Author: Anthony Labarga
The only way for our country to survive the challenges of both today and the future is for it to do what democratic society presupposes: to make all people equal in the eyes of the law. Only when we all have the same rights can our true potential manifest itself, and only then can we ascend the staircase to a culture of real freedom. When it comes to the tender matter of “popping the question,” the United States faces a particularly egregious censure of the rights of a certain group.
The question of marriage brings with it an unnecessary set of power struggles, one between between partners and the other between partners and the state. In particular, when our country assumes the power to regulate one of the most fundamental of an individual’s rights—the right to marry whom one loves—the United States has crossed into the territory of illegitimacy. It was upon the foundation of individual rights that our country came into being in the first place and thus, when the apparatus of the state decides that gay and lesbian couples may not marry like heterosexual couples can that very foundation is threatened.
Many are deceived by what has become a rather popular position of equivocation on the issue of homosexuality in general but disapproval of marriage between people of the same sex. “Being gay is fine,” we often hear. “They just shouldn’t be allowed to marry one another.” The problem, however, remains the same, differential treatment based on sexual orientation. People who adopt this position often offer up a consolation prize, a kind of pseudo-marriage they call a domestic partnership, which ultimately falls short on the legal benefits that come from a traditional marriage—all 1,138 of them outlined in the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.
Those concerned with equality under the law are often forced to see domestic partnerships as a compromise which promises happiness and security, where in fact domestic partnerships and their cousin, civil unions, offer a different set of legal rights and obligations than state-sanctioned marriage. Domestic partnerships are not federally recognized, and the rights afforded by such partnerships vary greatly from state to state due to their origin in state and local jurisdictions.
By denying same-sex couples the right to a federally-recognized marriage, society and the state are telling them that their relationship is not “real.” A heterosexual relationship, the law suggests, has the potential to become the most serious commitment of all, marriage. When the state dictates who can and cannot get married, it says that same-sex relationships don’t have this potential.
Regulations that discriminate against same-sex couples are regulations against us all, since they tell us who we can and cannot love. Understand that if the government is allowed to legislate in this insidious style, there is nothing stopping it from making illegal those relationships with racial, age or social differences.
In the not-so-distant past, interracial marriage was unthinkable, owing both to legal and cultural obstacles. It was only in 1948 that marriage between races became legal after the California Supreme Court decision in “Perez v. Sharp.” That California, or any state for that matter, would go back on that decision would seem inconceivable. Yet that very idea is afoot with all but six states banning same-sex marriage.
The most fundamental freedom of all is one’s right to be with whom one chooses. It is central to one’s happiness and fulfillment as a person. Laws outlawing the right of gay people to marry undermine both the legal equality of our society and a critical natural right: to have feelings as one so pleases and to behave across the entire possible spectrum of actions to express those feelings. No modern sensibility would tolerate anti-miscegenation laws; rules banning same-sex marriage should be considered much the same thing. Our society, founded upon equal opportunity and civil rights, has been coming closer and closer to those ideas as time has passed. It would be a travesty to leave them behind on such a fundamental issue of love.
Anthony Labarga is a junior economics and mathematics double major. He can be reached at labarga@oxy.edu.
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