Gay "Marriage"?
by Anton N. Marco
In http://www.narth.com/docs/marco.html
Anton N. Marco is founder of Colorado for Family Values and America for Family Values. He was the author of Colorado's Amendment 2 campaign against "protected class" status for gays, and, with his wife, Joyce, runs DoveTail Ministries, a ministry to gays.
In mid-December, 1990, three homosexual couples simultaneously applied for marriage licenses in the State of Hawaii. Their action was not unprecedented (gay couples elsewhere have made the same request), but the outcome was.
While all other previous same-sex couples have had to settle for blunt State refusals of such requests, or in gay-friendly cities like San Francisco, for so-called "domestic partnership" registration, the Hawaii Six have been able to leap several legal hurdles. They may, after an autumn 1996 trial, become the first same-sex couples in the United States to be joined in legal civil marriage.
According to the courts and a legislature-created Commission on Sexual Orientation (which refused to hear any "religious" or "health"-oriented arguments against gays or homosexual behavior[1]), despite legislative action defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman (and in the face of 74% poll-tallied public opposition to same-sex "marriage"), the State's refusal of the Hawaii Six violates Hawaii's Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the Six's right to equal protection, unjustly denying these (and all) same-sex couples marriage benefits in health care, insurance, joint child custody and support, tax-filing status and other critical life areas.
Some Americans might not wish to begrudge Hawaii the privilege of sanctioning same-sex marriages. But others not so "accepting" are distressed that the effects of Hawaii's decision could extend far beyond that State's borders:
"Gay rights" activists are hoping that the U.S. Constitution's "Full Faith and Credit" clause, under whose authority States ordinarily must recognize legal licenses of other States, will mandate endorsement and "transferability" of Hawaiian same-sex marriage to every State in the Union.Gay activists' wished-for scenario: Gay couples by the thousands will flock from around the nation to Hawaii, be married there, then return to their home states. There, they will demand marriage recognition and broad ranges of benefits. If or when denied recognition and/or benefits, gay couples will launch litigation salvos, based, as in Hawaii, on State ERAs or denial of Constitutional "equal protection." In the aftermath of these salvos, homosexuality will at last achieve equal standing with heterosexuality throughout America, culturally as well as legally.
As Mike Gabbard, who has led opposition to same-sex "marriage" in Hawaii, has reported:
Homosexual activists are serious about legalizing same-sex "marriage." So far, seven lobby groups have been formed to convince mainstream America that homosexuals should be allowed to marry. These groups are: The Forum On the Right to Marriage (FORM), Hawaii Equal Rights Marriage Project (HERMP), Inter-National Spouses Network (INS), Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (LLDEF), Partners Task Force for Gay & Lesbian Couples, Same-Sex Marriage Advocates Coalition (SSMAC), and Freedom to Marry Coalition (FMC).
The FMC is urgently attempting a massive national effort of (1) "state-by-state political organizing (i.e., coming together at a local level now) to start approaching non-gay and gay groups for support on marriage, building a coalition while also in a concentrated fashion developing defensive legislative strategies and (2) public education (engaging the non-gay as well as gay worlds) in understanding real-life gay and lesbian families and how we are harmed by being denied the Freedom to Marry."
Efforts are being made to identify and enlist "key contacts" in every state to "spearhead the work in each state/community." Also organizations and individuals are being asked to sign The Marriage Resolution, which reads: "Because marriage is a basic human right and an individual personal choice, RESOLVED, the State should not interfere with same-gender couples who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities, and commitment of civil marriage." Most groups who have signed the resolution are homosexual activist organizations, but there are others as well, including ACLU, Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism, Japanese-American Citizens League, National Association for Women in education, and the National Organization for Women (NOW).[2]Both gay and non-homosexual public policy observers expect a decision in favor of the Hawaii Six to produce nothing short of seismic cultural, spiritual and economic shifts in the terrain of our national life.
Gay Activists Perceive Numerous Advantages in Securing Marriage Recognition
That legitimization of gay relationships by marriage is a prime goal of gay activists is clear from numerous sources. Gay activists perceive well the advantages of such recognition. One writer in a Denver gay tabloid wrote:The most obvious advantage [of same-sex "marriages"] is the hope that society, including but not limited to, our families, schools, and churches, will not only accept our relationships, but our homosexuality as normal...In addition to societal and religious beliefs, we will have all of the tax, insurance, and legal benefits available to "straight" married people. The marital and spousal deductions and diminished inheritance and estate taxes alone would save us millions and maybe even billions.[3]To Have and to Hold, official same-sex marriage organizing guide of the activist National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), points out that...
If legally married, gay, lesbian and bisexual couples would have a greater ability to care for and protect their families, including the option to:Never before now has there been so much financial advantage to marriage itself, at least in terms of societal benefits and government-bestowed tax breaks, insurance, etc. Marriage now offers substantial benefits to people who might otherwise wish to remain single. One can understand why homosexual activists regard the issue of "lifestyle affirmation," achievable through domestic partnership or marriage recognition, as crucial to achieving "equal rights" in American society.
- file joint tax returns
- have access to joint insurance policies for home, auto and health
- inherit automatically in the absence of a will, including jointly owned real and personal property through the right of survivorship
- secure workplace and other benefits such as annuities, pension plans, Social Security, Medicare
- obtain veterans' discounts on medical care, education, and home loans
- enter jointly into leases and other contracts, such as apartment and car rental agreements, and maintain renewal rights
- raise children together including: joint adoption, joint foster care, custody, and visitation including non-biological parents
- secure wrongful death benefits for a surviving partner and children
- take bereavement leave when a partner or child dies
- handle post-mortum decisions involving deceased partners, including where to be buried and how
- receive crime victims' recovery benefits
- secure domestic violence protection orders in states where this is currently prohibited
- obtain divorce protections such as community property and child support
- establish status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions where one partner is too ill to be competent[4]
At the same time, activists recognize that the legitimization of same- sex "marriage" is not an idea with high approval ratings among the American public. In Hawaii, opposition to gay "marriages" has risen steadily since the Hawaii Six launched litigation to secure it.
Gay Activists' Main Arguments in Favor of Same-Sex Marriage
Basing their conclusions largely on the unquestioned acceptance of three key unspoken presuppositions, gay activists employ the following public arguments in their attempt to promote the idea of legal recognition for same-sex "marriages":1) Gays, lesbians and bisexuals are being "discriminated against" when their unions are denied marriage recognition.
This is not the first instance of government interference in a couple's choice to marry. Less than thirty years ago interracial couples were prohibited from legally marrying. Today, very similar discriminatory arguments are being used to prohibit same-gender couples from marrying.[5]Of course, this argument presumes a virtual legal equivalency between skin color or race and "sexual orientation."
2) Marriage is a "basic human right" and choice of marriage partners should in no way be regulated by government; therefore same-sex couples should be allowed to legally marry.
Marriage is an important personal choice and a basic human right. The decision to get married should belong to the couple in love, not the state.[6]Here, the operative presumption seems to be that every "sexual orientation" is fundamentally like every other, and relationships involving any and all "sexual orientations" should be freely chosen by the individuals in relationships and then recognized without question by the state.
3) Civil and religious marriage will remain separate institutions if same-sex marriages are legalized.
Legally, religious and civil marriage are two separate institutions. Though many faiths do perform same-gender marriages now, they have no legal recognition as civil marriages. The state should not dictate which marriages any religion performs or recognizes, just as religions should not dictate who gets a civil marriage license from the state.[7]
These statements seem to presume that recognition of same-gender marriages will have little social impact, in either religious, civil or economic spheres.
4) Same-gender couples cannot legally marry in any state, despite how much they may feel a "need" to (emotionally), or how much their "families" need civil marriage's protections, benefits and responsibilities.[8]
In Virtually Normal, Andrew Sullivan's book-length apologia for same-sex marriage, the author asserts that...
The introduction of gay marriage would not be some sort of leap in the dark, a massive societal risk. Homosexual marriages have always existed, in a variety of forms; they have just been euphemized. Increasingly they exist in every sense but the legal one. As it has become more acceptable for homosexuals to acknowledge their loves and commitments publicly, more and more have committed themselves to one another for life in full view of their families and friends. A law institutionalizing gay marriage would merely reinforce a healthy trend.[9]Elsewhere, Sullivan explains further:
In the contemporary West, marriage has become a way in which the state recognizes an emotional commitment by two people to each other for life. And within that definition, there is no public way, if one believes in equal rights under the law, in which it should legally be denied homosexuals.[10]
So long as conservatives recognize, as they do, that homosexuals exist and that they have equivalent emotional needs and temptations as heterosexuals, then there is no conservative reason to oppose homosexual marriage and many conservative reasons to support it.[11]As mentioned, there are several unspoken presuppositions which are the foundation of these arguments.
