s. In other words, they want to reserve the word “marriage” for religious purposes, but they’re not going to stand in the way of secular, legal constructions of the same.

Which strikes me as mostly good, but possibly sneaky. “You may remember”:http://www.thudfactor.com/archives/002927.php I don’t think the state has any interest in the religious sacrament of marriage, but they do have an interest how people share resources and who gets to visit whom in the critical care unit of the hospital. And the church doesn’t have any right having their fingers in that. If this amendment does what they claim it does — and no more — it would effectively make a Constitutional distinction between marriage and civil unions, severing Church and State where they are still most closely connected.

The other group is run by the usual suspects — William Bennet, James Dobson, Gary Bauer to name a few. They’re scared that somewhere two gay people might be having sex in private, and they want that fear recorded in the Constitution. “Neither the federal government nor any state shall predicate benefits, privileges, rights or immunities on the existence, recognition or presumption of non-marital sexual relationships,” they want to say. Which means the only way two domestic partners could claim the legal, secular benefits of marriage would be to qualify as married according to the Christian Right’s concept of marriage.

If this amendement were to pass, Church and State would be more closely entwined. The rest of the Conservative agenda would be set on a greased path: their views on abortion (”because its immoral”) almost certainly, and then religious teaching in public schools (”because all this Columbine stuff started when we got rid of school prayer”) and who knows what else. It’s the foot in the door for that American Taliban otherwise known as the Christian Right.

That first amendment, though — that seems to be what I am looking for, protecting the rights of the Church and those who don’t attend as well. Does anyone else see this differently?

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