Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Gay marriage: no Houston, Tex. To the Editors: These comments respond to your symposium on gay marriage [November 22]: (1) Standards for controlling the legal extension of...
...New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis can write good stories about great cases...
...To the Editors: The argument against gay marriage isn't really that at all...
...And so, with optimism, I turned to Make No Law...
...While the case may make for high drama on the stage of history, it simply is not the stuff of a good tale...
...Under these criteria, polygamy, polyandry, cluster marriages, or any other "arrangement" that comes to mind cannot be forbidden, as long as there are free adults who want it...
...Struggle over sexual orientation is a leading cause of teen suicide...
...Analyzing marriage as purely an economic union, they conclude that the economic disadvantages of marriage exceed the benefits...
...For example, one chapter details the differences among the eight drafts of Justice Brennan's Supreme Court opinion: "Eleven days later, on February 17, Justice Brennan circulated a third draft among his colleagues...
...But the fact is that procreative sexuality has presented society with children who need help...
...Lewis is forced to expand on the unexceptional...
...Once children come on the scene the state as agent for society has a tremendous interest because the intergenerational family assures our transition to the future—both that we will have a future, and that the future will be worth having...
...The problem is a common one in legal literature: Cases that make great law don't always make great stories...
...To praise "the social goods of the regenerative family" is high-sounding talk...
...This argument is really about heterosexual unwillingness to accept the fact of gay and lesbian people who are not sick, who are not immoral, who are not child molesters, and who (contrary to your editorial) don't choose their homosexuality any more than others choose their heterosexuality...
...but they must not ask to be assimilated into the sacrificial paradigm of heterosexual marital relationships with children...
...It is profoundly counterproductive to those needs when we withhold from a responsible and loving gay couple who would be willing to raise a child any legal or religious support whatsoever that could help them achieve that goal...
...This is not to "plead neutrality about the value of procreative sexuality...
...Common historical wisdom tells us that social acceptance of sodomy is unwise...
...To the Editors: I was stunned by your editorial in which you call on us to "respect and protect homosexuality as a personal value or choice...
...What is the quality of the relationship...
...Thus, to dramatize the undramatic, Mr...
...RANDALL R. PHILLIPS 26: 17 January 1992 Commonweal...
...it's deeper than that...
...This is my primary reason for approving of same-sex marriages...
...The homosexual community seeks the right to marry by arguing that they are otherwise denied a share of the economic benefits which follow marriage...
...Most often these youths cannot talk about their feelings with their parents...
...The editors are aware that not all children are so fortunate...
...Its doctrine has been expanded and refined through the years, and criticized too, as lawyers and journalists try to find ways to streamline the complex and somewhat intrusive procedural requirements of the case...
...Familial concern for those who cannot reproduce themselves is an argument for, not against, gay and lesbian marriage...
...This is what justifies giving advantages in taxation, Social Security payments, property divisions, various child exemptions, as well as respect, to heterosexual marriages...
...In Gideon's Trumpet Mr...
...The point is made by the "soft" criteria for defining "family" given by the New York Court of Appeals in a case earlier this year: How long has the relationship endured...
...Its main themes, free speech and civil rights, are two of the defining subjects of the republic...
...Yes...
...I am having difficulty hearing you.' This was unusual, and perhaps a sign of unusual attentiveness to this case...
...The future of marriage will be insured by those who enter into the contract...
...Apart from the initial trauma of divorce, single-parent families—headed by women in about 90 percent of cases— produce severe strains in relationships between children and fathers...
...And, while single-parent families must of course be helped in various ways, it should not be by weakening the model of the intergenerational family through equating the paradigm with its failures...
...And so on...
...It is a bright star in the First Amendment firmament, a bulwark of press freedom...
...That's the reason why a number of our young people elect not to marry...
...I support your conclusion...
...In fact, civil and religious marriage impose economic burdens which outweigh the advantages...
...I know of few Catholic lesbian or gay couples who would want the church to formally recognize their unions just to please their parents, take advantage of a pretty setting, or have a reception and receive lots of gifts...
...The volume is serviceable, but these defects make reading it very rough going...
...Continued on page 25) 2: 17 January 1992 Commonweal libel law...
...Related to this is the plight of adolescents who discover themselves to be gay or lesbian...
...Clearly a commitment to gay marriage would offer tangible models, a sense of identity and belonging for young people...
...Some divorces are necessary, of course, but most are not...
...A major concern of most gay organizations is outreach to youth—not for sexual purposes, as some believe, but to offer them a sense of community, family, and support where none is offered them...
...New York Times v. Sullivan seems a natural for a good read...
...We know that divorce harms children and that the hurt often persists through their lives...
...One need only turn to Gideon's Trumpet, his powerful account of a 1963 Supreme Court ruling about the right to counsel...
...Lewis had that rare find, a case that was both...
...What role model can their heterosexual parents and family offer...
...To the Editors: I wonder about the veracity of your claim that marriage is not denied to homosexuals to oppress them, but to uphold the social goods of the regenerative family...