Three Presuppositions for Gay "Marriage"
Three presumptions are critically important for gay activists taking their case for same-sex "marriage" to the public-the most crucial of which is the presumption that gays constitute some kind of immutable "minority." Possession of "minority" status is the key that will enable gay militancy to achieve all of its aims most easily and quickly, including gay "marriage." Consider how achieving even the appearance of "minority" status has already helped advance the various goals of the 1972/1993 Gay Rights/March on Washington Platforms...1972 Federal Demand #1:
"Minority" Status For Gays
Several cities with "gay rights" legislation in force (San Francisco and Denver to name two) have already instituted affirmative action goals for gays in city employment.
1972 Federal Demand #6:
Support for Gay/Lesbian-Taught Sex Education Of "Gayness" As Healthy, Normal
From 1993-1995, nearly $38 million worth of Federal grant money has been given to promote gay-related "health studies" in America's public schools.[12]
1972 Federal Demand #8:
Aid for Gay Organizations To Combat Effects Of "Oppressive" Society
By 1982, an exhaustive study revealed that the Federal government provided 58% of funding all American homosexual advocacy organizations.[13] It is commonly known that per-case Federal spending on AIDS research (which here in the U.S. largely benefits gay males) far exceeds spending on research for other diseases producing comparable or much larger mortality rates.
1972 State Demand #4:
"Non-Discrimination" Against Gays In Insurance, Bonding, Etc.
"Gay rights" lobbyists were largely responsible for AIDS being declared a "disability" under the Americans with Disabilities Act (1991). Thus, AIDS has become the world's first 100% fatal disease to be protected by "minority rights," thus making "non-discrimination" against AIDS sufferers mandatory for employers, insurers, etc.
1972 State Demand #5:
No Denial Of Child Custody, Adoption, Visitation, Foster Parenting Rights To Gays
In November, 1995, "the New York Supreme Court- noting 'fundamental changes' in the American family-ruled (4-3) that neither heterosexual nor homosexual couples have to be 'married' to adopt a child together. And, in July of last year, the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that homosexual unmarried couples in 'committed relationships' are permitted to adopt children under District law."[14]
1972 State Demand #8,
1993 Platform Demand #C-29: Legalize Same-Sex Marriages
As public policy analyst Whitney Galbraith has observed, "[t]he key to the [Hawaii Supreme Court's] decision [regarding same-sex "marriage"] was the court's declaring same-sex couples to be part of a 'suspect class.'"[15] If gays are indeed part of a suspect class, they should not be denied such privileges as marriage either, the argument goes.
There are two other presuppositions key to gay "marriage" recognition. In addition to believing gays are a "minority," the public must presume that homosexuality is "normal and healthy" (and probably innate)-that homosexuals are "just like anyone else (in emotional needs and behavioral proclivities), except for their choice of sexual partners." If this is so, there should be little reason to deny gay unions marriage recognition.
The third presumption follows from the second: If gays are "just like everyone else," then gay activists desire the same kinds of marriages as "everyone else." Thus, placing the marriage imprimatur on gay unions will have merely negligible effects on society at large.
Gay activists arguing for same-sex "marriage" recognition now treat these presuppositions as "givens," trying as much as possible to avoid making analysis of the three a part of the debate.
Examining Presupposition One
If achieving "minority"/suspect status looms as the "fulcrum" gay activists need most to leverage the rest of their "gay rights" platforms into place, the presupposition that gays do constitute an "oppressed minority" is the first to examine. Securing suspect status in one form or another would allow gay activists, through taxpayer-funded lawsuits, to silence or punish their critics and coerce businesses and society at large to grant benefits to their "spouses" or domestic partners.Shortly after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the U.S. Supreme Court began to issue (and reaffirm) a series of Civil Rights decisions which soon added limitations (to counterbalance the incentives) to the process of seeking suspect class status. In essence, the High Court put a "fence" around suspect status, in the interest of ensuring that the status remain open only to disadvantaged, politically powerless classes that truly needed government protection. The High Court did so by establishing three criteria[16] by which prospective suspect classes might be evaluated, and by which some failing to meet the qualifications might be fenced out if necessary:
Criterion #1: Prospective suspect classes should have experienced a history of severe societal oppression, evidenced by an entire "class-averaged" lack of ability to obtain economic mean income, adequate education, or cultural opportunity.
Criterion #2: Prospective suspect classes should, "averaged" as entire classes, clearly demonstrate political powerlessness.
Criterion #3: Prospective suspect classes should exhibit obvious, immutable, or distinguishing characteristics, like race, color, gender or national origin, that define them as discrete groups.
Low Income, Inadequate Education, Lack of Opportunity
- Homosexuals have an average annual individual income of $36,800- $41,000, depending on which study one cites (an estimated 55% of gay individuals earn more than $50,000 per year), versus $12,287 for the general population and $3,041 for disadvantaged African Americans. Thus, gay individuals' average income is at least 300% higher than average Americans' and more than 1,200% higher than that of disadvantaged African Americans.
- More than three times as many gays as average Americans are college graduates (59.6% v. 18%)-a percentage dwarfing that of truly disadvantaged African Americans and Hispanics.
- 65.8 % of homosexuals are overseas travelers-more than four times the percentage (14%) of average Americans. More than thirteen times as many homosexuals as average Americans (26.5% vs. 1.9%) are frequent fliers.
- 7% of gays live in households with annual income of over $100,000. Gay households are four times as likely as average Americans to be earning in excess of $100,000 annually.
- 56.2% of cohabiting lesbian/gay couples' household incomes top $50,000 a year. Almost 30% of lesbian households earn over $50,000 annually.
- While, in 1989, 32.8% of African Americans lived below the poverty line ($8,343 annually for two-person households under age 65[18]), 62% of gay households earned more than the average American household, and more than 95% of gay households lived above the poverty line.[19]
Also contradicting the "severe oppression" complaints of gay activists, avowedly gay writer Ed Mickens, employment and business commentator for The Advocate, has admitted that gay people do not suffer greatly in the workplace: "Today, it's rare that anyone gets fired just for being gay."[21] Gay activist/journalist Andrew Sullivan commented:
Unlike blacks three decades ago, gay men and lesbians suffer no discernible communal economic deprivation and already operate at the highest levels of society: in boardrooms, governments, the media, the military, the law and industry. They may have advanced so far because they have not disclosed their sexuality, but their sexuality as such has not been an immediate cause for their discharge. In many cases, their sexuality is known, but it is disclosed at such a carefully calibrated level that it never actually works against them.[22]Syndicated columnist Mike Royko, generally regarded as liberal in political philosophy, agrees that gays scarcely seem "oppressed":
[Gays'] difficulties look pretty meager compared to those of the poor, the uneducated and the unemployed. It may be a politically incorrect risk to disagree with those hundreds of thousands of homosexual demonstrators who gathered in Washington, but, no, this decade will not be "The Gay '90s." That's because there are so many people in this country who have far worse problems than do homosexual men and lesbians.[23]Overwhelmed by the weight of such evidence, self-identified gay activists and journalists like Jonathan Rauch have as much as conceded that, by virtue of their failure to meet Criterion #1 alone, gay activists should abandon their "minority" claim:
The standard political model sees homosexuals as an oppressed minority who must fight for their liberation through political action. But that model's usefulness is drawing to a close. It is ceasing to serve the interests of ordinary gay people, who ought to begin disengaging from it, even drop it. Otherwise, they will misread their position and lose their way, as too many minority groups have done already....[24]
Political Powerlessness
- Won passage of legislation granting homosexuals suspect-equivalent status in eight states, more than 135 cities across America, plus our nation's capitol.
- Secured political office both in the U.S. Congress and on numerous major U.S. city councils.
- Pressured the medical community to discard well-established public health measures and treat AIDS as history's first "politically protected" 100% fatal plague.
- Received benefits for "domestic partners" identical to those of married couples, and other kinds of preferential treatment in numerous major U.S. corporations.
- Implemented gay activist-created curricula representing homosexual sex as a "valid, healthy alternative" to heterosexuality.
- Gained ordination in mainline church denominations. Case in point: On April 1, 1991, a prominent Marin County, Calif., lesbian minister became a co-pastor of the Downtown United Presbyterian Church of Rochester, N.Y.
- Won National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants for "works of art" that graphically portray homosexual sex and savagely ridicule traditional "family" and religious values.
During the 1986 elections, HRCF raised more than $1.4 million. This put it in the top 1% of PACs nationwide. HRCF funded candidates in 112 political races-"an incredible political achievement," according to political experts.
By fiscal year 1991-1992, the HRCF's budget had grown to nearly $4 million and announced a 1992-1993 projected budget of over $5 million.[25] Gay activists have now established a Washington, D.C.-based "Victory Fund" to empower local, openly homosexual candidates, with a current operating budget of between $650,000 and $1 million.
Giving to the top 12 "gay rights"-promoting PACs now ranges in the top tenth of one percent of all PAC giving in the United States.
Immutable Characteristics
"The genetic theory of homosexuality has been generally discarded today... Despite the interest in possible hormone mechanisms in the origin of homosexuality, no serious scientist today suggests that a simple cause-effect relationship applies" according to Human Sexuality, a 1984 textbook written by Masters, Johnson and Kolodny.
