It appears Seton Hall University will offer a controversial course on gay marriage over the objections of Newark Archbishop John J. Myers, according to the professor scheduled to teach the class.

The undergraduate seminar course — called "The Politics of Gay Marriage" — is to begin Tuesday with about two dozen students, said W. King Mott, an associate professor of political science. ...

The syllabus for the class says the course will focus on gay marriage as a contemporary political idea and may bring guest speakers to campus to share their personal stories.

"This point of view does not dismiss those that hold a religious belief; all perspectives are welcome in this discussion," the syllabus says.

Mott, one of the few openly gay professors at Seton Hall, came up with the idea for the elective class for upperclassmen. He said students will explore the social and political issues surrounding the gay marriage debate without advocating for either side.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, gay marriage, universities

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One of the many ways the Constitution’s framers showed their collective wisdom was by embedding the rule of law into the very framework of our system of government. Judicial review of popularly enacted laws keeps the majority accountable to underlying constitutional principles. Of course, one person’s core constitutional safeguard is another’s judicial activism run amok. And so, in a range of hot-button “culture war” cases, lower courts have tried to steer clear of the dreaded “judicial activist” label by shifting their analysis from the constitutional principles themselves to the facts through which the principles may be invoked. At times these days, the rule of law looks more like the rule of facts.

Facts were certainly the unmistakable focus of Judge Vaughn Walker’s recent ruling in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. In striking down Proposition 8, the California law limiting valid marriage to that between “a man and a woman,” Walker’s 136-page opinion devoted a mere 26 pages to legal analysis, while 100 were spent reciting and evaluating the evidence presented at trial. For a judge looking to transcend the ideological labels that often attach to high-profile cases, this is an understandable strategy. And indeed, Judge Walker’s work was quickly praised by many as “a very careful analysis,” “meticulously crafted,” a “comprehensive, detailed decision.” Yet a constitutional analysis of same-sex marriage is not an obvious fit for an evidentiary trial, which is more generally associated with such questions as whether driver error or brake failure caused a traffic accident.

Consider the eighty findings of fact made by Judge Walker, many of them far more speculative than the usual “plaintiff drove his car too fast on wet pavement” variety. Given the court’s eventual conclusion that a ban on same-sex marriage lacks a rational basis, the factual findings needed to show that same-sex marriage harms no legitimate state interest. This was a tall order, and Walker marshaled the facts aggressively—and, critics say, overconfidently. Some of his fact findings come across as premature, portraying contested and unverified issues as conclusively settled. See, for example, no. 55 ("Permitting same-sex couples to marry will not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, have children outside of marriage, or otherwise affect the stability of opposite-sex marriages"); no. 70 ("The gender of a child's parent is not a factor in a child's adjustment"); and no. 71 ("Having both a male and a female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted").

Labels: gay marriage, Proposition 8

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The country’s largest lawyers’ group has backed a resolution calling on all state legislatures to let same-sex couples marry. The group, the American Bar Association, adopted the measure Tuesday in San Francisco at its annual meeting The resolution was sponsored by the New York State Bar Association, and only one speaker voiced opposition during debate on it, said Stephen P. Younger, president of the New York group. The vote, which was overwhelming, Mr. Younger said, comes days after a federal judge in San Francisco struck down California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, professional associations

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Here are some commonplace arguments against gay marriage: Marriage is an ancient institution that has always been defined as the union of one man and one woman, and we meddle with that definition at our peril. Lifelong heterosexual monogamy is natural; gay relationships are not. The nuclear family is the universal, time-tested path to forming families and raising children.

These have been losing arguments for decades now, as the cause of gay marriage has moved from an eccentric- seeming notion to an idea that roughly half the country supports. And they were losing arguments again last week, when California’s Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that laws defining marriage as a heterosexual union are unconstitutional, irrational and unjust.

These arguments have lost because they’re wrong. What we think of as “traditional marriage” is not universal. The default family arrangement in many cultures, modern as well as ancient, has been polygamy, not monogamy. The default mode of child-rearing is often communal, rather than two parents nurturing their biological children.

