Same-sex couples have a legal right to marry in
California. Among the thosands wedded so far are San Mateo County
Supervisor Rich Gordon and his partner of nearly 26 years, Dennis
McShane, as the Almanac reported on September 3rd. Mr. Gordon stated
that they were gratified to be "treated equally fairly as any other
couple who gets married in the state." More marriages will follow, at
least until November when the proposal to take away this right will go
before the voters in Proposition 8. They should choose to keep it.

To understand why consider the extraordinary
benefits to society and to the married couple. Marriage is not just a
contract between two people; it is a contract that the couple makes
with their community, which is why there is always a witness. This is a
bountifully fruitful bargain for society. The partners agree to take
care of each other so the community doesn't have to. In exchange they
are deemed a family, binding them to each other and to the society with
a myriad of legal and social ties. Marriage makes people on average,
healthier, happier and wealthier. For a couple raising kids, marrying
is likelier to make them healthier, happier, and wealthier, too.
Marriage is our best line of defense against financial, medical and
emotional meltdown. It stabilizes communities by formalizing
rsponsibilities and creating kin networks (aunts, grandparents,
cousins.) Its absence can be calamitous, whether in inner cities or in
gay ghettos.

Because parents want happy children, communities
want responsible neighbors, employers want productive workers, and
governments want smaller welfare case loads, society has a powerful
interest in recognizing and supporting married same-sex couples.

Rather than as an offense to some religion's
doctrinal concept of the ideal family, imposed on all of us even though
we are not a member of their relgion, the better way to see the legal
marriage of Supervisor Gordon and Dennis McShane is that it is the end
of something radical. It is the end of a radical experiment in which
committed couples must live in a culture without marriage and bonds of
mutuality and kinship networks that go with it. It is the end of a
shadowy world on the outskirts of the law marked by heightened fear of
lonliness or abandonment in a crisis or in old age. It is the end of an
uncivilized world, because marriage is the foundation of civilization.

America needs more marraiges, not fewer, and the
best way to encourage marriage is to encourage marriage, which is what
we are doing now by bringing same-sex couples inside the tent. On the
other hand society can be denied its stabilizing benefits and same-sex
couples can be sent back to their shadowy world of lesser citizenship
by the proponents of Proposition 8.

Let us keep same-sex marriage by voting "no" on
Proposition 8. Let us end this radical experiment of discrimination
against a significant proportion of society's members. Being in love
should facilitate marriage,not preclude it.

Comments

Well put, Harry A. Turner. As an unmarried woman
who has been in a domestic-partner relationship with a man for more
than two decades, I found your analysis about the benefits of marriage
to be thought-provoking -- though I'll have to think a little longer
about it before I decide whether I agree with ALL of your points.

What I don't have to ponder is whether Prop 8 is
worthy of support. It is not. Over the years, I've become quite
pessimistic about the growing level of intolerance for "the other" that
people in our society -- fueled by the bigotry of certain religions and
the ignorant, arrogant self-righteousness that generally prevails in
our culture -- display at the polls and in the public forum. If Prop 8
passes, my pessimism will approach hopelessness.

This attempt to take away from gays the right to
marry is antithetical to our long-professed belief in "liberty and
justice for all," and anything we can do to convince friends, family
and colleagues of that, we MUST do. Posted by Liberty Lover, a resident of the Menlo Park: University Heights neighborhood, on Sep 5, 2008 at 9:55 pm