How sexual orientation evolves is a debatable question, but that it can (and does) change is a well-observed fact. A recent study by the gay- friendly Kinsey Institute found that 84% of homosexuals and 29% of heterosexuals shifted or changed their "sexual orientation" at least once in a lifetime; 32% of homosexuals and 4% of "straights" reported a second shift; and 13% of homosexuals and 1% of heterosexuals claimed at least five changes in sexual orientation during their lifetimes.[26]
Scientific literature is filled with evidence of permanent change from initial homosexual orientation to exclusive heterosexual orientation:
Sexual behavior may or may not correlate with sexual orientation. Furthermore, an individual's sexual behavior and orientation may vary over time.
The scientific literature indicates that homosexual feelings are more frequent than homosexual behavior and that same-sex behavior is more frequent than lasting homosexual identification.[27]
Approximately thirty percent of male homosexuals who come to psychotherapy for any reason (not just for help with their sexual preference) can be converted to the heterosexual adaptation.[28]
Five years after publishing our study, a follow- up of patients showed that the one-third whose adaptation had shifted to heterosexuality remained so. And we have personally followed some patients for as long as 20 years who remained exclusively heterosexual.[29]
Treatment using dynamic individual psychotherapy, group therapy, aversion therapy, or psychotherapy with an integration of Christian principles will produce object-choice reorientation and successful heterosexual relationships in a high percentage of persons....Homosexuals can change their orientation.[30]Dr. Judd Marmor, past president of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, has said:
The myth that homosexuality is untreatable still has wide currency among the public at large and among homosexuals themselves....
There is little doubt that a genuine shift in preferential sex object choice can and does take place in somewhere between 20 and 50 per cent of patients with homosexual behavior who seek psychotherapy with this end in mind. The single most important prerequisite to reversibility is a powerful motivation to achieve such a change.
Although some gay liberationists argue that it would be preferable to help these persons accept their homosexuality, this writer is of the opinion that, if they wish to change, they deserve the opportunity to try, with all the help that psychiatry can give them....[31]Dr. Reuben Fine, director of the New York Center for Psychoanalytic Training, has written:
I have recently had occasion to review the result of psychotherapy with homosexuals, and been surprised by the findings. It is paradoxical that even though politically active homosexual groups deny the possibility of change, all studies from Schrenk-Notzing on have found positive effects, virtually regardless of the kind of treatment used...a considerable percentage of homosexuals became heterosexual....
If the patients were motivated, whatever procedure is adopted, a large percentage will give up their homosexuality. In this connection, public information is of the greatest importance. The misinformation spread by certain circles that "homosexuality is untreatable by psychotherapy" does incalculable harm to thousands of men and women.[32]Nevertheless, gay activists insist publicly that homosexuality is innate and immutable-and cite "scholarship" to "prove" their contention. One highly-publicized study by an avowed homosexual, reported in a cover article in the Feb. 24, 1992 edition of Newsweek, claimed to discover "homosexual brains."[33] However, on closer examination the study does not hold up. Simon LeVay's study of the brains of 19 homosexual male corpses (who died of AIDS complications) noted a difference in size of a specific neuron group, INAH3, compared with that of a group comprised of 16 presumably heterosexual male and six female corpses.
One problem with LeVay's study is that the researcher presumed that the control group of 16 corpses had been heterosexual. Avowedly homosexual reporter Michael Botkin wrote, shortly after the study's publication:
It turns out that LeVay doesn't know anything about the sexual orientation of his control group, the 16 corpses "presumed heterosexual." A sloppy control like this is...enough by itself to invalidate the study. LeVay's defense? He knows his controls are het[erosexual] because their brains are different from the HIVer corpses. Sorry, doctor; this is circular logic. You can use the sample to prove the theory or vice versa, but not both at the same time.[34]Similarly, a much-publicized "gay twin" study (by avowedly gay researchers Bailey and Pillard) suggested genetic origins for "gayness." The study, however, did not examine twins raised in different environments. Thus, the study cannot prove any genetic connection. Developmental biologist Anne Fausto Stirling put it simply:
In order for such a study to be meaningful, you'd have to look at twins raised apart. It's such badly interpreted genetics.[35]Though another "genetic origins of homosexuality" study, by Dean Hamer, has also been widely (and uncritically) reported in the media, minuscule coverage has been given to the fact that the study, done under the auspices of the National Cancer Institute, is, according to syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, "under investigation for alleged fraud by the federal Office of Research Integrity and that a colleague of Mr. Hamer has charged that Mr. Hamer selectively reported data in ways that enhanced the study's thesis...."[36]
Also of note, though several studies have been undertaken, none has ever been published advancing an even nearly credible claim that lesbianism is genetically determined.
More astounding is the enormous weight of evidence available from gay and lesbian activist sources that the issue of gay "innateness and immutability" is in serious doubt among gay activists themselves. According to "Queer Nation" pioneer Jonathan Ned Katz:
Contrary to today's bio-belief, the heterosexual/homosexual binary is not in nature, but is socially constructed, therefore deconstructable.
In other words, human beings make their own different arrangements of reproduction and production, of sex differences and eroticism, their own history of pleasure and happiness.[37]In an Afterword to Katz' book, lesbian activist Lisa Duggan frankly explores the reasons why some activists make so-called "innateness" arguments: They are politically expedient...
...Katz will...be challenged by lesbian and gay "essentialists" who believe that sexual identity is fixed, perhaps inborn. Understandably, these advocates of equality believe that their kind of argument works better against the conservatives who would banish them from the earth. If lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are born, not made, then the wish to ban or punish them is itself against nature and thus wrong as well as mean.
But such arguments are short-sighted as well as a-historical. All they can win is tolerance for a supposedly fixed minority called "lesbian" and "gay." What they can't do is change the notion that "heterosexuality" is "normal" for the vast majority of people, and shift social, cultural, and political practices based on that assumption. Nor can they destabilize the rigid notions of gender that underlie sexual identity categories.[38]Lesbian activists Sue O'Sullivan and Pratibha Parmar comment on the raging debate among lesbians about who is a "real lesbian":
That a woman can spend half her adult life seeing herself as a heterosexual, marrying and bearing children, and then, in mid-life, become a lesbian puzzles most observers and quite often the woman herself. Yet from rural Idaho to Metropolitan New York, women are redefining their sexuality and becoming lesbians in mid- life.
What are the social dynamics involved in this process of change? We will discuss this question in light of a survey of over 30 American women who had recently changed their sexual identity. Their experiences challenge the common assumption that sexuality is "set" at an early stage of the life cycle. They also illuminate the social context which was supportive to the redefinition of the lesbian stereotype and their own sexuality.
From the same article: "Several women followed what we might call a 'feminist path' to lesbianism, a pattern for 'coming out' that has been known since the early days of the women's movement. For these women, becoming a lesbian was a direct and conscious outgrowth of their commitment to feminism. For them, lesbianism was a deliberate choice, the logical last step in the process of political analysis."[39]A recently published survey also calls the "innateness" of lesbianism into question:
There's a big controversy now: Is lesbianism hereditary? People are trying to find a genetic predisposition to being gay. I think part of this is positive in that researchers are trying to tell the establishment, "Don't try to cure homosexuality. They were born this way. A certain percent of the population is going to be this way, no matter what you do."
But even if they're right, what about those for whom it's not hereditary? Many women say it's a choice. They have chosen lesbianism because of positive experiences with women...Why are we so afraid to say we chose it? It's so scary to take that chance and say, "I am choosing it. It's really what I want to do. It's not because my DNA is making me. DNA be d[-]ed, I think I'll be a lesbian."[40]Lesbian activist Donna Minkowitz would also seem to affirm a "non- innateness" perspective, in an article entitled "Recruit, recruit, recruit!":
Remember that most of the line about homosex[uality] being one's nature, not a choice, was articulated as a response to brutal repression. "It's not our fault!" gay activists began to declaim a century ago, when queers first began to organize in Germany and England. "We didn't choose this, so don't punish us for it!" One hundred years later, it's time for us to abandon this defensive posture and walk upright on the earth. Maybe you didn't choose to be gay-that's fine. But I did.[41]Public policy author and American University professor Jerry Z. Muller observes, of gay activist "sexual politics":
In political arguments toward the non-homosexual public, the homosexual movement has tended toward a deterministic portrait of homosexuality as grounded in irrevocable biological or social-psychological circumstance. Yet among homosexual theorists in the academy, the propensity is toward the defense of homosexuality as a voluntarily affirmed "self-fashioning."
The confluence of feminism and homosexual ideology has now led to a new stage, in which the politics of stable but multicultural and multisexual identities is being challenged by those who regard all permanent and fixed identity as a coercive restriction of autonomy, which is thought to include self-definition and redefinition.[42]Lastly, a number of prominent gay activists have recently attempted to disparage LeVay, Hamer and their "findings," holding that homosexuality is indeed non-innate and mutable, for a curious reason: They fear that if "gayness" can be proved to be genetically determined, it will therefore be "surgically correctable, or alterable by genetic engineering." They fear "fascists" and/or "homophobes" may try to round up gays and "correct" their sexual orientation "under the knife" or "in the test tube"-even kill infants determined genetically to be homosexual.