Nor is lifelong heterosexual monogamy obviously natural in the way that most Americans understand the term. If “natural” is defined to mean “congruent with our biological instincts,” it’s arguably one of the more unnatural arrangements imaginable. In crudely Darwinian terms, it cuts against both the male impulse toward promiscuity and the female interest in mating with the highest-status male available. Hence the historic prevalence of polygamy. And hence many societies’ tolerance for more flexible alternatives, from concubinage and prostitution to temporary arrangements like the “traveler’s marriages” sanctioned in some parts of the Islamic world.

So what are gay marriage’s opponents really defending, if not some universal, biologically inevitable institution? It’s a particular vision of marriage, rooted in a particular tradition, that establishes a particular sexual ideal.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, Marriage

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...To be fair to Mr. Blankenhorn, though he is no expert on same-sex unions, there is a great deal of social-science evidence connecting marriage and the active engagement of two biological parents with child well-being. And there is simply no other way to view the age-old, universal institution of marriage than as rooted in the biological family.

Marriage, like all cultural institutions, evolves; and it may look very different in different cultures. But the institution's common denominator across time and cultures has been its dedication to the offices of reproduction. The great 20th century cultural anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowsky stated that while marriage is as old as human life, it has never been primarily a romantic, or even an economic, bond. It has been principally an arrangement for bearing children.

Over the course of the 20th century, the institution of marriage endured precipitous change. In fact, there remain in Western nations today only very tenuous connections between marriage and parenthood, as we once understood those connections. Thirty-eight percent of American children are now born out of wedlock. A recent Pew analysis of 2008 census data showed that only just over 40% of Americans consider children fundamental to marriage.

The once-critical relationship between sexuality and parenthood also is quickly becoming irrelevant. The explosion of reproductive technologies make it possible for men and women to reproduce regardless of sexual orientation. Finally, gender roles have become so fluid that they strain court decisions on family matters. The courts can no longer rely, as guidelines in family cases, on the once deterministic roles of "husband," "wife," "mother" and "father." ...

They care about marriage precisely because in a culture searching for meaningful symbols, marriage is the veritable symbol of culture. Jonathan Rauch, a leader in the gay-marriage movement, puts it succinctly enough: Gay people want to marry because "marriage is the foundation of civilization."

Labels: David Blankenhorn, gay marriage, Marriage

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After New York Times columnist Frank Rich questioned his work and linked him to a notorious anti-gay figure in three columns this past spring, David Blankenhorn had had enough.

The founder and president of the Institute for American Values (IAV) recruited 13 college professors to attest to his credentials in a 12-page letter he sent to the Times asking the paper’s public editor to weigh if Rich’s columns were “consistent with the Times’ standards.”

Among the 13 were two University of Minnesota professors who support gay marriage, including Dale Carpenter, who is openly gay. Another gay marriage supporter from the Brookings Institution, a think tank, signed on as well.

While Blankenhorn backed civil unions for gay and lesbian couples in 2007, he gained greater attention this year when he testified in favor of Prop 8 during the federal trial over that 2008 amendment to California’s constitution that banned same-sex marriage. That more public stance has cost him.

“I’m losing friends, being told I’m on the wrong side of history, I’m like Bull Connor,” he said, referring to the top Birmingham, Alabama law enforcement official who in the 1960s used police dogs and fire hoses to attack pro-integration protesters. Blankenhorn has been mocked in the gay blogosphere. ...

In Blankenhorn’s view, the gay marriage debate shows “goods in conflict.” Same-sex couples and their children would benefit from marriage, but this beneficial institution could be harmed by admitting them, he said. He opts to exclude gay and lesbian couples from marriage while creating a parallel framework that has many of the same benefits.

In a sharply divided debate, Blankenhorn is still searching for a third way. He and Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at Brookings, have convened a series of meetings with 20 peers titled “Achieving Disagreement” that they hope will produce a document that will define the debate.

