A little over one year ago, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial court made history with its 2004 decision in Goodridge, generating a new option for gay couples: marriage. We all know the controversy (and state constitutional amendments) these changes have wrought. Much of the focus has been on same-sex couples and their choices: will they travel to marry? Will they seek to transport their marriages across state lines and impose them on unwilling home states?
Less noted has been the new and difficult choice presented to heterosexual couples: Now that it is possible to marry in a jurisdiction that does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, is it moral for heterosexuals to marry in discriminating states?
To understand this dilemma, imagine you were living in Virginia when the state still prohibited interracial marriage. Even if you wanted to marry someone of the same race, wouldn’t you consider traveling to a neighboring state that did not discriminate?
From now on, every heterosexual couple that wants to marry must face the same question. After all, they can marry in Massachusetts knowing their new status will be fully recognized at home. And Massachusetts will not invoke its hateful 1913 “reverse evasion statute” to turn away heterosexual couples, as it has some out-of-state same-sex couples.
Some will protest that planning a wedding is tough enough; requiring long distance planning is unrealistic. But for many couples, Massachusetts is only a short drive away. What if a couple lives across the road from Massachusetts? Or ten miles away? At some point, the distance becomes small enough that people who care about equality should be embarrassed not to make the journey.
Moreover, the truth is that for decades, couples have taken their weddings on the road, marrying in, say, Hawaii for scenery or Las Vegas for kitsch. Now they can travel for a different value: equality. It helps that Cape Cod, the Berkshires, and Boston’s historic neighborhoods offer lovely venues for weddings and receptions. Mitt Romney said he did not want Massachusetts to become the Las Vegas of “gay marriages.” But legalizing same-sex marriages could also make Massachusetts the Las Vegas of straight ally marriages – as “hetero holdouts” travel to the Commonwealth to avoid marrying in a discriminatory jurisdiction.
The choices created by Massachusetts marriage equality do not end with travel plans. Even couples who marry at home in discriminating states have some decisions to make. Consider the wedding invitation itself. Even though most LGBT people would never think of raising the issue with their marrying heterosexual friends, they could quite reasonably harbor feelings of disquiet and pain that they are excluded from the very institution they are asked to celebrate. One might think that marriage rights for same-sex couples in some jurisdictions would reduce such feelings of pain and resentment. But a couple’s choice to marry in a discriminatory state even as non-discriminatory options become more readily available may exacerbate negative feelings.
Perhaps a personal note could accompany invitations to gay and lesbian friends. A couple could apologize for marrying in a state or church where their friends cannot. An explanation, such as concern for a sick parent who cannot travel to Massachusetts, might also help.
Couples make all sorts of choices about their ceremony. They could include a public statement of support – a prayer or blessing, for example — specifically acknowledging the love and commitment of gay and lesbian couples who cannot marry.
Heterosexuals who marry might devote some combination of time and money to work for change. As newlyweds, they could spend their honeymoon in Massachusetts and reward the state that has done the most to promote marriage equality. In lieu of gifts, couples might ask wedding guests to contribute to freedomtomarry.org or Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the organization that won the Massachusetts case (and continues to fight for marriage equality). Even if the bride and groom don’t request it, wedding guests could donate on their own initiative, contributing in the couple’s honor. Guests can still buy a toaster or table cloth, but it makes sense to buy a slightly smaller gift and redistribute part of the money in the interest of people who are unfairly prohibited from marrying.
Even clergy people have decisions to make. For instance, in 2003 about a dozen clergy from Connecticut and Massachusetts refused to sign marriage licenses for heterosexual couples until unions between same-sex couples are legally recognized. Their motive was not to renounce the tainted benefits of discrimination, but to avoid facilitating the discrimination itself. There are always two ways to end disparate treatment; in a world where same-sex couples can’t marry, refusing to legally marry everyone does the trick.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts’ innovation gives all of us some choices. Supporters of gay rights, regardless of sexual orientation, may want to reward the state for its progressive stance. Instead of the negativism of boycotts, a grassroots campaign should declare a marriage “buycott.” Summer 2005 looks like a great time to visit Massachusetts.
A single state has provided a truly global public good. Massachusetts is offering the right to marry without regard to sexual orientation. The rest us of us are now challenged to construct an appropriate response.
The real solution is to separate the state from religion entirely. Stop making every community’s decision to put up a monument into a federal case, and at the same time stop allowing domestic partnerships to be dictated by one groups misguided sense of “morality.”
And before anyone steps in to say “what about” I’ll go ahead and out it: yes, I mean getting rid of the ridiculous laws against polygamy as well. Churches shold not be required to embrace every union that goes against their beliefs, but government’s job is to serve all its citizens. Getting a marriage license should have as much to do with the church as getting a driver’s license.
So… it’s taken me a few posts to realize the point that these posts are sort of a Machiavellian “what tactics work best” type of dialogue.