In any event, it must be observed that if gay activists themselves, strongest advocates of the "innateness and immutability" of homosexuality, cannot agree on this question, and if what "science" there is supporting their thesis is faulty if not fraudulent, it would be foolhardy to make sweeping public policy decisions based on the dubious presumption that gays are "born that way" and cannot change their sexual orientation.
Examining Presupposition Two
For arguments in favor of same-sex "marriage" to be valid, the presupposition that gays are "just like everyone else, except for their desire for same-sex partners" must be proved valid. Does such a presupposition have a basis in truth? Has the "homosexualization of America" (Americans, in general, becoming more promiscuous and more favorable toward casual and anyonymous sex) proceeded so far that there are indeed no essential remaining differences between the ways "gays and straights" conduct their lives and loves?To address these questions one can examine the scientific literature and gays' and lesbians' own self-admissions with regard to dominant lifestyle patterns within gay and lesbian populations. Then, one can compare these findings with evidence regarding lifestyle behaviors in the general population.
Dominant Features of Gay, Lesbian Lifestyles
AIDS research released in 1982 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported that the typical gay man interviewed claimed to have had more than 500 different sexual partners in a 20-year span. Gay people with AIDS studied averaged more than 1,100 "lifetime" partners. Some reported as many as 20,000. (A psychologist we interviewed personally told of counseling a gay clergyman who admitted to having had more than 900 sexual partners to date.)
From perhaps the most comprehensive study of gay lifestyles ever undertaken before 1980, we learn that:
- 43% of white male homosexuals estimated they'd had sex with 500 or more different partners
- 75% had had 100 or more sexual partners; 28% (the largest subcategory) reported more than 1,000 partners
- 79% said more than half their partners were strangers
- 70% said more than half their sexual partners were men with whom they had sex only once[43]
In a 1986-published gay tabloid, Dr. Will Handy, former co-chair of Wisconsin's Governor's Council on Lesbian and Gay Issues and an avowed homosexual, detailed his objections to "contact tracing" of HIV-positive people as follows:
Contact tracing has not proved very effective among gay men, even for those diseases (syphilis and gonorrhea) which are, in a sense, "designed" for it. In the three weeks incubation period for syphilis, the average gay man will have three sexual partners to report. Wisconsin's HTLV-III contact tracing proposal calls for the tracing of partners back to 1980: that suggests quite a large pool of people to contact for each positive test given to a gay/bisexual man. But the reality is that many of those contacts would have been anonymous or so casual that memories of names, addresses, and dates would be long lost. The Division of Health can't trace my partners if I can't recall who they were.[44]In one of medical literature's only studies reporting on homosexuals who kept sexual "diaries," the number of annual sexual partners was nearly 100.[45]
Studies reported by Bell and Weinberg (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981) indicated that only 3% of gay men they surveyed had had fewer than 10 "lifetime" sexual partners. Only about 2% could be classified as either "monogamous" or even "semi-monogamous." Even "monogamy" seems to lack traditional meaning in gay male circles. Studies have indicated that "monogamy" for gay men tends to last from between 9 and 60 months.[46]
A study by McKusick, et al, of 655 San Francisco gay men[47] recommended that homosexuals limit their sexual expression to committed monogamy. McKusick reported responses to this suggestion he received from avowedly gay men:
...[T]he recommendation that gay men limit themselves to committed monogamy was discussed [among survey participants] and found to lack creativity...and to reflect the simple insensitivity of an outsider approaching the gay world. Although most of our subjects have expressed a desire for more primary partnering in response to AIDS, there has been no significant increase in these bonds during the [three year] period of our investigation.[48]Weinberg and Williams (op. cit.) reported that two-thirds of 1,117 gay males they had surveyed answered "no" when asked whether they or their present sexual partner were currently "limiting your sexual relationships primarily to each other." Only a third of gay males surveyed claimed they had "ever" been involved in such a mutually exclusive relationship.
Gay activist marketing experts Kirk and Madsen admit in After the Ball (op. cit., p. 330), "...[T]he cheating ratio of 'married' gay males, given enough time, approaches 100%...Many gay lovers, bowing to the inevitable, agree to an 'open relationship,' for which there are as many sets of ground rules as there are couples."
"Reparative therapist" Joseph Nicolosi writes:
The fact is, a committed, monogamous gay relationship is very rare. Sometimes good friends make a commitment to share a home and care for and support each other, but as gay literature itself tells us, these relationships characteristically include an understanding that there will be outside sexual relationships.
In The Male Couple, by David McWhirter and Andrew Mattison, the authors-a gay couple themselves- could find no gay relationship in which fidelity was maintained more than five years. In fact, the authors tell us, "the single most important factor that keeps couples together past the ten-year mark is the lack of possessiveness they feel. Many couples learn very early in their relationship that ownership of each other sexually can become the greatest internal threat to their staying together."[49]A 1984 study by the American Psychological Association's Ethics Committee, reported in USA Today (November 21, 1984), indicated that fear of AIDS had lowered gay men's promiscuity rate from 70 different partners in 1982 to 50 partners per year by 1984. (Even at this "safer sex" rate, a gay male would still total over 600 sexual partners between ages 18-30.)
A University of Chicago study[50] concluded that the estimated number of lifetime sexual partners since age 18 for the U.S. population as a whole is 7.15 (only 8.67 for those who never marry).
In American Couples (1983)-"A major enlightening report on how Americans live their private lives," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer-authors Philip Blumstein, Ph.D. and Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D. state:
If a gay man is monogamous, he is such a rare phenomenon, he may have difficulty making himself believed.[and]
Gay men can make non-monogamy part of everyday life. They have no trouble incorporating casual sex into their relationships. Since their partner is male, they are not called on to honor the female preference for monogamy...Gay authors David P. McWhirter, M.D., and Andrew M. Mattison, M.S.W., Ph.D. (The Male Couple) confirm homosexual promiscuity:
Only seven couples [out of the 156 interviewed] have a totally exclusive sexual relationship, and these men have all been together less than 5 years. Stated in another way, all couples with a relationship lasting more than 5 years have incorporated some provision for outside sexual activity in their relationships. That translates into 5 percent monogamous, 95 percent non- monogamous.[51]Isolated studies of interviews conducted since 1987 suggest that gay men may have lowered the number of their sexual contacts to around 10 per year. Even a reduction of this magnitude would mean gay males, on average, have more sexual partners in one year than the average American male (and this estimate is probably raised somewhat by factoring in the partnering of promiscuous gay men) has in a lifetime.
Evidence also exists in the literature and in gay self-admissions that lesbians exhibit high levels of promiscuity relative to the general female population. Jay and Young's Gay Report[52] revealed that 38% of lesbians surveyed claimed to have had between 11 and more than 300 sexual partners lifetime. In Homosexualities (op. cit.), Bell and Weinberg reported that 41% of Caucasian lesbians admitted to having had between 10 and 500 sexual partners lifetime.
There is also much evidence of lesbian relational instability. An article entitled, "Maintaining Our Equilibrium in Couples-Or Not," by Clare Coss, quotes a writer named Alison as saying:
I met somebody the other day and she's been in and out of relationships as I have. She said, "You know, I'm so jaded now I think if I ever got into a relationship it would be about six weeks." I said, "That long?"[53]Also, from the book Lesbian Passion...
Everyone wants to know: How come lesbian relationships don't last long? They forget that these days, no relationships last long. We're in a fast-paced, fast- moving world. Things change all the time...
Today, everybody's moving all the time. Who even knows her neighbors? Relationships of all persuasions aren't lasting very long. Some lesbians have unreal expectations that because we're lesbians, our relationships are going to be better. They're going to be different. They're going to be stronger. They're going to last longer. All the while, somewhere inside of us, we don't believe that for an instant. We need only look at the relationships of our friends to see how flimsy that belief is.[54]The authors of Lesbian Passion spend considerable time writing about the instability and transitory nature of many lesbian relationships. According to their survey, many lesbians (69%) who'd been couples had been couples for fewer than three years. Only 7% had been couples for nine or more years.[55]
When thinking about [sexual] satisfaction it's important to remember that most of the lesbians in this survey had been in their current situations (single, casually involved, coupled) for fewer than three years... No matter how many questionnaires were analyzed, the statistics did not change significantly, so it seems likely that lesbians generally do not stay in their situations for long.[56]
Sex In America, conducted by Michael, Gagnon, Laumann and Kolata, published in 1994, and claiming to be the most comprehensive report ever conducted of American sexual life and habits[57], calls these claims and the entire "homosexualization of America" concept into serious question. According to Michael, et al:
America has a message about sex, and that message is none too subtle. Anyone who watches a movie, reads a magazine, or turns on the television has seen it. It says that almost everyone but you is having endless, fascinating, varied sex.