...We know that social supports of various kinds, some of them costly, can reduce the incidence of divorce...
...There is also a tremendous amount of heterosexual discomfort with the knowledge that their sons/daughters/sisters/ brothers/fathers/mothers are sometimes lesbians or gays...
...JOHN P. HALE Finding a scapegoat Piedmont, Calif...
...The state has little interest in relationships with no families or children—in some countries (and in California) married adults with no children can get a divorce via a notarized postcard...
...Those families in which the children's caretakers are also their biological parents and in which all live together amicably have the leisure to enjoy "the mystery of the other and the joys of human creation...
...Given that premise, I do not see how you can logically conclude that you oppose homosexual marriage...
...The great majority of gays and lesbians, particularly those with religious convictions, do not deprecate the nuclear family, or devalue the mother/father/children arrangement for propagating the species, or denigrate the supporting, loving, and stabilizing form of family into which most (but far from all) of them were born...
...The argument is, finally, Commonweal 17 January 1992: 25 a search for a scapegoat for the fragility of the nuclear family in late twentieth-century Western society and the inability to moralize and legislate it back into "Ozzie and Harriet-hood...
...From the point of view of the child who does not have the option of living in an ideal family situation and is forced to suffer "haphazard arrangements" for his or her upbringing, there would be no value in denying to prospective adoptive parents the advantages of an officially sanctioned union (in other words, marriage) simply because they are of the same sex...
...Lack of male role models for boys and girls creates serious emotional imbalances and is responsible in no small measure for increased hostility between the sexes...
...3) Since resources are always scarce, extending economic benefits to strengthen parafamilial institutions would inevitably diminish social support for marriage and the family, this at a time when these core institutions are in crisis...
...Its cast includes a great newspaper, Southern segregationists, civil rights leaders, and constitutional scholars...
...Doesn't it seem quite odd these days that, at least from within the Catholic church, some of the strongest, most sincere voices asking to be included, to be recognized, are those of the church's gay and lesbian children who, in spite of all pressures to the contrary (from both the Catholic and homosexual communities) have kept the faith and see value and meaning in the sacraments...
...Anyone who can turn a potentially arid legal discussion into a masterful story and a Hollywood movie (starring Henry Fonda, no less) is doubtless a deft craftsman...
...But appearances can be deceiving...
...As a rule gay and lesbian teens feel isolated, alone, and cursed by their difference...
...Hardly edgeofthe-seat stuff...
...Lewis also takes us on forays into First Amendment history so extended that this reader wondered if we would ever return to the case that the title promised was the subject of the book...
...Both are reductions to the physical, and both are equally limited perspectives on sexuality...
...CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) To illustrate, one loses the right to make an absolute disposition of one's estate and assumes the burden of responsibility for one's spouse...
...Or: "On March 3, Justice Brennan circulated a fifth draft of his opinion...
...Reducing sexuality to (physical) procreation is as obscene as the pornographer reducing sexuality to lust...
...PETER J. RIGA Gay marriage: yes Detroit, Mich...
...I've witnessed enough farcical "matrimonies" to know that many parents of heterosexual children cannot say the same...
...I reject your premise...
...2) The core reason for upholding heterosexual marriages exclusively is that only such a relationship insures the future...
...The homosexual community seeks not some illusory economic advantage from marrying...
...My conclusion is that couples, whether heterosexual or homosexual, who choose to live together without bearing the burden of rearing children, are free to live as they wish with no obstacle from the state or other disability...
...They seek the social acceptance of homosexuality which they are convinced marriage would confer...
...The tax advantage is minimal, if it exists at all...
...To the Editors: These comments respond to your symposium on gay marriage [November 22]: (1) Standards for controlling the legal extension of marital rights to the unmarried are uncertain...
...Is it exclusive...
...Is this not a constitutive feature of generati vity...
...Sometimes these contrivings just seem silly: "Justice Brennan interrupted to say, `I am sorry...
...But with New York Times v. Sullivan, he would have been better advised to write a thematic essay...
...Or perhaps it was a sign that, well, Justice Brennan was having difficulty hearing...
...But its importance is undisputed...
...Bringing libel under the mantle of the First Amendment, the Court recognized the critical connection James Madison saw between free speech and self-governance, and conferred on libel procedures protections commensurate with that vital nexus...
...To the Editors: As the female half of a heterosexual marriage and the mother of two young children, I certainly agree with the editors ["The Future of Marriage," November 221 that sexual generativity gives us a "compelling stake in the future...
...The larger religious and secular societies have nothing to gain by trying to blame others for wanting to have their own contracts recognized, validated, and sacramentalized...
...Sullivan ushered in a new era for the Constitution and for the press...
...JIM McCREA Outreach to youth Sterling Heights, Mich...
...SUSAN FEENEY A thousand times no New York, N.Y...
...But when that regenerative family cannot or will not take care of its own, it makes little sense to put obstacles in the way of any nonprocreative couple that is eager to love a child...
Vol. 119 • January 1992 • No. 1