Labels: civil unions, culture, David Blankenhorn, gay marriage, Jonathan Rauch

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Is God your Daddy? Your mother, judge or liberator? Would that make a difference when you consider whether gay marriage should be legal?

Those are the kinds of questions threaded through a new survey looking at Californian's views on Proposition 8, two years after the controversial referendum overturned the legalization of gay marriage.

Any day now, a judge is expected to rule on whether Prop 8 will be overturned. And who will cheer about that? Possibly the 29% of Californians who say Prop. 8 was "bad for California" according to the survey of 3,351 adults released today by the Public Religion Research Institute. ...

Other key findings in the survey released today:

* If a referendum "similar to Proposition 8" were held tomorrow, it would be defeated by a narrow margin (51%), riding on votes from younger people, those who claim no religious affiliation, Latino Catholics and while Mainline Protestants, and Democrats. And (45%), white evangelicals, Latino Protestants, and African American Protestants say they would approve it, again.
* One key to moving voters from support of civil unions to support of same-sex marriage appears to be adding a "religious liberty reassurance that the law would guarantee that no congregation would be forced to conduct same sex marriages against its beliefs."
* People are beginning to lock in to their positions. While 25% reported that they have shifted to become more supportive of gay rights over the last five years, 8 % are more opposed but a strong majority, 66%, held their ground. ...

The survey also asked people their perspective on God. Sure, 82% of Californians see God as "father" and 70% call God "judge" but the survey also added some less traditional choices and found 65% think of God as "liberator" and 39% see God as "mother." (Yes, these correlate as you would expect to views on gay marriage, although the results from the Mother God view are mixed.)

Labels: California, culture, gay marriage, Proposition 8, religion

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The other day I watched two friends, both Indian, get married in a beautiful garden in Santa Cruz. One is Christian, the other Hindu, so they had two ceremonies. There was a three-tiered wedding cake and a sacred fire. But the really amazing part of the ceremony was that one of their fathers had flown in from India to bless them. It was amazing because my friends are both men. ...

One friend said that when an unmarried Chinese friend told his parents that at least he wasn't gay, they retorted, "We'd rather you were gay with kids."

When I left India for America, my aunts worried about who I might end up marrying. "I hope it's another Bengali," one told me. Over the years, that relaxed to, "I hope she's a Hindu." Then it became, "At least another Indian," until finally we reached, "I hope you'll get married before we all die." ...

In fact, I can imagine this ad in the local Indian weekly:

"Hindu very well-established Los Angeles family invites professional match for daughter, 25, 5-foot-3, slim, fair complexion, U.S. born, senior executive in Fortune 500 company. Loves music and dancing. Prospective lesbians encouraged to reply in confidence with complete bio data and returnable photo. Must be professional, under 30, caste no bar."

It might just be time for the gay arranged marriage.

Labels: arranged marriage, culture, gay marriage, India, Marriage

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The other day I watched two friends, both Indian, get married in a beautiful garden in Santa Cruz. One is Christian, the other Hindu, so they had two ceremonies. There was a three-tiered wedding cake and a sacred fire. But the really amazing part of the ceremony was that one of their fathers had flown in from India to bless them. It was amazing because my friends are both men. ...

One friend said that when an unmarried Chinese friend told his parents that at least he wasn't gay, they retorted, "We'd rather you were gay with kids."

When I left India for America, my aunts worried about who I might end up marrying. "I hope it's another Bengali," one told me. Over the years, that relaxed to, "I hope she's a Hindu." Then it became, "At least another Indian," until finally we reached, "I hope you'll get married before we all die." ...

In fact, I can imagine this ad in the local Indian weekly:

"Hindu very well-established Los Angeles family invites professional match for daughter, 25, 5-foot-3, slim, fair complexion, U.S. born, senior executive in Fortune 500 company. Loves music and dancing. Prospective lesbians encouraged to reply in confidence with complete bio data and returnable photo. Must be professional, under 30, caste no bar."

It might just be time for the gay arranged marriage.