But, we have found, the public image of sex in America bears virtually no relationship to the truth. The public image consists of myths, and they are not harmless, for they elicit at best unrealistic and at worst dangerous misconceptions of what people do sexually. The resulting false expectations can badly affect self-esteem, marriages, relationships, even physical health.[58]
Our study, called the National Health and Social Life Survey, or NHSLS, has findings that often directly contradict what has become the conventional wisdom about sex. They are counterrevolutionary findings, showing a country with very diverse sexual practices but one that, on the whole, is much less sexually active than we have come to believe.[59]For instance, the survey revealed that 67.6% of men and 75.5% of women surveyed had had only one sex partner in the past year. The survey found that only 2.6% of men and only 1.2% of women had only same-sex partner(s) during the past year.[60]
The survey also revealed that Americans tend to establish long-term relationships in marriage with people much like themselves, i.e., people largely choose marriage partners and "significant others" from the same socioeconomic and educational strata they themselves "fall into." And people tend to have little sex while establishing those relationships. Obviously, for most Americans, other factors than sheer sexual attraction play a major role in the making of long-term, committed relationships.
Contrary to some expectations, the survey found very little incidence of adultery in traditional marriage. And, according the survey, in 1992, more than half of men and women in America between the ages of 18-26 had had just one sex partner in the past year, and another 11% had none. The same kinds of results are reported in British and European sex surveys. Michael, et al, find that...
...nearly all Americans have a very modest number of partners, whether we ask them to enumerate their partners over their adult lifetime or in the past year. The number of partners varies little with education, race, or religion. Instead, it is determined by marital status or by whether a couple is living together. Once married, people tend to have one and only one partner, and those who are unmarried and living together are almost as likely to be faithful.[61]The survey's findings...
... give no support to the idea of a promiscuous society or of a dramatic Sexual Revolution reflected in huge numbers of people with multiple casual sex partners. The finding on which our data give quite strong and amazing evidence is not that most people do, in fact, form a partnership, or that most people do, in fact, ultimately get married. That fact was also well documented in many previous studies. Nor is it news that more recent marriages are much less stable than marriages that began 30 years ago. That fact, too, was reported by others before us. But we add a new fact, one that is not only important but is striking.
Our study shows clearly that no matter how sexually active people are before or between marriages, no matter whether they lived with their sexual partners before marriage or whether they were virgins on their wedding day, marriage is such a powerful social institution that, essentially married people are nearly all alike-they are faithful to their partners as long as the marriage is intact....Once married, the vast majority have no other sexual partners; their past is essentially erased. Marriage remains the great leveler.[62]
The old standards of sexual behavior are not so much gone as made more fuzzy, more diffuse, in the time before and between marriages. But there are definitely standards of behavior. And if society's goal is to get people safely married and procreating and faithful to their spouses, the standards have been a roaring success.[63]The survey revealed that overall, married people are those most physically pleased and emotionally satisfied with the sex they are having. The lowest rates of satisfaction are among the unmarried or those who are not living with someone. Interestingly, satisfaction declines when people have more than one sex partner. The least satisfied are the unmarried or non-cohabiting who have two or more sex partners at any one time. More interestingly, the survey revealed that conservative, Protestant married women claimed the highest rate of orgasms during sexual relations. The sexually-active unmarried and the non-religious, non-cohabiting, reported the lowest incidence of orgasms.
Not surprisingly, most people in the survey who identify themselves as faithful partners or mates also have faithful partners or mates. It also showed that only 4.1% of men and 1.6% of women had five or more sexual partners during the last 12 months. And only 15.1% of men and 2.7% of women had 5 or more partners lifetime.[64] Very few Americans had five or more sex partners in the past year of the survey, and these were mostly young, mostly male, and we may be safe in assuming, mostly gay.
When the survey inquired about the kinds of sex practices engaged in by Americans, heterosexuals showed very little interest in "kinky" or unusual sexual behaviors, like sado-masochism. Heterosexuals report very little drug or alcohol use before sex, and, except for religious liberals and libertarians, Americans overwhelmingly think same-gender sex is always wrong.
Significantly, the National Health and Social Life survey did not find gays numbering anywhere near the 10% of the general population figure usually cited by gay activists. In fact, researchers found very small percentages of both men and women who have had exclusively gay sex and lesbian relationships and even a much smaller percentage of people who have been involved in bisexual relationships. Only 1.4% of women and 2.8% of men identified themselves as homo- or bisexual:
No matter how we define homosexuality, we come up with small percentages of people who are currently gay or lesbian. These numbers, in fact, may sound astonishingly low, especially to residents of cities like New York or San Francisco, where there are large lesbian and gay communities. But, we found, gays and lesbians are not evenly distributed across the country. They tend to live in large cities and to avoid or leave small towns and rural areas...[65]Certainly, Sex In America's sexual and relational portrait of the married and cohabiting general American population presents a striking contrast, in sexual/relational fidelity, to the "open" nature of gay relationships, even those characterized as "monogamous." Gay lifestyles appear to be much more promiscuous than "straights'." There appears to be a marked transitoriness in both gay and lesbian relational patterns, and a great deal more sheer sexual preoccupation.
Avowedly gay activist leaders themselves admit the deficiencies of gay life. Kirk and Madsen say: "In short, the gay lifestyle-if such a chaos can, after all, legitimately be called a lifestyle-just doesn't work: it doesn't serve the two functions for which all social frameworks evolve: to constrain people's natural impulses to behave badly and to meet their natural needs."[66]
Examining Presupposition Three
If gays are not "just like everyone else," then gay activists' third major unspoken presupposition-that gay activists will desire the same kinds of marriages as "everyone else," and that the legalization of same-sex "marriage" will have minimal effects on society at large-must be examined carefully before America proceeds to make public policy decisions we may deeply regret. Granting same-sex unions legal recognition may have much greater "ripple effects" than gay activists would have us believe.Andrew Sullivan is the most prominent avowedly gay spokesman who says the effects of same-sex "marriage" recognition will not be serious. In his Virtually Normal,[67] Sullivan assures us that:
(1) Same-sex "marriage" would certainly not be "a massive societal leap in the dark."
(2) Same-sex "marriage" would not radically alter the nature of marriage as society has known it; instead, marriage would bring "stability" to gays, "domesticate them" and bring them closer to society's mainstream.
(3) Churches, synagogues and other religious organizations would not be forced to enact or recognize same-sex civil "marriages."
(4) Granting same-sex "marriage" recognition would not exacerbate the tumultuous struggle over "gay rights"; it would actually defuse the conflict.Sullivan's assertions demand responses.
Same-sex "marriage" would be no "leap in the dark" for society.
... to have enormous impact on the broad range of rights and benefits associated with marriage. These range from income tax and estate tax law, communal property ownership, inheritance and probate law, divorce and child custody regulations, and insurance benefits.[68]
... to unleash avalanches of gay activist lawsuits, against employers, landlords, school authorities, insurance companies, churches, governmental authorities and more which refuse to recognize same-sex "marriages."
... to force the rewriting of business employment policies, insurance actuarial tables and government regulations at every level of society. "Mega"- businesses may be able to afford to subsidize and create benefit structures for same-sex "marriages" and "domestic partnerships" (some large companies are already providing employee benefits for partners of gay employees[69]), but small businesses will not likely be able to survive with these kinds of added burdens.
... to coerce public and private schools to rewrite curricula to include materials showing gay and lesbian lifestyles in a favorable light. As Mike Gabbard, who has led statewide opposition to same-sex "marriage" recognition in Hawaii, points out: "Compulsory education forces all children-a truly captive audience-to [be educated]. If same-sex 'marriages' become legal, children would be taught in health ed, sex education, and marriage/family courses that so-called homosexual 'marriage' is the equivalent of heterosexual marriage."[70]
... to, as numerous gay activists have predicted, begin "blowing the doors" off traditional marriage and family definitions and boundaries, to accommodate the vagaries of gay and lesbian lifestyles.California Attorney General Dan Lundgren observes:
If you have the legal determination that there cannot be a preferred status for heterosexual marriage, you open yourself up to all sorts of other [legal] attacks... We go all the way to the question of bigamy, we go to the question of marrying between cousins and so forth and so on once you eliminate this preferred status.[71]In raising such issues, have opponents, as columnist Stephen Chapman says in an article supporting same-sex "marriage," "passed into outright hallucination"[72]? One wonders how much "gay theory" about marriage and relationships Chapman has read. Activist Paula Ettelbrick, currently policy director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, formerly legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (formerly the Lambda Legal Defense Fund), is tactically "for" same-sex "marriage," but shares these caveats:
Being queer is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender, and seeking state approval for doing so....Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society....
As a lesbian, I am fundamentally different from non-lesbian women....In arguing for the right to legal marriage, lesbians and gay men would be forced to claim that we are just like heterosexual couples, have the same goals and purposes, and vow to structure our lives similarly....We must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and of radically reordering society's view of reality.[73]Both the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund are considered, not "fringe," but "mainstream" gay activist groups. Former Lambda Legal Defense Fund president Thomas Stoddard also expresses lukewarm support for same-sex "marriages":
I must confess at the outset that I am no fan of the "institution" of marriage as currently constructed and practiced....Why give it such prominence? Why devote resources to such a distant goal? Because marriage is, I believe, the political issue that most fully tests the dedication of people who are not gay to full equality for gay people, and also the issue most likely to lead ultimately to a world free of discrimination against lesbians and gay men.[74]The New American has reported:
In his 1990 book An End to Shame: Shaping Our Next Sexual Revolution...sociologist Ira Reiss describes..."a true sexual democracy [in which] all of us can achieve a much higher level of well-being-an ability to satisfy one's sexual interests without guilt or anxiety...."
