On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments (read the transcription and hear the recording of them here) in what is the culmination of a decades-long struggle for equality for gay people. The Supreme Court took this case on after the bans on gay marriage that were upheld in the lower courts of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee were struck down in other states' appellate courts.
These states are going up against 12 couples and two widowers, according to this story that aired on National Public Radio (NPR). Given how nuanced of an institution marriage can be, especially for gays, it comes as no shock that there is more than one question. In fact, there are two. The first is about whether or not states have the right to ban gay marriage at all, and the second is concerned with whether states that ban gay marriage must recognize marriage must recognize same-sex marriages that occurred in a state that permits it. The debate is messy, to repeat myself, nuanced, exceedingly tenuous and highly emotional for many parties involved.
I think it would be fairly obvious where I come out with regards to my opinion. I support gay marriage. I support gay marriage along with significantly more than half of the nation's populous. At that point, you might ask yourself why, if the approval ratings for gay marriage are that high – more than doubled since 1996, the year the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed – we are still debating this? Why is this even a question? Don't we live in a democracy, where the opinion of the majority rules? Well, think again.
One might detect a tinge of bitterness in my tone. My apologies. What I am more than bitter is saddened. I'm saddened by the seeming inability of those who oppose gay marriage and/or those who wish to discriminate against gays in other ways to learn from history. The reality is that progress marches on. It is the people that enter the courts with personal fear, hatred, or a vendetta against the gays that try and attach rational arguments to discriminating against a certain segment of the population that I actually feel most sorry for. Have you not understood that the last thing we need in this nation right now is discrimination? Can you not fathom that two people can love each other regardless of sex, and that they deserve the same protections that every other couple does that lives in this great nation's many states? Right now, this case brings to the surface far more questions than it does hypothesized answers in my mind.
At this point, I pause to ask myself just how this has to do with secrets. I'll say this. It doesn't really. As a matter of fact, this is a very publicly divisive issue. For example, while we currently permit gay marriage to occur in 36 of our 50 states, for example, many of the states that are holding out legalize discrimination in other forms against gay people. We are at wildly different ends of the spectrum as a union of 50 smaller entities. With regards to secrets, though, what is to be said for the thousands upon thousands of men and women who have kept secret a part of themselves for the last, I don't know, forever? Personally, I am not very confident in a decision by the supreme court that will prohibit states' gay marriage bans. In my opinion, the unwanted decision would be an invalidation of countless men and women, especially those fighting for this right as part of larger movement, who have chosen to both keep and share their secrets with a world that doesn't understand them and often doesn't accept them. So, in my mind, the decision this court makes has a great deal to do with secrets. Honoring secrets. Secrets shared and secrets hidden.
I would like to end this with the prophetic words of Virginia Senator Chuck Robb, who argued against DOMA before the senate. As a representative of a conservative state, this raised some eyebrows. He knew this speech would cost him re-election, but he knew he could not sit on his hands and let DOMA go uncriticized in the ways he imagined it needed to be critiqued. I believe it is time for our Supreme Court justices to do a similar thing with the casting of their votes that Robb did with the opportunity he had to speak out. Here is what I think is the most salient excerpt of his speech:
"What we do know is that time has been the enemy of discrimination. It has allowed our views on race, gender, and religion to evolve dramatically and inevitably in the American tradition of progress and inclusion. We're not there yet, Madam President [of the Senate]. In matters of race, gender, and religion, we've passed the laws, implemented the court decisions, signed the executive orders. And everyday, we work to battle the underlying prejudice that no law or judicial remedy or executive action could completely erase. But we've made the greatest strides forward when individuals faced with their moment in history were not afraid to act, and time has allowed us to see more clearly that the humanity that minds us rather than the religious, gender, racial differences that distinguish us. But I fear, Madam President, that if we don't stand here against this bill, we will stand on the wrong side of history, not unlike the Supreme Court justices who upheld the separate-but-equal doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson...Most of us are uncomfortable discussing, in public, the intimacies of life. And most of us are equally uncomfortable with those who flaunt their interests, whether they be gay or straight. But in the end, we cannot allow our discomfort to be used to justify discrimination. We are not entitled to that indulgence. We cannot afford it."
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