Civil Unions For Everyone
Where ever there is an agenda, we must ask what the personal motivation is behind that agenda. If the motivation is to do harm to people – particular individuals, or in general – then it is a poor and morally bankrupt agenda. As a “straight” person who is non-religious, and therefore has no real personal stake in gay rights, I can be objective in looking at the marriage debate. Let’s look at the two sides and what they have to gain or lose in arguing their point of view.
Those who advocate for gay marriage – and this includes many straight people – simply want same-sex couples to have the same social and economic benefits afforded opposite-sex couples. To name a few things, they want gay couples to be able to share benefits, and to be able to adopt children. The adoption right seems to me to be even more important to gay couples than to straight couples, given that gay couples cannot conceive children on their own. So there is little wonder that they would argue passionately for that right.
On the other hand, those who are against gay marriage have nothing to gain where gay marriage is prohibited. They might argue that they have something to lose – citing perhaps some deterioration of family values – but this view is contingent on prejudice and a sheer misunderstanding of the family dynamic in gay relationships. That is to say, they wrongfully assume that being gay is some immoral choice, rather than merely one very natural possibility for human relationships. For them, marriage represents something more ideological than practical; they speak of the “sanctity” of marriage – its purported “meaning” – rather than the practically of marriage, as in all of its legal implications.
So going back to judging an agenda by the motivations behind it, we have one agenda that wishes to allow people freedoms that only affect the people themselves, making their lives easier and/or richer. The opposing agenda aims to cause actual harm to the same group of people for no conceivable benefit. To any justice-minded person, there can be no question of which side they must take. And no, I am not just saying that to infer that only those who support gay marriage are justice-minded, but for those who don’t and are, there must be some crisis of consciousness.
Anyway, with all that said, and my position on the matter clearly established, I would like to contribute a new thought to the debate. Perhaps the struggle for gay rights is misdirected in fighting for marriage. So-called “civil unions” may actually be a better alternative, if only the rights granted under such unions were equal to those granted by marriage. Since gay couples are fighting for more practical gains, perhaps they should concede to the zealots and the bigots their ideologically “sacred” institution.
That is not my new thought, however. I recognize that even were civil unions and marriages to be the same in practical terms, the ideological separation would still strongly represent the “us versus them” mentality at the center of the debate which must be eliminated. So my new thought is that civil unions should be an alternative to marriage for all people, regardless of their sexual orientation. Because marriage is one of those weird gray areas where the separation of church and state is not so clear, for those of us who are avowedly non-religious, a civil union may be a more desirable representation of our bond with a significant other.
One idea would be to expand the definition of civil unions to subsume all marriages. In this way, the so-called “sanctity” of marriage could be “preserved” and at the same time remove “sanctity” as cause for the denial of the rights of same-sex couples.
It is mostly a given that anti-gay marriage ideologues act out of some desire to punish same-sex couples for what is perceived to be an immoral choice, in spite of their framing it within the idea of protecting marriage as an institution. Were they to fight against this new definition of civil unions, they would expose their motivation as being one of blatant prejudice and antagonism. Such overt discrimination is not only intolerable but also prohibited by law, not to mention that it undermines the “good will” clauses written into every major religion.
Granting civil unions to everyone would restore the Constitutional mandate of church and state separation. It would also give opposite-sex couples a personal stake in the rights bestowed through those unions and allow people of every stripe to act with solidarity for the cause of justice.
As for those who want to maintain marriage as only between a man and a woman – they could keep it, along with what it says about their character. Meanwhile, those of us who care about human rights, justice, and forming strong relationships – more than preserving the stagnancy of some ancient institution – we would be able to choose something better.
Tags: Bigotry, Civil Union, Courts, Gay, Gay Marriage, Human Rights, Justice, Law, Marriage, Proposition 8, Straight
The combination of this post and your other post is interesting for me because I, as a queer, absolutely agree with this post and, as a queer who also promotes this as the political strategy for queers, don't wish I could have the marriage that straights take for granted. As a straight person, though, I think you are right in asserting a non-reactionary vision while simultaneously acknowledging the straight privilege in adopting that vision – yet, maybe a bit ironically, it is the queer organizations with the least privilege/resources that are most critical of marriage.
I strongly believe that many broader movements, including the "lgbtq movement," need to center themselves around a trickle-up model of justice rather than a trickle down one. The pumping of all this money into marriage is obscene to me, for many of the reasons listed on the Beyond Marriage document on the QEJ site. I believe it's obscene too, especially because marriage rhetoric always cites material "benefits" to the marriage contract that would a) hardly be secured for all queer individuals if people got gay marriage – like, ya know, how you need to OWN property in order to transfer it, to HAVE health insurance in order to share it with a partner and b) Fighting for civil unions and just getting rid of the word marriage would actually work strategically much more swiftly than fighting for that word would!!! Which would, as you suggest, move towards a direction of relegating marriage to the religious institution that it is for ALL people, which would have all sorts of other implications. So, in short: the gay marriage struggle is one of privilege in that not only are the benefits it cites mostly middle class and dependent on couple status, but it refuses to engage in a struggle that would actually bring about those benefits that they say are so critical!
Well, if I started on how the marriage movement is one of privilege I could take all day…..don't even let me get started on hate crimes! The fact is, when the mainstream lgbt movement gets wind of non-middle-class-white-lesbiangay issues they deem those individuals to have "intersectional" issues and not specifically "gay" issues that specifically "gay" organizations should center on. However, these issues they call specifically "gay" ARE intersectional, they mean "gay and white and middle class."
Oh no no, you're going to have to talk about hate crimes, because I don't know what you're referring to. Maybe by e-mail though.
Ugh fine, inspire me to procrastinate more, haha. What's your e-mail? I've looked around the blog and can't find it.