Joe Bell

America is a confused nation. The simplest questions that were once considered answered are today debated with a seriousness that would rival Moses upon his return from the mountain. There is even a sense of bewilderment over a question that was decided thousands of years ago: What is marriage?

On July 8, a federal judge in Boston struck down the 1996 federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and woman. Judge Joseph Tauro said the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton, violates the rights of same sex couples as well as the federal tradition that permits states to establish their own marriage laws. Same sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts in 2004.

This decision illustrates a misunderstanding of the issue on at least two points. First, marriage should not be a state issue – it belongs in the federal arena. Second, Tauro and those who support gay marriage approach the topic from a civil rights perspective even though it is not a civil rights issue.

Marriage is the fundamental component of any social infrastructure. Therefore it must be defined at the national level. Marriage is not like a speed limit on a state highway. There are no social ramifications if a driver must slow down from 65 miles per hour in one state to 60 miles per hour when crossing into an adjacent state. But marriage cannot mean one thing in Michigan and another in Maine. To ensure social stability marriage must be uniform across the nation. It is not a state issue.

In Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (2003), which declared same sex marriage to be Massachusetts policy, the Massachusetts Supreme Court said marriage is “an evolving paradigm.” The phrase is gibberish; the court is wrong. Marriage is society’s underpinning and due to liberal judicial activism it is now necessary and appropriate that marriage be defined and defended by a constitutional amendment. It is regrettable that circumstances have brought America to this juncture, but those who would legislate through the courts and judges that are more interested in unearthing “evolving paradigms” than respecting the law have forced the situation.

In his dissent in Goodridge, Justice Francis Spina offered clarity by writing, “What is at stake in this case is not the unequal treatment of individuals or whether rights have been impermissibly burdened… The power to regulate marriage lies with the legislature, not with the judiciary.”

The attempt to link the 1960s civil rights movement with homosexual marriage fails because gender is not related to skin color and skin color is not related to conduct. Shelby Steele, from the Hoover Institution, has pointed out that once proponents of same sex marriage drape their case in the morality of civil rights they can avoid any discussion of homosexuality, marriage or social stability. Once homosexual marriage becomes a civil rights issue the only things that matter are justice and fairness. It would be wrong to rewrite America’s civil rights history to bolster the case for gay marriage. As Steele has pointed out, same sex marriage “is not a struggle for freedom.”

Gays and lesbians already have the same right to marry that heterosexuals have, that is, to marry someone of the opposite sex. A right that individuals decline is not the same as a right denied. The issue is not whether homosexuals are being deprived of their civil rights but whether society will enact a new right that will allow men to marry men and women to marry women.

To fortify their civil rights case homosexual marriage advocates have engaged in the most extreme rhetoric imaginable. In a February 29, 2004 column in the New York Times, Frank Rich wrote that same sex marriage opponents are “donning the roles played by Lester Maddox and George Wallace in the civil rights era…”

Homosexual marriage advocates are not like Rosa Parks or the North Carolina college students who went to a Woolworth lunch counter to order something to eat. Rosa Parks wanted nothing more than a seat on a bus, which any white passenger was entitled to have, and the students wanted nothing more than lunch, something any white patron was entitled to provided he had the money to pay the bill.

Parks was not asking the bus company to provide something special for her, such as a private vehicle, and the college students were not asking for free food. None of these individuals were demanding new rights or special treatment. They were demanding equal treatment, which they should have been enjoying all along.

To further align themselves with the civil rights movement, gay marriage supporters have compared their demands with those who fought against laws that banned interracial marriages. However, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down America’s interracial bans in 1967, in Loving v. Virginia, it did not redefine marriage. Instead the Court confirmed the importance of marriage by declaring any man and any woman had the right to marry. Marriage is an institution that brings the two genders together; not one that keeps the races separate.

Americans appear incapable of discussing rights in a conscientious, rational way. Conversations about rights too often focus on the unending list of human wants and demands and not about orderly freedom and the Constitution’s requirement to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

Marriage has fallen victim to the rights rebellion. The only sensible solution to the “what is marriage” controversy is to enact a constitutional amendment. H.J. Res. 56 would accomplish that goal by declaring: “Marriage in the United States shall consist of the union of a man and a woman.”

That such a concept has become controversial says a great deal about how far America has traveled from its core truths and traditions.

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