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J.A.
Bowden's column on the Virginia Marriage Amendment
("Marriage
A,B,Cs," July 10, 2006) makes some points
that bear repeating, some that need
examination and some that are just downright
false.
The
article title states it is about marriage but the
very first thing Mr. Bowden discusses is behavior.
He attempts to make the case that the government
has a legitimate interest in regulating behavior,
especially sexual behavior. Marriage and behavior
are not the same thing and are not related. Some
people on both sides of the same-sex marriage
issue seem not to understand this. As Mr. Bowden
brings up the topic, I will discuss it briefly.
The
courts, especially the United States Supreme
Court, have repeatedly ruled that the government
has no legitimate interest in regulating
behavior "per se". However, the
government does have a valid interest in
regulating behavior when that behavior happens in
a context or in such a way as to harm the public
or children.
For
example, it is not illegal to drive fast on
private property. I can speed all I want on
private property and, in fact, people pay lots of
money to watch NASCAR drivers to exactly that.
However, when I drive on the public rights-of-way,
speed becomes a legally regulated behavior.
Similarly, it is not illegal to lie to one's date,
spouse, parent, child, etc. However, it is illegal
to lie in a court of law or on a legal document.
Prohibitions
against rape and sex with minors are examples of
appropriate regulations within this context.
Beyond that, what consenting adults do in the
privacy of their own homes is no business of
the government. Passing laws against behaviors because
certain people disapprove serves no legitimate
purpose and does not promote the common welfare.
Indeed, it is not feasible to control private
behavior, including sexual behavior. Regardless of
what your neighbors may be doing in bed, they are
not doing anything that men and women have not
been doing for thousands of years. Certainly there
are plenty of legal private behaviors (such as lying) that
I personally disapprove of, but I don't try to
make them illegal, nor should I. Enough said about
behavior.
Under
the heading, "Why does government interfere
with marriage?", Mr. Bowden leads off with
the statement, "Marriage is a religious
institution," and concludes the paragraph,
"It has nothing to do with religion."
Neither
statement is correct. The reality is that
marriage is both a religious and a civil
institution and the two are separate.
Heterosexual couples are free to choose one or the
other, or both or neither. In the years when
interracial marriage was illegal, many interracial
couples were religiously married but had no access
to civil marriage. In days before the abolition of
slavery, slaves could not marry legally but they
"jumped over the broom" to symbolize
their marriage. Similarly, same-sex couples have
been having religious marriages for many years.
The state does not regulate the religious
institution of marriage. Religions are free to
administer (or not) marriage rites to whomever
they choose.
Mr.
Bowden states, "Marriage and the family are
essential to the survival of the state. The family
is the basic unit of society and our American
Civilization." I completely agree. We should
not lose sight of that important fact. Mr. Bowden
goes on to say, "A family with a father and a
mother is the best formula for raising
children." Again, he is correct to a point.
Studies
show that the best formula for raising children is
one mother and one father of the same race, same
religion, same ethnic background and same
socio-economic level. We do not, however,
legislate that only persons meeting those criteria
can have families. In years past that same
argument was used to justify the so-called
miscegenation laws that prevented colored people from
marrying white people. Until 1952,
interracial marriage was illegal in every state.
It took 15 years before the laws were abolished in
all states and Virginia fought the change all the
way to the Supreme Court.
Mr.
Bowden makes an insightful statement when he says,
"The statistics are clear on how to promote
every social pathology – just discourage
marriage." Then he proceeds to make the
case that we should do exactly that by
limiting marriage to only certain couples. If
we had any sense at all, we would be encouraging
marriage, not passing laws against it or
restricting it to what some people consider a
"best formula for raising children."
In
the section titled, "Why is marriage limited
to heterosexuals? Isn’t that
discrimination?", Mr Bowden makes some very
interesting but contradictory statements. Mr
Bowden claims, "There isn’t a
‘right’ to marriage." The Supreme Court
has ruled otherwise in many occasions and made
that clear when deciding Loving v.
Commonwealth of Virginia when it stated, "The
freedom to marry has long been recognized as one
of the vital personal rights essential to the
orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. ...
Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of
man.'"
Mr.
Bowden then states, "Marriage for the
state is about families," and implies that
marriages between two people who cannot
procreate children with one another are invalid,
"a lie." Then he contradicts himself by
saying that "any adult ... man can
‘father’ and a woman can ‘mother’ an
adopted child." If adoption is a valid family
then certainly the many same-sex couples raising
adopted children are just as valid families as
heterosexual couples raising adopted children. As
one who was raised with an adopted sibling, and on
behalf of all adoptive children, and parents, I
find his slurs about people who "have to
procure their children from someone else" insulting
and demeaning.
One
important point that Mr. Bowden and many other
miss is that marriage is not just
about raising children. Marriage is about
families. Not all families have children, either
because they cannot or will not procreate. Two
people who marry and either cannot or choose not
to have children are still a family and to imply
otherwise is both insulting and arrogant. We allow
death row inmates to marry even though they can
never have conjugal relations with their spouses,
much less produce children.
From
the state's perspective, marriage is much more
than a way to establish parentage of children.
Married people enter into a civil contract to care
for each other. Every credible study,
including the study by the Office of Management
and Budget, has concluded that legalizing same-sex
marriages would have a positive effect on the cost
of government. Married people put more in and take
less out of the system than similarly situated
single people.
With
all due respect to the same-sex marriage advocates
who claim there are 300+ "privileges of
marriage" that are being denied them, civil
marriage is much more about responsibilities and
obligations than it is about
"privileges". As one who has been
married and divorced, I can attest to the
responsibilities and obligations. If there are
benefits of marriage then it is appropriate that
the government should offer incentives to marry
because marriage benefits the government.
Moving
on, Mr. Bowden claims that "Nordic
countries that have homosexual civil unions see a
drastic drop off in normal marriages." The
fact is, those Nordic countries that have allowed
same-sex unions have actually seen an increase
in marriage rates and a decrease in the number of
children living outside of marriage after the
beginning of same-sex unions or marriages. Mr.
Bowden's incorrect "statistic" keeps
getting recycled in spite of the evidence to the
contrary. There is no evidence to back up the
claim that recognizing same-sex unions undermines
heterosexual marriage.
There
are those who claim that same-sex marriages have
existed in previous cultures but the fact remains
that in our culture this is a new idea. We learn
new things as we progress as a human race. New
information results in new thinking and changes in
laws and actions. Society resists new ideas.
Some people seem incapable of incorporating new
information and ideas into their reality. This is
nothing new. The idea that the world was a sphere
and not flat was a radical idea in it's day.
People who promoted that idea were labeled
heretics and attacked by the religious and
governmental institutions.
Not
that many decades ago scholarly books asserted
that the various races were inherently inferior to
the "white race" and that the dusky
races could be easily distinguished by their
similarity to apes and their diminished mental
capacity. Once we learned that other races were
not inherently inferior to us, slavery and
discrimination lost their basis. Eventually we changed
our laws including those preventing intermarriage
with "whites."
Not
until the 20th century did we learn that sexual
orientation existed. People understood
homosexuality simply as a form of sexual behavior.
Sexual orientation, sexual behavior and sexual
preference are three very distinct and different
things. Today many still cling to the discredited
ideas of the past and insist that sexual
orientation is just behavior and therefore a
choice. They use that false claim to justify to
themselves and others their
discrimination and oppression of homosexuals
including denying them access to "basic civil
rights of man," including marriage.
--
July 24, 2006
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