August 25, 2010

• What are your stances on homosexual marriage and the NYC Islamic Cultural Center controversy?

  
  A loving man and woman in a committed relationship can marry. Dogs, no matter what their relationship, are not allowed to marry. How should society treat gays and lesbians in committed relationships? As dogs or as humans?

  

  The institution of marriage conveys dignity and respect towards a couple that make a lifetime commitment to support each other. Same-sex couples deserve this dignity and respect.

  Denying marriage to same-sex couples removes from one group a fundamental, important human right — the right to marry the person that one loves and to whom one has made a commitment. That is unfair and unjust in a democracy.

  Denying one group the right to marry has many adverse emotional and financial consequences. Examples are Social Security, Medicare, medical leave, and other benefits; property inheritance; the right to visit their spouse in hospital, and make medical decisions if they are incapacitated; security of the couple and of their children.

  Ask just about anyone. They’ll all tell you they’re in favor of equal rights for LGBT. Just name the situation, and ask. They’ll all say, yes, LGBT should have the same rights in housing, jobs, public accommodations, and should have equal access to government benefits, equal protection of the law, etcetera, etcetera.

  Then you get to Same-sex marriage.

  And that’s when all this talk of equality stops dead cold.

  Nearly seventy percent of people in the U.S. oppose same-sex marriage, almost the same proportion as are otherwise supportive of LGBT rights. This means that many of the same people who are even passionately in favor of gay rights oppose gays on this one issue.

  The values that such gay couples exhibit in their daily lives are often indistinguishable from those of their straight neighbors. They’re loyal to their mates, are monogamous, devoted partners. They value and participate in family life, are committed to making their neighborhoods and communities safer and better places to live, and honor and abide by the law. Many make valuable contributions to their communities, serving on school boards, volunteering in community charities, and trying to be good citizens. In doing so, they take full advantage of their relationship to make not only their own lives better, but those of their neighbors as well.

  A benefit to heterosexual society of gay marriage is the fact that the commitment of a marriage means the participants are discouraged from promiscuous sex. This has the advantage of slowing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, which know no sexual orientation and are equal opportunity destroyers.

  These benefits of gay marriage have changed the attitudes of the majority of people in Denmark and other countries where various forms of gay marriage have been legal for years. Indeed, in 1989, when the proposal to legalize marriage between gays first was proposed in Denmark, the majority of the clergy were opposed. Now, after having seen the benefits to the partners and to society, they are overwhelmingly in favor, according to the surveys done then and now.

  When LGBT people say that this is a civil rights issue, they are referring to matters like the fact that they cannot make medical decisions for their partners in an emergency. Instead, the hospitals are usually forced by state laws to go to the families who may be estranged from them for decades, who are often hostile to them, and totally ignore their wishes for the treatment of their partners. If that hostile family wishes to exclude them from the hospital room, they may legally do so in nearly all cases. It is even not uncommon for hostile families to make decisions based on their hostility — with results actually intended to be inimical to the interests of the patient! One couple  uses the following line in the “sig” lines on their email: “…partners and lovers for 40 years, yet still strangers before the law.” Is this fair?

  If their partners are arrested, they can be compelled to testify against them or provide evidence against them, which legally married couples are not forced to do. Is this fair?

  In most cases, even carefully drafted wills and durable powers of attorney have proven to not be enough if a family wishes to challenge a will, overturn a custody decision, or exclude them from a funeral or deny them the right to visit a partner’s grave. As survivors, they can even seize a real estate property that they may have been buying together for years, quickly sell it at a huge loss and stick them with the remaining debt on a property they no longer own. When these are presented to a homophobic probate judge, he will usually find some pretext to overturn them. Is this fair?

  These aren’t just theoretical issues, either; they happen with surprising frequency. Almost any older gay couple can tell you horror stories of friends who have been victimized in such ways.

  These are all civil rights issues that have nothing whatever to do with the ecclesiastical origins of marriage; they are matters that have become enshrined in state laws over the years in many ways that exclude LGBT from the rights that legally married couples enjoy and consider their constitutional right. This is why it is very much a civil rights issue; it has nothing to do with who performs the ceremony or whether an announcement is accepted for publication in the local paper. It is not a matter of “special rights” to ask for the same rights that other couples enjoy by law, even by constitutional mandate.
  
     

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  • 10:19 am
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