Dumb dumb DOMA

In a vote which passed 70-14, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) forbids any state from recognizing a partnership existing between anyone but a man and a woman as marriage. This Act affects inheritance laws, tax laws, health care policies, and hospital visitation rights, not to mention the less tangible issue of a loving couple which wants a publicly-recognized commitment.

Critics have questioned the constitutionality of this decision based on its infringement of states' rights (if Hawaii chooses to legalize gay marriage, the other 49 states must recognize the contract). But states' rights are not the important issue. They are only the legal loophole that we hope may allow us to reverse the legislation. The irrationality of DOMA does not lie so much in the bigotry which spawned it (though bigotry is never rational) but in the allegedly moral arguments its proponents make for it. This is, by necessity, mirrored in the arguments for homosexual marriage which sometimes overlook the simple fact that people get married because they love each other in favor of more readily understandable claims like the need for joint insurance policies.

This is a shame. The issue in marriage, no matter who the parties involved, should be love--not money, not potential hospitalization, not even having children. In sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer. The marriage vows make the point. To love and to cherish is what it is all about. As long as we both shall live. The benefits married couples receive stem from a recognition that each partner is necessary to the other for reasons quite beyond the financial.

Consistency is a virtue which is denied to the gay rights activists because the people they must argue with are so inconsistent. Where, please, is the sense in condemning the "immoral homosexual lifestyle" and then preventing people from officially settling down with a single partner? If stable family life is an ideal to be valued, why make it illegal?

If, moreover, we are trying to discourage general dependence on the government (the rationale behind welfare cuts), surely that should include independence beyond the realm of the financial. Deciding whom to marry is much more personal than deciding to find a job.

Where is the sense in intruding only in the most private areas of domestic life while leaving the more public ones alone? It is true that homosexual marriages would be slightly different from heterosexual ones. If the purpose of getting married is to produce children, then clearly a gay couple will have a little more difficulty than a straight one. But many conventional marriages do not lead to children, whether by choice or for biological reasons, and the essential purpose of marriage is to bind two people together, preferably indivisibly. Children may or may not be a part of that; but the first concern is the two primary parties.

Critics of homosexual marriage have expressed concern that extending marriage benefits to homosexual partners would imply that any couple living together would be able to expect the same thing.

Allowing "casual" partners to share married couples' rights would be contrary to our most moralistic traditions. (The time-honored English practice of common-law marriages does not seem to enter into the debate.) Legal marriage, however, would be exactly the opposite of demanding such an extension of rights. The marriage ceremony again: marriage is an honorable estate, not to be entered into lightly. Marriage is serious; it is very hard to dissolve, even in our day of frequent divorce.

Most importantly, the fact that rights may be abused is no reason to withhold them. Our government in its best form is based on the concept of citizens' rights. DOMA overlooks this, not merely by infringing on homosexuals' freedom in the pursuit of happiness, but by enforcing a ban which is essentially religious in basis. The modern American taboo against homosexuality is essentially based in the Old Testament. DOMA has the slight benefit of being a multicultural form of bigotry -- Jews and Muslims as well as the Christian Right can see the roots of the ban in their sacred texts -- but that does not excuse the violation of the constitutional right to freedom of religion.

Not only is DOMA a blow against homosexual rights, it is offensive. By not allowing homosexuals to legally marry, it almost encourages the kind of unstable relationship that the family values people claim to condemn.

DOMA is the product of false logic and inequitable moral codes. Love thy neighbor like thyself. Or at least, if you cannot love him, allow him to love his husband.