Marriage equality bill picks up steam at Legislature

If the intent of the act is to create gender neutral laws then I would recommend calling it the Gender Neutral Law Act. It is Rovian to call it the Marriage and Family Protection Act. It makes it sound like something it is not. It is better to be honest about it.

I would also question the wisdom of calling secular unions of same sex couples “Marriage”. Those who understand marriage as a church sacrament will often recoil from any effort to extend the sacrament of marriage to include same sex unions. On the other hand, they may not object to extending the benefits of marriage to same sex unions which are described by some less religiously charged word. If you want to poke a sharp stick in the eye of religious conservatives, call it marriage. If you want to achieve the benefits of marriage for same sex unions, call it something else.

I wish you success with this effort.

Dear Ron,

The reason it was titled as such was because it does not only deal with same-sex marriage. Yes, it incorporates that as perhaps its biggest issue. But that isn’t the only issue at hand.

By allowing same-sex couples to marry, it extends benefits which are granted to the families of those who are married, thus “protecting” them.

I do not mean to pick a fight with you, so please do not take it like that. I’d suggest reading the text of the bill itself so you may see for yourself all that it entails.

As far as whether or not it is called marriage, I think it is an erroneous idea to change the name. Sure, it may offend conservative religious and secular citizens, but that’s their problem. That’s an issue they need to deal with.

Should we call every interracial marriage an “interracial union” just because it offends racists? If you don’t think so, then I don’t see why we need to call them anything other than what they are: same-sex marriages.

On the flipside, I hope you understand that this bill does not support any government action forcing a religious institution to solemnize/bless a marriage it does not agree with. It does, however, enable those religious institutions which do believe that same-sex marriages are a beautiful thing to be able to freely solemnize/bless those marriages.

Sincerely,
Justin

Justin,
Thank you for your respectful comments. The dilemma here is that we have taken what was once a sacrament of the church and institutionalized it as a civil contract. As long as the states only conducted “marriages” between heterosexuals, the religious quarter had no problem with it. As we have become more cognizant of human rights and have realized that discrimination based on sexual orientation is wrong we moved to end discrimination against homosexuals (please forgive me if I am not using the most current politically correct descriptor) by extending the contract of civil marriage to them so that they could enjoy the same rights as any other couple. Because the common term “marriage” used by the state to describe such a union is the same term that the churches use to describe a sacrament, there has been this huge backlash.
That is unfortunate because, most conservatives I know understand the desire to extend the same civil benefits to these unions but they are hopelessly hung up on the term marriage being attached to it.
I really don’t think that most younger people care about this. Many older or very religiously oriented people do however. From a practical standpoint, what same sex couples probably want is the rights they deserve. Perhaps I am wrong on this and what they really want is the moral victory. If that is the case, they may have to wait a while as society matures.
We passed civil rights legislation in the 60′s that didn’t reach fruition until 2008. My guess is that if we pass the law to eliminate gender discrimination and civil unions are allowed, then public sentiment, and even religious sensibilities, will change over time.
I offer this advice with the best of intentions. I am well aware of the inequities in our laws that continue to plague many minority groups. I wish none of it were there and I view all of this discrimination not as a special interest issue but as a fundamental human rights issue. If we could cure it all with one single law or one single act of national reconciliation, that would be good. Short of that, we will need to continue to chip away at it incrementally.
Love comes from the heart. It can never be mandated by any other means. Sooner or later we will come to realize this. My only advice here is to wisely seek the legal victory now and trust that the moral victory will come later.

First of all, the oldest civil marriages we have record of are from court records written in cuniform on clay tablets from ancient Sumeria nearly 4,000 years ago and it is clear from those records that issues related to “same” and “opposite” sex couples and their families were handled by the courts under the same law. As it says in Ezekiel, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

Crossculturally and transhistorically there is significant evidence that in cultures where couple formation is a basis for household and family formation that “same” and “opposite” sex couples have often been treated the same by law and custom.

Civil marriages in the U.S. are a completely seperate entity from religious or sacramental marriage. Some heterosexual couples choose to only have a religious/sacramental marriage and as they never go to the county clerk to obtain a marriage license they are not “married” in the eyes of the state. This is true whether the religious sacramental body is a church, synagogue, temple, mosque, coven, friends meeting house, tribal religious ceremony, etc.

Conversely, same sex couples already have the right to marry religiously or sacramentally in the eyes of those religions or reliious body which choose to do so just as opposite sex couples have the right to marry religiously or sacramentally in the eyes of any religion or religious body which chooses to celebrate their union. Alabama actually tried to make it illegal for licensed clergy to perform ceremonies celebrating the relationship between two people of the same sex but it was determined to be unconstitutional before it even passed through the legislature under the freedom of religion clause of the constitution.