The short of it seems to be that you can make just about every social act a gay rights issue. This seems to be a more straightforward way of changing people’s minds. If you effectively say to all of your wedding guests, “this issue is so important to me that I’m willing to incorporate it into something as important as my wedding,” that would send a strong message to the couple’s guests and would go a long way toward showing their sincerity. This sounds very effective, and I’d have a lot of respect for a couple that chose to do this.
Perhaps the couple could have the legal marriage take place in Mass., with a very minimal cerimony involving only the actual solemnization of the license, and then have a full (but not legally binding) ceremony in their home state.
Very interesting.
Imagine too, when you invite diverse family backgrounds to the wedding and explain why you are driving/flying X kilometers (“miles” in america I suppose) away instead of gathering locally. It’s quite a statement to your social circle.
Makes me want to have a re-wedding with my current spouse. 🙂
Interesting idea. Thank you.
I was thinking about how archaic some of the united states is in regards to same-sex marriage. And then I get things into perspective — forget legalizing marriage… as far as I know, if I have homosexual sex where I live I can face a prison term of up to 5 years. As well, I may be fined up to several hundred US dollars. This is probably not completely accurate as I am an expatriate – it’s more likely that I would be heavily “fined” and then extradited. But still, things are much worse elsewhere compared to the united states.
So what then is the question for those who do not agree with you that homosexual marriage is moral? Should they refuse to get married in states where homeosexual marriage is legal? I think you are supporting the notion that making homosexual marriage legal is somehow connected in a way that can help or harm heterosexual marriage. This seems to me a mistake.
I think Ian Ayres is an evil man. I hope he burns in Hell for his blasphemy.
Even if you wanted to marry someone of the same race, wouldn’t you consider traveling to a neighboring state that did not discriminate?
No, I wouldn’t. That would be a silly, pointless gesture, with no significant effect on anything that mattered.
You seem to be claiming that by not travelling out-of-state to get married (when my home state was willing to do it locally), I’d be implicitly offering some kind of support for my home state’s policies. I don’t think that is the case; and even if there were some implicit statement involved, it would be so attenuated as to be practically worthless. The home state’s marriage license department doesn’t keep a statistic of “number of people who were eligible to marry here but went somewhere else because our discriminatory policies (not against them) made that a moral imperetive”. They would have no way of knowing that number even if they cared about it. Things might be different if marriage licenses were a significant source of revenue for states – but they aren’t.
The morally right thing to do would be get married locally and use your *vote*, and other normal resources of democratic change possibly backed up by the money you’d otherwise have been willing to spend on the meaningless travel, to work on changing the home state’s policy – or, if the home state’s policy is so deeply immoral as to make that course of action intolerable (I don’t think restrictions on other people getting married would fall into that category for me, though combined with other discrimination they might), then leave permanently.
That said: I might well consider not getting married *at all*, if I thought that the institution had been turned into something I didn’t want to be part of…
*sigh* I’ve noticed that Brown and Ayres don’t seem to be commenting much, and I’m sorry to think that it might be because of something I said which was construed to mean something like the hatefulness posted by Jonathan Barker. Unfortunately, people like me, in an act of… bad generalization?… are mistaken for people like him. Once again, sorry to all if I offended. You can go back and read the “Gay like me” thread if you want a further clarification, which might offend you… Sorry…
Mr. Harker: I think you’ll notice that whichever God you chose to worship doesn’t go around condemning people to “burn in Hell” a whole lot. You might want to think about that before you do…
The “marry in Massachusetts and return home” argument is very weak. That gays and lesbians are prohibited from having a marriage ceremony in 49 states is the least of the discrimination. What really matters is the wholesale exclusion from hundreds of governmental benefits available under state and federal law to heterosexual couples after the ceremony is over. Has Ayers given up all the benefits he and his wife receive under CT and federal law? If not, whatever his protests, he is still riding at the front of the segregared bus.
For the life of me, I can’t understand all of the controversy surrounding this issue (gay marriage). Afterall, marriage is a religious ceremony. It’s not a govenmental entitlement. Since it is a religious ceremony, let the church decide. Federal and State legislatures should avoid this issue, as it breaches the separation of church and state.
Such legislation would be akin to legislating baptism over sprinkling, or circumcision, or who was qualified to preach. These are all religious rites which do not belong in legislation.
There are both religious and civil (meaning government) marriage. Both are often called ‘marriage’ causing some confusion. Religious marriage is not a government institution, and it the sole provence of each religion. Civil marriage is a government institution and confers many rights (some 1400 specifically), and should not have anything to do with religion. So let’s call all government marriages “‘civil unions’ and only call people married if their union involved a religious ceremony.
BTW government marriages were first created in Europe during the reins of the Royal families as a way to control property and inheritances….had nothing to do with religion or love for that matter, but it was a legal contract.
Marriage itself is a fraud. In theory it’s also a lifelong commitment. But in reality it’s just a bad proprty agreement that gives everything you own to two law firms if the relationship fails. Be careful what you ask for because you might get it.
Even though we had a ceremony in CT, my wife & I were legally married in MA for precisely this reason. How could we join a club that excluded members of our own families?