Reiss points out that extending the social privileges associated with marriage to homosexuals and unmarried couples would be a major step toward the establishment of that "sexual democracy":
We should develop some kind of religious and civic ceremony that will sanctify and recognize a non- marital love relationship between two gays, two lesbians, or two straights. The registration of domestic partners so they may claim legal rights of inheritance and health benefits is a step in this direction which some cities have taken. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation must join the list of forbidden discrimination like race, religion, and creed.
Unlike some...Reiss is refreshingly candid about the totalitarian nature of the reforms he recommends: "To build [sexual] pluralism we must firmly root out the narrow thinking about sex that exists in all of our basic institutions-family, political, economic, religious and educational. We need to change our whole basic social institutional structure...."[75]Activist Donna Minkowitz says:
We [gay and lesbian activists] have been on the defensive too long. It's time to affirm that the Right is correct in some of its pronouncements about our movement. Pat Buchanan said there was a "cultural war" going on "for the soul of America" and that gay and lesbian rights were the principal battleground. He was right. Similarly, [homo]'phobes like Pat Robertson are right when they say that we threaten the family, male domination, and the Calvinist ethic of work and grimness that has paralyzed most Americans' search for pleasure.
Indeed, instead of proclaiming our innocuousness, we ought to advertise our potential to change straight society in radical, beneficial ways. Het[erosexual]s have much to learn from us: first and foremost, the fact that pleasure is possible (and desirable) beyond the sanction of the state. Another fact gleaned from gay experience-that gender is for all intents and purposes a fiction-also has the potential to revolutionize straight lives.[76]Writing in Out magazine, regular contributor Michelangelo Signorile (quoted supra) has described a strategy in which homosexuals "fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely...to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution....The most subversive action lesbians and gays can undertake-and one that would perhaps benefit all of society-is to transform the notion of 'family' entirely."[77]
Same-sex "marriage" would not radically alter the nature of marriage as society has known it; rather, marriage would bring "stability" to gays, "domesticate them" and bring them closer to society's mainstream.
As we have seen, not only married couples, but also cohabiting singles in the general population overwhelmingly practice fidelity during their committed relationships. Gays enjoy the same opportunity to be "domesticated" as general-population singles, yet they do not seem to be "domesticating"-and do not, for the most part, seem to desire "domestication." In fact, gay promiscuity and its consequences are generally highest in cities that are most "gay friendly."[78]
Even "conservative" same-sex "marriage" apologist Andrew Sullivan "fudges" when it comes to the idea of pinning gays down to the same marriage relationship standards by which the general population abides. Early in Virtually Normal, Sullivan says conservatives should welcome same-sex "marriage," because it would "harness one minority [?] group-homosexuals-and enlist them in a conservative [social] structure." But, by his book's end, Sullivan coyly hints heterosexuals might learn a lot from gay open-style "marriages":
At times among gay male relationships, the openness of the contract makes it more likely to survive than many heterosexual bonds. Some of this is unavailable to the male-female union: there is more likely to be greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman...
...I believe strongly that marriage should be made available to everyone, in a politics of strict public neutrality. But within this model, there is plenty of scope for cultural difference. There is something baleful about the attempt of some gay conservatives to educate homosexuals and lesbians to an uncritical acceptance of a stifling model of heterosexual normality. The truth is, homosexuals are not entirely normal; and to flatten their varied and complicated lives into a single, moralistic model is to miss what is essential and exhilarating about their otherness.
This need not mean, as some have historically claimed, that homosexuals have no stake in the sustenance of a society, but that their role is somewhat different...they may be able to press the limits of the culture or the business infrastructure, or the boundaries of intellectual life, in a way that heterosexuals by dint of a different type of calling, cannot.[79]To date, no such "essential and exhilarating" allowances have been made for heterosexual marriages.
On the one hand, Sullivan and other gay activists imply that gays are promiscuous because they cannot marry. On the other hand, they say, "Change the basis of marriage to suit the way we are. It's heterosexual society that needs changing, not us!" They say, "We can't develop stable relationships because we can't marry." But to other audiences they say, "We don't want to form stable relationships, so change the definition of marriage so we don't have to live in sexually faithful relationships."
Sullivan says gays should not be pressed into the "stifling mold of heterosexual normality" (though the "straight" world has also experimented with "open marriages"-with less-than-happy results). But if gays and their relationships aren't "entirely normal," why should either gays or their relationships be recognized as legal "minorities" or equals of heterosexual marriages?
In effect, Sullivan has just pulled the rug out from under his own argument: Do gay activists want to stretch marriage barriers to include all kinds of relationships and combinations of same that would not now be accepted under that "tent"? Evidently, the "ripple effects" of same- sex "marriage" will by no means be as gentle as Sullivan is purringly trying to make them seem!
If gay activists are not trying to effect a radical demolition and re- establishment of the basic foundations of marriage, just to accommodate themselves, why do they seem so unwilling to accept the same standards of sexual fidelity as heterosexuals? Do gay activists want new marriage definitions, not just so marriage can include them, but also so marriage can include the vagaries of their lifestyles?
Ironically, Sullivan finds himself willing to apply the very kind of practical, lifestyle-pattern analysis considerations we have applied to gay unions to disqualify incest and near-kin sexual attraction as bases for marriage. Would he be willing to accept our analysis of homosexual lifestyles in evaluating "gayness" as a basis for marriage? Somehow, we doubt it.
Sullivan himself also admits that no two gay men or lesbians can be parents in the way heterosexual men and women can, so in what way would same-sex "marriage" and parenthoods be comparable to heterosexuals'?
Churches, synagogues and other religious organizations would not be forced to recognize same-sex civil "marriages."
Although the [Hawaii Commission on Sexual Orientation] majority report recommends that religious institutions not be forced to perform same-sex ceremonies, it offers no defense for the conscientious Christian, Jew or Muslim (or Hindu or atheist, for that matter) who will not legally recognize same-sex "marriage." Law carries the potential use of force against those who will not abide by it....
All institutions except specifically religious ones would be subjected to state enforcement [according to the Commission]. That would include [religious] bookstores, radio and TV stations, and other nondenominational businesses owned by religious people.[80]In fact, shortly after the State of Hawaii passed S.B. No. 1181, its comprehensive "gay rights" legislation, Hawaii Attorney General Warren Price answered by letter an inquiry regarding the bill's effects on religious organizations' hiring practices as follows:
Non-sectarian employees of the church, church- sponsored activities or programs are not exempt. This would include janitors, gardeners, teachers, etc.[81]At present, Hawaii requires clergy to obtain a State license in order to perform marriages. The legal "machinery" is already in place to compel Hawaiian clergy to recognize and perform same-sex "marriages" or forfeit licensure.[82]
Gay activists have been known in the past to renege on promises not to disturb religious organizations. When Wisconsin's former governor, Lee Sherman Dreyfus, signed that State's "gay rights" bill into law, he was assured by gay activists that the bill would have no effect on religious institutions.
Shortly after Dreyfus left office, two allegedly gay men appeared at the 40-year-old Rawhide Boys' Ranch, a Christian home for troubled youths, demanding to be hired as counselors. When refused, the gay men took legal action. Evidence later surfaced indicating that not only was this action deliberate, it was planned by the Wisconsin Governor's Council on Lesbian and Gay Issues. A copy of minutes (obtained by this writer) of the October 19, 1985, meeting of the Council, under the heading "RAWHIDE" contains the following words:
Jim Thideman [one of eight Council members present] has asked some people to apply for a job [at Rawhide] and pursue filing a discrimination report with ERD [Equal Rights Division] upon refusal of employment, assuming it will be that clear cut. Kathleen Nichols [another Council member] reported that Char McLaughlan is acquainted with a lesbian with a son at Rawhide who has been refused family counseling sessions if accompanied by her lover. Follow-up is necessary to see if this woman would be willing to file a complaint.According to sources at the Rawhide Ranch, heading off these conspiratorial actions has cost the home in excess of $30,000. Former governor Dreyfus later wrote the "gay rights" bill's promoters, expressing his sense of betrayal at "gay rights" activists' flagrant breach of promise. Relief for Rawhide came only through passage of additional legislation that "exempted" religious institutions like it. But, for significant reasons, "religious exemptions" in "gay rights" or same-sex "marriage" legislation may only bring temporary relief from enforcement of such measures.
It is difficult to believe that Andrew Sullivan does not perceive the potential for coercion religious organizations will face in these kinds of dilemmas. Same-sex civil "marriage" recognition might well predicate these dilemmas and others. Yet while Sullivan decries as "anti-liberal" the potential coercion of "gay rights" legislation, he insists same-sex "marriage" recognition will not have the same effects.