Civil marriage deals with civil rights. 515 under Minnesota state law and 1138 under federal law at last precise counting though it is now estimated to include 1340+ rights under federal law. Where civil unions or domestic partnerships or any other name has been used and those structures challenged in state courts as functionally and effectively unequal the courts have agreed ordering equal marriage access as supposedly “seperate but equal” does not meet the standards of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law.

So, assuming we agree that same sex couples and their families should be entitled to the same rights, obligations and protections afforded to opposite sex couples and their families, the only effectively constitutional way to do this is to end discrimination on the basis of sex in marriage and render marriage laws gender neutral. Civil unions and domestic partnerships and other “seperate but equal” schemes have repeatedly been found by the courts where challenged to violate the equal protection clause of the constitution without rational basis in the eyes of the law which is completely neutral on whose relationships religious groups and bodies choose to celebrate.

If such “seperate but equal” schemes did not violate the equal protection clause under the constitutions of most states(and ultimately one might assume the federal constitution where the issue has yet to be heard)then there would be no need by opponents of equality under the law to amend state constitutions to prevent it.

Note that nearly every state with such constitutional amendments not only ban equality under the law by banning equal access to marriage but most ban any other semblance of equality such as civil unions or domestic partnership, reciprocal beneficiaries or any other means of extending some let alone all of the civil rights of civil marriage to any non-heterosexual couples.

Of course who is and who isn’t a heterosexual couple is not always so easy to determine as we live in amazingly diverse world and that includes sex and gender diversity. For example, I have a friend who is a mosaic meaning ze has cells in hir body(ze and hir being appropriate personal pronouns in this situation if the individual has not chosen to be recognized as one gender or the other having characteristics of both) that are XX and that are XY. Tell me who should ze be able to marry?

Profoundly intersex individuals clearly through new light on this conversation. So do transexual and transgender inviduals.

Courts have generally ruled that so long as a transexual or transgender individuals legal identity is opposite that of their at the time the enter into the marriage contract the marriage is legal. However, not all states have the same guidelines as to whether or not they recognize legal changes of gender.

I know a lesbian couple here in Minnesota who are legally married. They were able to marry because one of them is transexual and was born in Texas. While she is legally recognized as female under Minnesota law, Texas law only recognizes her as male. So using her original birh certificate from Texas she and her partner were able to get married in Texas which does not legally recognize her transition of gender and therefore considers them legally to be an opposite sex couple. Even though under Minnesota law they would be considered a same sex couple at the time they got married, what matters under the full faith and credit clause of the constitution and the so called Defense of Marriage Act is what they are legally considered to be under the laws of the state where they got married when they got married. THerefore, Minnesota recognizes the Texas marriage even though the same two people could not have gotten married in Minnesota at the same time they could in Texas.

There are many similiar stories involving people who are transgendered, transexual or profoundly intersex.

Though most women are genetically XX, some are XO, X’, or in the case of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome XY. Not to mention XXX and other possible combinations. There is also variety among men genetically.

How in these cases do we determine who is a man and who is a woman and who should have the right to decide? Inevitably it falls to self determination. An individual is the best person to determine their gender, gender identity and gender expression.

At any rate, transexual people generally won the right to marry(someone opposite of their current gender at the time they are married) and marital recognition beginning in the early 70′s with one of the highest profile cases being out of North Carolina in 1974.

If someone transitions gender before or after marriage is generally considered irrelevant so long as the person they are marrying are opposite their legal gender under the laws of the state in which they get married at the time they get married.

So

Dave,

I enjoyed your comments. We do agree that same sex couples and their families should be entitled to the same rights, obligations and protections afforded to opposite sex couples and their families. As a kid, I had neighbors who were a sister and a brother who lived together their entire lives. Non traditional families should also have access to the same rights as opposite sex couples. There should not be separate and equal contracts but one identical state civil contract for forming civil unions between two individuals whether those individuals are pursuing sacrimental marriage or not.

You touched on many details in your thorough discussion of this topic which are all accurate to my knowledge. Unfortunately black and white are the popular colors right now. I like gray myself and hope it makes a comeback soon.

Simple solution:

Get rid of the word marriage from civil law. Replace it with Partner Contract.

Then marriage can be anything anyone wants it to be. The Catholic Church only recognizes Catholic marriage anyway. Let the Druids, the Branch Davidians, the Lutherans, the Holy Rollers and the Prosperity Theologists make their own rules and enforce their own prejudices. It will provide hours of entertainment as people of various religions accuse each other of “not really” being married.

And get rid of the “solemnizing” required by the state. It is offensive that I have to pay some “officiant” to mumble some words in order for me to get a Partner Contract from the state.

[...] The Minnesota Independent reports:  ”The Marriage and Family Protection Act is getting traction at the Minnesota Capitol, bill supporters said Tuesday. Numerous legislators have offered their support for the legislation, so much so that a duplicate bill has been drafted in the Senate to allow for more sponsors, and a multipartisan coalition of organizations are hosting a rally for the bill on Thursday . . . “ [...]