A Marriage of Convience
In his blog, Andrew Sullivan talks about the Massachusetts amendment. The Log Cabin apologist shows through at times: "Of course, this process in Massachusetts is not, in many ways, a bad thing. It really has initiated an extraordinary public debate that has enriched many of us." He segues from here into the more logical argument that Massachusetts is an example of State's Rights at work, and there's no need for a federally imposed solution. His best point is an analysis of the possible long-term impact of the amendment, as written:There's no possible reason to give gay couples something that walks, talks and squawks like a marriage but is called something else - except to maintain a purely semantic distinction, whose purpose is to reaffirm the inferiority of homosexual couples. Since many of these couples will get married in a religious ceremony as well, they may well describe themselves simply as married anyway. In time, common parlance will simply refer to all of the above as married. The only real difference may be that a civil union will be less transportable to other states. But that will also surely change, as some states will agree to recognize such civil unions, just as New York state has said it will agree to recognize Massachusetts' civil marriages.That's a very rosy picture. And it seems reasonable.
But what Sullivan and so many others seem to be losing track of in this sound bite farcas is the timeline involved here. The Presidential election may be in November, but the Massachusetts Amendment has to be approved by their legislature again in 2005 and has to pass as a referendum in 2006; the San Fransisco case will take at least two years to wind its way through to the California Surpreme Court and longer than that if the US Supremes agree to hear it.
All that time does two things. First, it gives a lot of gay couples the chance to marry in Boston (and the unimportant areas of the Commonwealth). It is harder to take someone's marriage away than it is to prevent them from getting married in the first place. Especially with the children that will be involved by that time.
Second, it gives people time to get used to the idea. We may be in for a vicious bloodbath of base, emotionally manipulative attacks this year, but it's hard to keep that up. And after the years it takes an Amendment to get to ballots (or the states, if the federal amendment passes Congress) people will have realized how, in the end, who marries who doesn't matter.
Not even a little.