Whether Sullivan believes so or not, same-sex "marriage" recognition would indeed "legislate private tolerance" by religious organizations, just as the acceptance of openly gay persons into America's military forces would "legislate tolerance" in that environment. Both of these eventualities would have the effect of saying to all touched by them, "Either accept gay 'marriages' or else!"
Granting same-sex "marriage" recognition would not exacerbate the tumultuous struggle over "gay rights"; it would actually DEFUSE the conflict.
So long as gay activists can "claim discrimination" on some grounds, they can still use government and taxpayers' dollars to sue others and advance gay activist interests. "Marital status" will serve as well as suspect status in many states for that purpose. Furthermore, if the Hawaii Supreme Court ruling that gender is a suspect class holds up, "married" gay activists will be able to claim discrimination on "gender" grounds wherever marital status is not a protected class.
In any event, same-sex "marriage" recognition will simply "grandfather" gay activists into a position where they can use government to sue resistors and opponents and advance their political and social interests, just as well as they might by wielding "gay rights" legislation. Thus the "gay rights" struggle will continue, though in a slightly different guise, every bit as fervently and rancorously as before.
If the three gay activist presuppositions we have examined cannot stand scrutiny, the rest of gay activists' apologia will not likely persuade, either. We conclude that gays do not constitute a true suspect minority; gays are not "just like everyone else" in terms of relational lifestyle stability; and gay activists do not desire the same kinds of "marriages" as "everyone else"; therefore, the changes in marriage brought about by same-sex "marriage" recognition would have cataclysmic effects for society at large. Same- sex "marriage" recognition:
- would be a "massive societal leap" into a "darkness" of radical social experimentation, endless litigation and drastic business, economic and public policy reorganization
- would radically alter the institution of marriage as we have known it
- would be highly unlikely to change gay/lesbian lifestyle patterns
- would force churches, synagogues and other religious institutions to either recognize and perform same-sex "marriage" rites or be attacked by gay activists
- would perpetuate, and probably intensify, the "gay rights" controversy, on national and local levels
Re-Examining the Four Major Arguments
With all this in mind, we will now briefly re-examine gay activists' four primary arguments in favor of same-sex "marriage recognition."1) Gays, lesbians and bisexuals are being "discriminated against" when their unions are denied marriage recognition.
In essence, to make a claim of discrimination, one must be a member of a protected or suspect class. In saying they are being "discriminated against," gay activists are already claiming to be a protected or suspect class, in most cases without having first earned the status that allows the claim.
Since gay activists cannot make a valid claim to be recognized as a suspect class, they cannot properly make "claims of discrimination." Also, not being able to make "claims of discrimination" does not prove that one is being "discriminated against." The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other state and local Civil Rights statutes simply do not provide extraordinary protection for every conceivable group that might at some time or other be looked down upon by some person or other group. Laws designed to specially protect the truly disadvantaged and politically powerless must be based on criteria of some sort. "Sexual orientation" simply does not meet the established criteria. It is not a racial, color or even religious category. It is not even, as gay activists define it, a behavioral category.
If gay activists are not part of a suspect class, they have no "right to claim discrimination," nor, in Civil Rights terms, can they be "discriminated against." Therefore, they do not have to be treated as if they were a suspect class-or anything other than people who claim to experience a certain sexual proclivity to an intense degree.
Are gays being denied benefits available to the married? An understanding of "minority" Civil Rights law should be sufficient to close the "discrimination" issue, but gay activists press further by insisting they are being denied benefits heterosexual married couples now enjoy. (They fail to mention that most of the benefits they feel they are lacking are also equally unavailable to unmarried heterosexual couples.) Is gay activists' claim in this regard true? For one thing, the argument itself smacks of circular reasoning: It presumes a priori that gays, lesbians and bisexuals deserve these benefits and are being willfully and unjustly denied them.
We also learn from numerous avowedly gay/lesbian sources that gay activists are aware of their ability to avail themselves of a host of substitutes for traditional marriage "benefits" now available through tort law. Gay activist Eric Marcus discusses several under the heading, "Legal Options for Formalizing Your Relationship."[83] Activist Paula L. Ettelbrick also reports, in a Lesbians at Midlife article entitled, "Legal Protections for Lesbians," that lesbians and gays have many legal options that can almost fully compensate for the lack of a marriage privilege. One of Colorado's chief avowedly gay same-sex "marriage" advocates, a Boulder activist named Rick Cendo, feels that he already has, in effect, "a working same-sex marriage."[84]
In the final analysis, to claim that opponents of "gay rights" or same- sex marriage recognition are "discriminating against gays and lesbians" is begging the question: assuming gays already possess universally accepted suspect status, which, as we have seen, is not the case. Criticism of, or legal action contrary to, the whims of affluent special interest groups which do not possess or qualify for suspect status does not constitute "discrimination." Saying that wealthy Caucasian corporation presidents as a class do not qualify for suspect status does not "discriminate" against the white and well-heeled. It simply states a fact. No amount of non-actionable verbal "millionaire-bashing" will compel government to declare Caucasian plutocrats a suspect class. They simply do not qualify for that status, nor do gay activists or other wealthy, powerful special interest groups. Gay activists have ample resources to secure virtually all the benefits they might desire-without tapping the public till or using government as a billy club to punish their opponents.
Refusing to grant special status (suspect or marital) to gay activists does not deny gay people a single fundamental Constitutional right. Suspect and marital status bestow privileges additional to the U.S. Constitution's fundamental protections. Again, Caucasian males under age 40 with no disabilities or firm ethnic identities are not beneficiaries of suspect status; nevertheless, it cannot be said that they do not possess all fundamental Constitutional rights because they do not enjoy special status.
In fact, it is gay activists who seem most eager to practice reverse discrimination against other Americans, by using suspect or marital status leverage to force society to subsidize and advance gay lifestyles and to institutionalize their own political goals, using government to advance their interests. Opposing gay activist special interests is not "discriminating against gays;" it is preserving rational and just Civil Rights policies; it is simply saying, "no special status and benefits" to a powerful special interest group which already shares the fundamental rights of American citizenship and enjoys far more advantages than most American citizens.
2) Marriage is a "basic human right" and choice of marriage partners should in no way be regulated by government; therefore same-sex couples should be allowed to legally marry.
One will search the Constitution of the United States in vain for a "fundamental right to marry," or even for a mention of marriage. It is true that numerous U.S. Supreme Court decisions have referred to the extraordinary significance of marriage; the High Court has called marriage "one of the basic civil rights of man" (see Skinner vs. Oklahoma, 1942; Zablocki vs. Redhail, etc.). But perhaps David Shapiro, managing editor of The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, has answered this argument as pointedly as is necessary:
There's no civil right to marry whomever you wish. Gay and lesbian couples aren't the only ones who can't get marriage licenses. You can't get a license to marry your brother or sister. You can't get a license to marry more than one person at a time. You can't get a license to marry a 9-year-old child or your horse.
Every man and woman in Hawaii has the exact same right to get married. It just has to be to an individual of the opposite sex who is of age, is not a close relative and is human.
If men and women are treated the same, there's no sex discrimination unless you hold that gay men and lesbian women are the third and fourth genders. There's a lot of legal ground to plow between here and there.[85]Far less likely will one be to discover in the Constitution any "right" to marry whomever one wishes based on particular self-alleged varieties of sexuality alone.
Republican Presidential candidate Alan Keyes has said, "...[I]f we allow people to redefine marriage as an institution in such a way as to make it consistent with life sensuousness instead of responsibility, then I think we will have destroyed not only this important institution, but all the things in society that depend on it."[86]
To oppose the aims of affluent gay activist special interests may violate their wishes and deprive them of undeserved status and benefits, including marital; it does not, however, violate their fundamental rights.
3) Civil and religious marriage will remain separate institutions if same-sex marriages are legalized.
If gay activists gain suspect status and sufficient political leverage, America can count on it: Gay activists will show up at religious organizations' doors with lawyers in tow, followed by process servers with subpoenas to "equal protection" lawsuits against organizations that refuse to recognize and enact same-sex "marriages."
4) Same-gender couples cannot legally marry in any state, despite how much they may feel a "need" to (emotionally), or how much their "families" need civil marriage's protections, benefits and responsibilities.
Like gay activists' second argument, this one also presumes that it is perfectly right and just for gay activists to demand marriage recognition for same-sex unions. We think we have shown that this demand is neither right nor just, and is no more appropriate than for consensual sado-masochists, or hair, foot or underwear fetishists to make, based solely on their self-alleged sexual fantasy proclivities.
Gay Activists' Unspoken "Fifth Argument"
Stripped of all their pseudo-merit, gay activists' arguments in support of same-sex "marriage" boil down to one unspoken "fifth argument," which happens to be a classic non-sequitur known as argumentum ad misericordiam, or the "argument to pity." Applied to "gay rights" issues, it goes something like this:Gay people have suffered emotional torment because society does not smile on their "sexual orientation." Gay activists complain loudly about this "oppression." Therefore, society "owes" gays suspect status, marital status and all accompanying benefits, to redress injuries done to gays and to make them feel better.Or, as one observer has put gay activists' position more colloquially, "We feel bad, we shout loud, give us 'perks'!"
