Without Same-Sex Marriage, There's No Marriage Equality (Page 1 of 2)

Married people: If your spouse was injured in a car crash tomorrow, how long would it take you to be by his or her side in the hospital emergency room? What, if you could imagine, do you think might happen if the hospital staff denied you the right to be with your spouse in what might be his or her last hours? How would you feel if your spouse passed away, and days after the funeral, your spouse’s family came to your house and began clearing your house of your family’s possessions because you had no right to them by law? These are some of the questions that continually bring me back to the conversation of same-sex marriage, or perhaps stated more politically correct, marriage equality.

This weekend of Aug. 31, I had the pleasure of meeting Pat Gozemba and Karen Kahn, partners for 15+ years and co-authors of Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America’s First Legal Same-Sex Marriages. This dynamic duo is dedicated to the cause of spreading the word of what just might be the “Civil Rights Movement of the 21st Century.” In the past week, the couple has presented its slideshow and lecture at Carpe Librum, Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and Highlander Research and Education Center. Gozemba and Kahn are spreading a message of justice and love. Without marriage equality, queer couples and families are often denied the basic rights questioned in the above paragraph. Until we have the right to marry, our relationships will never be validated in the eyes of mainstream America.

To borrow from the book, “…Courting Equality takes readers through the volatile public debate following the Goodridge decision [offering civil marriage for same-sex couples in Massachusetts] and introduces some of the many lesbian and gay families who have taken advantage of [Massachusetts’] equal marriage laws.” The book begins with Marilyn Humphies’ photographs documenting the aftermath of the Goodridge decision. Perhaps my favorite of these photos is of a billboard truck featuring a Bay Windows newspaper headline from May 17, 2004: “Gays wed, world doesn’t end.”

It seems that two major themes consistently surface in my conversations with people who are opposed to same-sex marriage. The first, from the conservative, right-wing religious camp, is usually a concern for the sanctity of marriage and religious family values. The second is a less-obvious but vital concern from the liberal camp regarding racial equality in the marriage equality debate, or put another way, “Is the same-sex marriage movement comprised of white gay and lesbian couples with money and privilege?”

I am for the separation of church and state, so to me, same-sex marriage needs only to be a legal process, validated in federal and state courts and legislation. I thought I had the perfect plan when I proposed to the authors that marriage remain within the church and that civil unions be the state-sanctioned counterpart. This way, gay and lesbian couples can have the rights afforded to a married couple, while churches are allowed to choose (I am pro-choice) whether to allow same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, as Gozemba and Kahn point out, there is no separate-but-equal.

In my conversation with the two, we agreed on giving the church autonomy in its decision, and Gozemba suggested that “40 percent of married couples in the United States hold civil marriages from courthouses without church involvement.” These civil marriages should be afforded to any people wishing to profess their love to the world while also securing their rights to property, health care, second parent adoption, etc. The term “marriage” carries weight in our society that the term “civil unions” might never hold.

And what role do race and class hold in this discussion? I asked Gozemba and Kahn if they thought the organizational funding and media attention directed to the marriage equality issue might leave less-privileged LGBT people out in the cold. “In our relationship, we were lucky to afford a lawyer to draw up the appropriate documents to secure our rights as a couple. A marriage license costs only $20 to $40, whereas lawyer fees range in the thousands of dollars, even more if children are involved. Marriage equality addresses this basic inequity and allows all families the right to legal protection under the law.” While I can see the obvious logic that Gozemba presents, I am moved when a colleague discusses the plight of the underserved in the LGBT community.