Labels: arranged marriage, culture, gay marriage, India, Marriage

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...Contrary to what some of my friends in the gay-marriage movement believe, however, homophobia is far from the only reason for opposition. Another group, which I think is at least equally large, feels threatened—less by the normalization of homosexuality than by the abnormalization, so to speak, of the conventionally defined family. “Nothing personal, do what you want,” they tell us, “but leave the definition of family—of marriage—alone!”

One way to see that more is going on than homophobia is to reflect, for a moment, on a peculiar fact: gay marriage is far more controversial in America than either same-sex adoption or same-sex child custody.

Think about that. Isn’t it odd? The care of children, by definition, involves third parties who often have little or no choice about their situation. If there is a case for harm, one would think it would be strongest here—not in the union of two mutually consenting adults. In fact, the other side has a very hard time articulating any concrete harm at all that gay marriage would do. Yet efforts to make a political issue of gay adoption have consistently failed, while, wherever it appears, gay marriage finds it cannot not be a political issue.

What is behind the alarm raised by gay marriage?

To answer this question, I think one must widen the aperture and look at same-sex marriage in the context of a much larger cultural battle over the nature of family, of marriage, and even of adulthood: a debate over what it is that constitutes, and should constitute, the template for “normal” in all of those areas.

Labels: contraception, culture, divorce, economics, gay marriage, Jonathan Rauch, June Carbone, Marriage, men, Naomi Cahn, out-of-wedlock births, poverty, Red Families v. Blue Families

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In vetoing Hawaii’s civil unions bill, Gov. Linda Lingle noted that the bill was “essentially marriage by another name.” ...

Like most civil-unions legislation, this bill was an attempt to grant marital rights and responsibilities without using the “M word”—a compromise that, for whatever strange reason, satisfies many opponents of marriage equality. Polls across the country show substantially greater support for civil unions than for marriage equality, even when the statewide rights and responsibilities would be legally identical in theory. ...

Okay, but suppose we grant identical legal boundaries to the relationship. Wouldn’t it then be a marriage, legally speaking?

Here’s where marriage-equality opponents get pushed into a corner. If they answer “yes,” they have to give up the argument that legal same-sex marriage is impossible by definition. If they answer “no,” they find themselves saying that a legally identical relationship isn’t legally identical.

The only way out of this logical pretzel is to distinguish between two senses of “marriage”—a legal sense, the boundaries of which are drawn however the law says they’re drawn, and a religious or metaphysical sense, the boundaries of which exist independently of human intentions.

The religious/metaphysical sense is surely what people have in mind when they say that same-sex marriage is impossible by definition. But the law isn’t—or shouldn’t be—in the business of religion or metaphysics. It should be concerned with the legal boundaries, period.

Labels: civil unions, culture, gay marriage, Hawaii, John Corvino, Marriage

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The vast majority of people in Guatemala oppose the notion of allowing homosexuals to marry, according to a poll by Cid-Gallup. 85 per cent of respondents disagree with same-sex marriage. ...

Guatemalan voters elected a new president in November 2007. Final results gave Álvaro Colom of the left-leaning National Union of Hope (UNE) 52.82 per cent of the vote. His run-off contender, Otto Pérez Molina of the right-leaning Patriot Party (PP), finished second with 47.18 per cent of all cast ballots. Colom was sworn in as president in January 2008.

During his campaign, Colom rejected calls to review the issue of the legal status of same-sex couples, saying, "God said Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

Labels: Central America, gay marriage, Guatemala

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Marriages between same-sex couples, accounting for 3412 last year and are mostly men which the protagonists (64.8 percent), according to the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals (FELGTB), which cites data from the National Statistics Institute (INE).

La FELGTB contabiliza alrededor de 20.000 parejas homosexuales que han contraído matrimonio desde que en 2004 fue aprobada la ley que lo permitía. The FELGTB accounts for about 20,000 gay couples have married since the 2004 law was passed that allowed it. ...

