Tuesday, President Bush announced he is backing an amendment to the US Constitution that would define a marriage as a “union between one man and one woman”. In a CNN poll, 67% of American respondents indicated they felt gay marriages should not be recognized in law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages.
Mr. Bush said, "The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honoured and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and a wife, to love and to serve one another, promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society.” He went on to say, “After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization.”
George, have a bite of a reality sandwich:
The US Census Bureau predicts that about 50% of first marriages will end in divorce. The number of unmarried couples living together increased 72% between 1990 and 2000. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (2000 data), 33% of all births are to unmarried women.
Conservative estimates are that 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an extramarital affair. These figures are even more significant when we consider the total number of marriages involved - since it's unlikely that all the men and women having affairs happen to be married to each other. If even half of the women having affairs (or 20 percent) are married to men not included in the 60 percent having affairs, then at least one partner will have an affair in approximately 80 percent of all marriages. (Peggy Vaughan, The Monogamy Myth).
Back to the US Census Bureau (2000): There are 9.7 million Americans living with an unmarried different-sex partner and 1.2 million American living with a same-sex partner. 11% of unmarried partners are same-sex couples. About two-fifths of children are expected to live in a cohabiting household at some point.
So much for the sanctity of marriage. Here are some more schizo stats:
In a 1995 Harris poll, 90% of people said they believe society "should value all types of families."
(Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms With America's Changing Families, 1997)
Only one-quarter of American households consist of what most people think of as a "traditional family": a married couple and their children.
(The Emerging 21st Century Family, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, 1999)
45% of people in their twenties believe the government should not be involved in licensing marriage.
(Gallup survey for the National Marriage Project, The State of Our Unions, 2001)
So what’s going on down there in Bush country? Why this hypocrisy on such a breathtaking scale? Based on the vast gulf between rhetoric and reality, we can only draw some uncomfortable conclusions. Since marriage is clearly not a “sacred institution”, still less a “fundamental institution of civilization”, why are so many Americans tying themselves in knots trying to “protect” it from being embraced by gays and lesbians?
Meanness.
What we are seeing is the ugly, universal, chauvinistic impulse that humans have exhibited forever, and that we can’t seem to rid ourselves of. Treat the “different” badly. Gays and lesbians are self-identified as “different” from non-homosexual people. (They aren’t actually different. It’s just marketing).
In our enlightened, civilized society, it is considered bad form to discriminate against people of a different colour, creed or religion, ethnic background, sex, physical or mental ability, or taste in clothes. Actually, it’s illegal to treat these people differently, punishable by large fines and even prison time.
So here we see a form of discrimination that the higher-ups say is okay – let’s tell gays and lesbians they can live happily together their whole lives, just so long as they don’t get “Married”. Call their bond a “Civil Union” or some other “separate but equal” label. When they object and go to court, as they will, and when that court rules that discrimination is discrimination, as it must, well, change the rules. Amend the Constitution. So there (stick out your tongue).
It’s just meanness, sanctioned by the powerful. When allowed to be anonymously mean, hurtful at a distance, many people will sink to the lowest possible level of human behavior. Remember the middle class housewives in the South who gathered to hurl abuse (and sometimes worse) at little black children trying to go to school. Think of the mind-numbing horror of the Holocaust. It’s nasty, awful and despicable. These people today, from Bush on down, should hang their heads in shame.
Here’s the difference between this current ugly episode and past shameful goings-on: in the past the folks being discriminated against have been poor, undereducated and marginalized. They were easy targets, and that’s why it took so long to end the hateful practices of the past. Today, gays and lesbians are none of those things. They are successful, middle class folks. Doctors, artists, business owners and especially, lawyers. They are proud of themselves, they know the system inside and out, and they have the resources to fight back. Expect this battle to be over quickly.
There is one crowning irony that shows me how far astray our cousins to the south have wandered. Perhaps the most hawkish conservative in the Bush administration is Vice President Dick Cheney. He stated today that he fully supports his boss in this stupid crusade.
Dick Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian, and proud of it.
Imagine dinner at that household. What a show….
In my humble opinion.