Of course, injured feelings per se offer no compelling reason to bestow favors on anyone. If they did, every child's tantrum would be rewarded. Doubtless many imprisoned criminals feel bad because they are behind bars. This fact alone does not entitle them to automatic release. Nor do gay activists' hurt feelings alone entitle them to get away with perpetrating massive Civil Rights fraud.
Endnotes
[1] According to avowed gay activist attorney Evan Wolfson, arguments rooted in "morality" or "religion" should not be recognized in public debate on this issue. Wolfson has said, "For government to interfere with the freedom of an individual-whether religious or personal-there must be valid secular reasons."
[2] "Homosexual Activists Start 'Marriage' Lobby Groups," SPHA Bulletin, December 1995, p. 6.
[3] "Gay and Lesbian Marriages: To Be Or Not To Be," Quest, February 1992, p. 20.
[4] "To Have and to Hold," (Washington, D.C.: The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 1995), p. 6.
[5] Ibid. p. 15.
[6] Ibid. p. 15.
[7] Ibid. p. 15.
[8] Cf. "To Have and to Hold," p. 15.
[9] Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), p. 183.
[10] Ibid. p. 112.
[11] Ibid. p. 185.
[12] Cf. "A healthy dose of homosexuality?" The Washington Times, National Weekly Edition, May 26, 1996, p. 33.
[13] Cf. Enrique Rueda, The Homosexual Network: Private Lives and Public Policy (Washington: Devin Adair Co., 1982).
[14] "The Family Defined," Chalcedon Report, June 1996, p. 9.
[15] Cf. "Matrimony in Hawaii: Marriage On the Rocks?" Rights in America newsletter, Vol. 2, No. 5, p. 1.
[16] Cf. San Antonio Independent School District vs. Rodriguez, 1973; Massachusetts Board of Retirement vs. Murgia, 1976; Plyler vs. Doe, 1982; City of Cleburne vs. Cleburne Living Center, 1985; reaffirmed in Jantz vs. Muci, 1991, denied cert., U.S. S.Ct.; cf. also Frontiero vs. Richardson, 1973.
[17] See the following articles, among many: "Overcoming a Deep Rooted Reluctance, More Firms Advertise to Gay Community," The Wall Street Journal, July 18, 1991; "The Gay Nineties," The Marketer, September 1990 (reporting findings by the Simmons Market Research Bureau and the U.S. Census Bureau). Other market research, produced by Overlooked Opinions, a Chicago firm (boasting 99%+ accuracy), are reported in: "Gay Market a Potential Gold Mine," The San Francisco Chronicle, August 27, 1991; "For Gays, Ship Charters Are a Boon, Say Two Travel Companies," Travel Weekly, August 5, 1991; and "Where the Money Is: Travel Industry Eying Gay/Lesbian Tourism," The Bay Area Reporter (a gay/lesbian newspaper), September 19, 1991.
[18] Source: The Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1990.
[19] Op. cit., Overlooked Opinions survey.
[20] Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, Edward O. Laumann and Gina Kolata, Sex In America (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1994), cf. p. 182.
[21] "Can I come out at work and be secure?" The Advocate, March 22, 1994, p. 20.
[22] "Beyond Oppression," The New Republic, May 10, 1993, pp. 34-35.
[23] "Gays' problems not all that bad," Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, April 30, 1993.
[24] "Beyond Oppression," pp. 18ff.
[25] "Activists from around the country descend on the Hill," The Washington Blade, May 8, 1992.
[26] Bell and Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversities Among Men and Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978); Hammersmith, S.K., Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981).
[27] "Health Care Needs of Gay Men and Lesbians in the United States," JAMA, May 1, 1996, Vol. 275, No. 17, p. 1354.
[28] Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, Homosexuality: A Symbolic Confusion (New York: The Seabury Press, 1977), p. 97.
[29] Tom Morey, Committee to Study Homosexuality of the United Methodist Church, General Conference of Ministries, Chicago Meeting on the Sciences, August 1990, p. 19.
[30] Charles W. Keysor, ed., What You Should Know About Homosexuality (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1979), p. 167.
[31] "Homosexuality and Sexual Orientation Disturbances," in Alfred M. Freedman, Harold I. Kaplan and Benjamin J. Saddock, eds., Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry II, second edition (Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Co., 1975), p. 1519.
[32] Fine, Psychoanalytic Theory, Male and Female Homosexuality: Psychological Approaches (pamphlet), pp. 84-86.
[33] See LeVay, Science, 253 (1991): 1034.
[34] "Salk and Pepper," The Bay Area Reporter, September 5, 1991, pp. 21, 24.
[35] See Newsweek, Feb. 24, 1992, p. 48.
[36] Cf. "Not-so-straight news: "Reporting" on genetic research tells only half the story," World magazine, November 11, 1995.
[37] Op. cit. Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality, p. 190.
[38] Ibid. p. 195, emphasis Duggan's.
[39] Op. cit., Lesbians at Midlife, "Redefining Sexuality: Women Becoming Lesbians in Mid-Life," Charbonneau and Lander, p. 35.
[40] Op. cit. Lesbian Passion, p. 35.
[41] Cf. The Advocate, December 29, 1992.
[42] "Coming Out Ahead: The Homosexual Movement in the Academy," First Things, August-September 1993, p. 20, emphasis added.
[43] Cf. op. cit., Bell and Weinberg, Homosexualities, a Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 308-309.
[44] Source: In Step, May 28, 1986.
[45] Corey, L. and Holmes, K.K., "Sexual transmission of hepatitis A in homosexual men," New England Journal of Medicine, 1980, 302, pp. 435-438.
[46] Gebhard, P.H. and Johnson, A.B., The Kinsey Data (Sanders, 1979); Bell, Weinberg and Hammersmith, Sexual Preference, op. cit.
[47] "AIDS amd sexial behavior reported by gay men in San Francisco," American Journal of Public Health, December 1985, 75, pp. 493- 496.
[48] Letters to the Editor, American Journal of Public Health, December 1985, 75, pp. 1449, 1450.
[49] Joseph Nicolosi, "Let's Be Straight: A Cure Is Possible," Insight, December 6, 1993, p. 24.
[50] Adult Sexual Behavior in 1989: Number of Partners, Frequency and Risk, presented February 1990 to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, published 1990 by NORC, University of Chicago.
[51] Eric Marcus, The Male Couple's Guide to Living Together (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 26-27.
[52] Summit Books, 1979, a survey by avowedly gay researchers.
[53] Op. cit., Sang, Warshow and Smith, Lesbians at Midlife: The Creative Transition, p. 134.
[54] Op. cit., Loulan/Nelson, Lesbian Passion, p. 35.
[55] Ibid. ref. p. 194.
[56] Ibid. pp. 202,203.
[57] Cf. Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, Edward O Laumann, Gina Kolata, Sex In America (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1994).
[58] Ibid. p. 1.
[59] Ibid. p. 25.
[60] Ibid. p. 35, Table 1.
[61] Ibid. p. 101, emphasis added.
[62] Ibid. p. 105.
[63] Ibid. p. 110.
[64] Ibid. ref. p. 109.
[65] Ibid. p. 177.
[66] Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, After the Ball (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 363.
[67] Op. cit.
[68] Whitney Galbraith, "Merits of amendment prohibiting gay marriage debated," Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, January 1, 1996, p. B-5.
[69] Walt Disney, for example.
[70] As quoted in "Same-Sex Marriage," The New American, April 1, 1996, p. 5.
[71] "Congress considers bill to ban same-sex marriages," Colorado Christian News, June 1996, p. 7.
[72] "Why shouldn't gay couples be able to marry?" Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, January 28, 1996, p. B-7.
[73] "Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation," essay in William B. Rubenstein, ed., Lesbians, Gay Men and the Law (New York: The New Press, 1993), pp. 401-405, emphasis added.
[74] Ibid. essay entitled "Why Gay People Should Seek the Right to Marry," pp. 398, 400, emphasis added.
[75] Op. cit., The New American, pp. 6, 7.
[76] Op. cit., Donna Minkowitz, "Recruit, Recruit, Recruit!"
[77] Quoted in "What's wrong with this picture," Citizen magazine, Vol. 10, No. 4, April 22, 1996, p. 3.
[78] Cf. The San Francisco Examiner, April 23, 1979; "CDC Hepatitis A among homosexual men-United States, Canada and Australia," MMWR, 1992: 41: 155-164, 12.
[79] Op. cit., Sullivan, pp. 203, 204, emphasis added.
[80] "Homosexual 'Marriage,'" AFA Journal, April 1996, p. 15.
[81] A copy of this correspondence has come into the possession of this writer.
[82] Cf. Biblical Baptist Press, March-April 1996, p. 5.
[83] Op. cit., The Male Couple's Guide to Living Together, p. 161 ff.
[84] "Same-sex couples register commitment," Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, July 2, 1996, p. B-2.
[85] Editorial, December 16, 1995, enmphasis added.
[86] Statement to press, January 27, 1996, quoted in SPHA Bulletin, January/February 1996, p. 6.