El número de matrimonios es considerablemente mayor entre hombres (64,8%) que entre mujeres (35,2%), por lo que FELGTB considera necesario trabajar por la visibilidad lésbica, "ya que para las mujeres lesbianas y bisexuales hacer pública su orientación sexual continúa siendo más duro". The number of marriages is significantly higher among men (64.8%) than women (35.2%), so FELGTB necessary work for lesbian visibility, "because for lesbian and bisexual women to disclose their (sexual) orientation remains harder.

Labels: gay marriage, gender differences, Spain

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Labels: Catholic Church, culture, gay marriage, gender, heteronormativity, Marriage, religion

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...The race analogy often focuses on Loving v. Virginia. In this 1967 case, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Virginia statute that imposed criminal penalties for marriages between whites and those of other races.

Loving is a significant case in U.S. constitutional history. The nation’s highest court found that Virginia’s prohibition was “designed to maintain White Supremacy.” Such laws, the court concluded, are repugnant to the principles of racial equality embedded in our Constitution.

Those fighting for same-sex marriage often quote a passage from Loving that asserts marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man.” This passage is from the second part of the opinion, which explained that, under constitutional concepts of liberty, the right to marry cannot be denied on “so unsupportable a basis” as “the racial classifications” embodied in Virginia’s racial integrity law.

But proponents of same-sex marriage don’t always provide the entire quotation. In the same passage, the court explains that marriage is “fundamental to our very existence and survival” — and that the freedom to marry is essential to the “orderly” pursuit of happiness.

Marriage is not fundamental to our “existence” and “survival” merely because it sometimes is marked by expressions of love, commitment, and respect. Marriage is fundamental to our existence and survival because it remains society’s best and most effective way of ordering sexual relations between men and women, encouraging procreation, and increasing the odds that a child will have the influence and support of both a mother and a father.

Labels: discrimination law, gay marriage, Marriage, race

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Marriage equality has become a central pillar of the modern gay rights movement. Five states and the District of Columbia offer same sex marriages and a case involving California’s ban on gay marriage is expected to end up in the Supreme Court. But despite recent advances, not all gay people are so eager to ring the wedding bells. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, self-described queer activist and author of “That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation,” says gay people should stop fighting to uphold what she considers to be the failed institution of marriage.

Labels: beyond marriage, culture, gay marriage, heteronormativity

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...Why get married? Why not just see how it goes, or enter into some kind of legal partnership? Because I believe that my relationship with Brett is important, and I want to publicly recognize that. Because I want to go through life as part of a partnership, and I want to kick off that partnership in a meaningful way. Being a couple is hard, even when you’re in love, and having the institutional support, as well as the support of my friends and family who recognize what it means to be married, matters to me. There’s a reason that weddings transcend most cultures, and that so many people are now fighting with whole hearts to earn the right to marry: those reasons go far beyond property rights and health-insurance issues.

(That being said: although any government perks Brett and I will receive never factored into our decision, they’re a hell of a lot better than what’s provided by the patchwork system of civil unions and domestic partnerships currently in place. These are half measures to provide rights and benefits to people denied them by the government, and what rights and benefits they afford are more expensive and less comprehensive than what we’d get from marriage. Domestic partnerships are a consolation prize, one not intended to give heterosexual couples the protections of marriage without the totally unhip matrimonial association. That’s why most companies—including NEWSWEEK—don’t extend domestic benefits to heterosexual couples.) ...

Statistics about marriage are helpful only to a point, because marriage is such a personal and personalized thing: it reflects, not creates, the culture, ideals, and attitudes of the people involved. Getting married doesn’t suddenly increase one’s chances of wanting kids, or breaking up, or getting heart disease (I’ve found that any romantic partnership leads to increased fatty-food consumption and time spent lounging on the couch). For many couples, it doesn’t even mean lifelong monogamy. Marriage is how you define it—it doesn’t define you.

