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Culhane: The human cost of denied gay equality
You’ve got to hand it to the National Organization for Marriage. Often
absurdly ineffective – recall the unintentionally hilarious (and much parodied) Gathering Storm video –
they are justly taking credit for their role in beating back marriage equality
in Maryland last week. In an e-mail to supporters, Brian Brown crowed: “We did
it!”
So they did, and it would be gracious to congratulate them on their
effort. Indeed, NOM and their fellow anti-equality travelers often express
frustration and dismay that we’re not…well, nicer about our demands. We demonize
them, we call them bigots, we’re pushy, and so on. More than once, I’ve been
witness to their astonishment when someone gets in their face to challenge the
shibboleths they espouse by rote.
“Can’t we just be civil in our disagreement?” they ask.
Inconveniently for them, most of the time we are civil. But it’s not easy to
be gracious when your basic rights are denied through a combination of
misdirection, exaggeration, and – too often – outright misrepresentations.
Or when people like Robert George or Maggie Gallagher say that, whatever
happens legally, the union of a same-sex couple just can’t be a marriage. For
them, evidence that marriage equality does not lead to the dire outcomes
predicted does not - cannot - count.
But these tactics are their only play, and not only because they don’t have
actual legal arguments that should persuade any court. Worse for them, the
stories of the dedication, hardship, and love – in short, the human stories – of
same-sex couples and our families keep piling up.
It’s clear to anyone with a pulse at this point that the continued denial of
the dignity and equality that marriage confers has a direct and profound effect
on everyone, not just on us. This glaring injustice diminishes those who oppose
us, too. The cost of denying the humanity of other people in favor of grand
abstractions – the ill-defined “sanctity” of marriage, the superiority of one
race over another, the proper role for women – is high, and is often seen in the
soul-seared apologies that follow, sometimes years too late.
And it’s all so pointless, really. After a couple of drinks, even the most
hard-bitten opponents of marriage equality would probably slur out an admission
that their worst fears will be realized, probably fairly soon. This isn’t like,
say, abortion, where there’s a real and probably unsolvable conflict between
powerful moral arguments on both sides, making back-and-forth shifts in opinion
almost inevitable.
No, here the forces are all pushing in one direction – toward equality. A recent poll shows a clear majority
against the Defense of Marriage Act, with fewer still thinking that it’s worth
defending in court. And on the cultural front, things have spiraled even further
out of their control. On Tuesday, TV’s cultural bellwether known as “Glee”
depicted a passionate kiss between Blaine and Kurt . Remember when
Ellen DeGeneres’s coming-out episode was front page news? We’ve fast-forwarded
in a nanosecond, and the barriers to acceptance are falling fast.
That’s just the reality, so at most the oppositionists are playing out a
doomed, defensive strategy. But their “game” has terrible human costs.
Consider this example. Marriage will be restored in California soon, but
maybe not soon enough for Derence Kernek and Ed Watson, who have been together
for forty years. Watch this, if you can, and then ask what possible purpose is
served by continuing to deny the dignity of this couple:
There are, of course, countless other cases like this, if not in the urgency
this video captures then in the poignancy of their humanity.
Opponents often express the worry that same-sex marriages will lead to the
devaluation of marriage. (Funny that they don’t seem nearly as worried about it
when marriage is shredded by opposite-sex couples, but never mind.) They should
instead worry that denying the basic humanity and dignity of an often-despised
minority diminishes all of us — the “queer” and the “normal,” alike.