In Washington, D.C., where I live, a recent report by the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance shows that there are 212 rights and responsibilities associated with marriage under District of Columbia law. Some of these could be conferred upon gay families through domestic partnerships or civil unions, assuming that the U.S. Congress does not stomp on any effort by the District's elected officials to do so. On the other hand, federal law, according to a recently updated report from the General Accounting Office, has 1,138 benefits, rights and privileges contingent on marital status. None of those may be gained through domestic partnerships or civil unions. Anything short of full marriage will leave gay families separate and unequal.

There is an unintended consequence as well. The various legal alternatives to civil marriage that are springing up across the country do indeed create a "marriage lite" that competes with marriage. Many such alternatives are open to straight couples as well as gays. As a result, some couples will inevitably accept fewer protections in exchange for fewer responsibilities. William Eskridge writes: "[P]eople who seriously value long-term, mutually committed relationships as the best situs of human flourishing and childrearing ought to be concerned that these new institutions make it easier for couples to enjoy many state benefits without as much state-supported obligation. These laws not only make marriage less special, but they lessen the difficulty of divorce. That should trouble the religious traditionalist and the gay marriage proponent alike. Thus, if traditionalists truly want to preserve marriage -- not just homophobia -- it's time for them to join forces with the gay-marriage activists in a common cause."

Once more into the breach
Few can remember the nomination acceptance speech given by President George H.W. Bush at the 1992 Republican National Convention. Few can forget the speech given by his defeated rival, Patrick J. Buchanan, from the same podium. Many factors contributed to Bush 41's defeat that year, but one factor was the angry, fanatical face that Buchanan had put on the Republican Party, in stark contrast to the president's more moderate image and rhetoric.

Buchanan's targets were many: Abortionists, women in combat, environmentalists, activist judges, and opponents of public funding for religious schools. As he had done so often as a columnist, however, he reserved particular scorn for gays. "Yes, we disagreed with President Bush, but we stand with him ... against the amoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing in law as married men and women ... There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself."

The choice it makes on whether and how to fight that culture war is also critical to the kind of party the GOP will be. After doing his damage in 1992, Pat Buchanan ended up bolting the party some years later and mounting a third-party candidacy. The fundamentalist Christian right -- the constituency of Judge Roy Moore and other apocalyptic preachers -- will never be satisfied short of remaking the entire country in their own theocratic image, which is impossible in a pluralistic Western democracy. Yet continuing to let itself be held hostage to these fanatics will be ruinous to the party's long-term mainstream appeal.

Some of the most energetic Republican activists in recent years have been the Log Cabin Republicans, whose viability as the nation's largest organization of gay and lesbian Republicans would be called into question by passage of FMA. In a press statement following the president's announcement on Feb. 24, Log Cabin called the proposed amendment "a declaration of war on gay and lesbian families" and vowed an all-out fight against it.

There is nothing conservative about demonizing a group of honest, hard-working American taxpayers and making them strangers in their own land.

To those who persist in denying the reality and legitimacy of gay people's lives, our sexual orientation is a psychological condition, a pathology, a sin, a crime, a behavior, a choice -- anything but a constitutive part of who we are, the same as with heterosexuality. From this perspective, our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not God-given, as it is for everyone else, but instead belongs in the hands of doctors, ministers and prosecutors. The fact that we are still standing after such an onslaught is a tribute to our strength, our American grit and our determination to be full citizens.

On Feb. 12, 2004, two days before their 51st anniversary, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were the first same-sex couple granted a marriage license by the San Francisco county clerk. Lyon and Martin are pioneers of the gay rights movement, and those of us for whom they began paving the way five decades ago were electrified by the image of this venerable couple, 79 and 83 years old, respectively, officially sealing their union at last. For them and the thousands of couples who followed them, there is no going back. A court may invalidate the licenses, but a powerful idea has been given life that can never be taken back.

This is our Rosa Parks moment: an act of civil disobedience that dramatically exposes an injustice. The gay couples going to San Francisco City Hall, and their counterparts and supporters across the country, follow in the footsteps of the participants in the Montgomery bus boycott. They are helping our nation, in the words of Dr. King, to live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. It would be most unwise, and a stark departure from its origins, for the party of Lincoln to stake its future on holding back that tide.

Recent Stories