Labels: beyond marriage, cohabitation, culture, gay marriage, gender, Marriage, monogamy, open relationships

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Many people regard marriage rights for same-sex couples as the civil rights issue of this generation. Indeed, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't have strong feelings one way or the other on this issue: Should courts recognize the marriage rights of lesbian and gay couples as a matter of dignity and equality, or should we respect opposition to same-sex matrimony based in religion and traditional morality?

This issue has taken a new turn in recent weeks as Seton Hall University political science professor King Mott was notified that the class he was planning to teach in the fall, titled "Gay Marriage," might be canceled by the university's governing board when it meets on June 4. Newark Archbishop John J. Myers said the course conflicts with the teachings of the Catholic Church (Seton Hall is a Catholic university). "This proposed course seeks to promote as legitimate a train of thought that is contrary to what the Church teaches," Archbishop Myers said in a statement. "As a result, the course is not in synch with Catholic teaching."

We have taken a special interest in professor Mott's class because we too are scheduled to teach a new class titled "Gay Marriage" this fall at Columbia University, through the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. The flier we put together to advertise the class poses two views of the marriage issue: One image captures gay rights demonstrators protesting laws that preclude them from marrying, while the other image, from the group Dyke Action Machine, asks: "Why Be Boring for a Blender? You Might as Well Be Straight."

Unlike professor Mott, we have little worry that officials from our university will step in and cancel our class for ideological or moral reasons. But that doesn't mean that we are immune from ideological criticism of the material we will cover in our course. Oddly enough, that criticism may come from the LGBT community itself.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, feminism, gay marriage, heteronormativity, religion, universities

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Same-sex couples just want the right to be married like everyone else, or so the argument goes. They call it a civil right. You could hardly find a more innocuous argument, perfectly designed to appeal to all of us who believe in equal rights and fair play.

The only problem is that it’s not true. A significant percentage of same-sex couples do not want to get married “like everyone else.” Many of them want to create a whole new paradigm for marriage that has serious implications for the institution and for the rest of society.

Now, if you think I’m being bigoted about this, then perhaps you haven’t checked out the latest scientific research on the subject. A recent three-year study of homosexual couples in San Francisco--where many gay “marriages” have been performed--shows that half of them are in open relationships.

Labels: beyond marriage, culture, divorce, gay marriage, gay/straight differences, open relationships

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...The overwhelming consensus among scholars is that the reason for these laws was to enforce racial purity, an idea that begins its cultural ascendancy with the commencement of race-based slavery of Africans in early 17th-century America and eventually receives the imprimatur of “science” when the eugenics movement comes of age in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[6] In Loving, for example, the statue overturned, SB 219, The Racial Integrity Act of 1924, was the product of the eugenics movement. [7] On the same day that SB 219 was passed, Virginia also passed the Eugenical Sterilization Act (SB 281), a law the allowed the state to involuntarily sterilize, among others, the mentally unfit.[8] In the case of Buck v. Bell (1927), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Virginia’s forced sterilization of Carrie Buck under that statute. In some of the most memorable and chilling words ever penned by a Supreme Court justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The Racial Integrity Act and The Eugenical Sterilization Act were of a piece, both legislative accomplishments of the eugenics movement and its goal of racial purity. [9]

Anti-miscegenation laws, therefore, were attempts to eradicate the legal status of real marriages by injecting a condition—sameness of race—that had no precedent in common law. For in the common law, a necessary condition for a legitimate marriage was male-female complementarity, a condition on which race has no bearing.

It is clear then that the miscegenation/same-sex analogy does not work. For if the purpose of anti-miscegenation laws was racial purity, such a purpose only makes sense if people of different races have the ability by nature to marry each other. And given the fact that such marriages were a common law liberty, the anti-miscegenation laws presuppose this truth. But opponents of same-sex marriage ground their viewpoint in precisely the opposite belief: people of the same gender do not have the ability by nature to marry each other since gender complementarity is a necessary condition for marriage. Supporters of anti-miscegenation laws believed in their cause precisely because they understood that when male and female are joined in matrimony they may beget racially-mixed progeny, and these children, along with their parents, will participate in civil society and influence its cultural trajectory.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, Marriage, race

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