BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Monday, February 23, 2004
Civil unions for everyone.
The results of the latest Boston
Globe poll on gay
marriage are disheartening, since they suggest that narrow support
has turned into fairly strong antipathy simply because the idea is
being debated in public. What had once been a margin in favor of 48
percent to 43 percent is now a pretty substantial 53 percent to 35
percent opposed.
You can be sure wavering
legislators are studying those numbers as they ponder what to do when
the state constitutional convention resumes on March 11.
Unfortunately, it seems likely that the convention will support an
amendment restricting marriage to one man and one woman; the only
real doubt is whether the amendment will specifically require civil
unions.
What's weird is that the battle for
marriage rights is moving backward and forward
at the same time. Massachusetts may be on the brink of retreat, but
the fight has already moved to San Francisco and New Mexico. Chicago
mayor Richard Daley has said some supportive things as
well.
It's clear, though, that the
biggest stumbling block is the word "marriage." And I'm beginning to
wonder whether Michael Kinsley has been right all along. Last July,
Kinsley wrote a piece for Slate arguing that the government
should get out of the marriage business. He wrote:
Let churches and other
religious institutions continue to offer marriage ceremonies. Let
department stores and casinos get into the act if they want. Let
each organization decide for itself what kinds of couples it wants
to offer marriage to. Let couples celebrate their union in any way
they choose and consider themselves married whenever they want.
Let others be free to consider them not married, under rules these
others may prefer. And, yes, if three people want to get married,
or one person wants to marry herself, and someone else wants to
conduct a ceremony and declare them married, let 'em. If you and
your government aren't implicated, what do you care?
Now, some of this is too flip. As
the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court makes clear in the
Goodridge decision, same-sex marriage should be considered a
social good precisely because it advances the notion of stable,
two-person relationships. But maybe the term we ought to use for
any such relationship that receives government sanction is
"civil union."
That way, a man and a woman, two
men, or two women could register for spousal benefits such as joint
health insurance, inheritance rights, Social Security benefits - in
short, everything that now comes with marriage. And if they wished to
get married, they could seek out an institution that would perform a
ceremony and call it marriage.
One of the odder aspects of the
current battle is that Catholics, fundamentalist Protestants, and
others who hold religious views in opposition to gay marriage wind up
dictating to those with completely different religious views. If
marriage were entirely a private matter, then a same-sex couple could
get married by whichever Unitarian Universalist minister, Reform
rabbi, or liberal-minded yacht captain they could find.
No one could order the Catholic
Church to perform same-sex marriages, of course. But neither could
the Catholic Church order Unitarians not to, which is, in
effect, what is happening now. Thus the solution may be a wider
separation of church and state.
Globe reviews Little
People. The Boston Globe today publishes
a
favorable review of
Little People. The reviewer is Mary Mulkerin Donius, who is
herself the mother of a dwarf child.
posted at 12:07 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
