Equality: One Small Step at a Time

Equality: One Small Step at a Time

The right of same-sex couples to marry could not be less relevant to my life, but I cannot help but notice our apparent inability to learn from past experience as a nation. Simultaneously with the historic election of the first black U.S. president, voters in California passed Proposition 8 as part of a nationwide "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) initiative introduced by the Bush administration that has evolved into a series of attempts to oppose same-sex marriage through legislation and state constitutional amendments (Edwards, Wattenberg, & Lineberry, 2009). There is tremendous irony in the extremely slow and largely incremental pattern of social progress in recognizing the need to apply equality more benevolently. In principle, the long argument over the rights of same-sex couples is playing out in the identical rhetoric as was used to justify laws prohibiting miscegenation (interracial) marriage until after the Civil Rights era. In most cases, one could substitute the word "same-sex" for "interracial" marriage and read the same arguments in American newspapers that are now half a century old.

The Defense of Marriage Act Concept

The principal argument at the core of the Defense of Marriage concept is that recognizing same-sex marriage is detrimental to the institution of marriage and, therefore, harmful to society. One prominent opponent of same-sex marriage (Bennett, 1996) argues that marriage has always been defined universally restricted to male-female couples; that children are less well raised by same-sex parents; and that males are more promiscuous than women, and therefore, incapable of monogamy. Meanwhile, infidelity and divorce each affects more traditional marriages than not and many more traditional marriages are tremendously dysfunctional but maintained for external appearance and (inadvisably) for the benefit of children.

The Constitutional Issues

In the modern era, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment has been the primary source of the progress this nation has made in resolving long-term institutionalized inequality and racism (Edwards, Wattenberg, & Lineberry, 2009). Just last month, New York State recognized same-sex marriage rights and the 2009 state supreme court decision to uphold the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage in California will likely be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court (Schwartz, 2009). The fact that sexual preference is not a suspect class that triggers the strictest constitutional scrutiny of laws limiting their rights is one barrier to the same-sex marriage cause, but marriage is a fundamental constitutional right and same-sex marriage recognition is much more consistent than inconsistent with the equal protection concept.

The other principle argument against same-sex marriage is that the inability of same-sex couples to procreate makes their marriage pointless (Bennett, 1996). Of course, that neglects the fact that childless couples (whether by choice or not) and marriages between older adults are not perceived as threatening traditional marriage. Perhaps the most offensive aspect of that reasoning is that it is derived from religious teachings about the purpose of marriage. The First Constitutional Amendment prohibits government involvement in religion (Edwards, Wattenberg, & Lineberry, 2009); therefore, secular law cannot be determined by religious beliefs.