If Gays Can Marry, I Just Might Cancel My Wedding: Ann Woolner

Bloomberg.com: Opinion

If Gays Can Marry, I Just Might Cancel My Wedding: Ann Woolner

Commentary by Ann Woolner



March 7 (Bloomberg) -- As a heterosexual engaged to be married, I listened closely this week as California lawyers argued over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to wed.

What happens to me if a court as powerful as the California Supreme Court says that would be just fine?

``It would undermine opposite-sex marriage,'' Mathew Staver, a lawyer for Campaign for California Families, told the justices.

Well, that's just great. I'm old enough to be a mother of a bride, and just as I'm about to get a marriage license for the first -- and only -- time in my life, its status is poised to plunge.

So, should I call off the engagement?

I mean, how special can marriage licenses be if courts let homosexuals have them?

Famous heteros have already battered the institution. Zsa Zsa Gabor pledged lifelong partnership nine times, and Britney Spears did so for a marriage annulled two days later.

Some folks among the huddled masses longing to breathe free snag phony marriages to get U.S. citizenship. In Las Vegas, you can book a Graveyard Wedding featuring black roses, haunting music and ``gruesome video.''

One chapel alone offers nine kinds of Elvis-themed weddings.

Remind me again, please, why gay people get blamed for trashing traditional marriage.

I'm wondering how Elizabeth Taylor's eight marriages each won a government stamp of approval denied the 55-year partnership between the two women, both in their 80s, who are lead plaintiffs in the California case.

Longer Commitment

Their commitment has already lasted longer than most marriages. Given my age and that of my groom's, surely death will do us part, too, long before 55 years pass.

So how did government get involved in regulating this most- intimate aspect of American life? It's all about protecting babies, according to lawyers for religious conservatives defending the state's same-sex marriage ban.

``This court as early as 1850 was talking about the primary purpose of marriage being procreation and the raising of the children of the marriage,'' said Glen Lavy, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund.

Every adult knows it takes a man and a woman, or parts thereof, to make a baby. It also takes two bodies physically able to accomplish the job.

Having Children

``Should we have marriage laws that say you can't marry unless you are prepared to have children or are capable of having children,'' Justice Carol Corrigan of the California Supreme Court asked.

(Hello, pastry chef? Hold that wedding cake.)

But that can't be right. If child-rearing were the most- important aspect of marriage, then my sure-to-be childless relationship wouldn't qualify, heterosexuality notwithstanding. Plaintiff Karen Shain's lesbian union would qualify as marriage, on the other hand, because she has raised a child with her partner.

The law doesn't read that way. If the state were indeed concerned about children, it would give the children of gay couples the stability conveyed by a stamp of legitimacy on their parents' unions.

``The name `marriage' matters,'' argued Therese Stewart, a lawyer for the city of San Francisco, which supports same-sex unions. ``It communicates something everyone can understand. It communicates loyalty and intimacy and commitment.''

Domestic Partnership

She didn't buy the state's argument that California's domestic partnership law puts gay couples on equal footing with straight, married couples.

Perhaps what is needed is an upgrade in status for domestic partnership so that it reaches equality with the declining prestige of marriage.

Maybe I can help by calling off the marriage and becoming domestically partnered instead, thus elevating the status of those poor souls who fell in love with someone of their own sex.

If more heterosexuals did that, wouldn't the standing of all domestic partners rise?

(Hello, honey. About that marriage license?)

Or here's another idea. Let religions carry the burden of deciding who can marry whom. Some rabbis won't marry Jew to Christian. Catholic and Episcopalian priests, in the main, say no to the previously married, or at least make it very difficult to try again.

Proper Role

This is a proper role for religion, which you can take or leave. But the state has no business setting those boundaries. This is why even the most-conservative states in the buckle of the Bible belt grant marriage to interfaith couples, even to divorced men and women.

In the same way, the state has no business denying marriage to same-sex couples, no matter how committed, while granting it to hetero couples, even if they are taking a boozy break from the Reno slot machines.

Let religion marry people in whatever manner honors the faith. Let atheists and anyone else write their own vows, design their own ceremonies and deny marriage to whomever they wish.

The state's only role is granting legal status to couples, making sure that both parties are of age and otherwise unmarried. Call it a civil union or a domestic partnership. But grant it to interfaith couples, the previously married, to same- sex couples, just as it is granted to first-timers of the opposite sex and same religion. Or no religion.

In the meantime, I'll marry a man that some religions say I shouldn't, fully licensed by the state.

When I do, I will wish that those now barred from marrying the partners they love will be allowed one day to honor matrimony by joining it.

(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 7, 2008 00:07 EST