Whole Milk Marriage

“There are two kinds of marriage,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Wednesday, “the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage.”

Ginsburg was referring to the effects of the Defense Against Marriage Act, the 1996 statute that denies gay married couples 1,100 federal benefits that straight married couples enjoy. Last week, the Court heard cases challenging the constitutionality of both DOMA and Proposition 8, California’s state ban on gay marriage. DOMA and Prop 8 discriminate indefensibly, denying homosexual citizens the equal treatment under the law that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution affords them. The Supreme Court has a moral and legal obligation to strike both policies down.

The Court could take multiple avenues in its Prop 8 decision, but its soundest option is to not only affirm the initiative’s unconstitutionality, but also to recognize a broad, national right to same-sex marriage. Invalidating DOMA would then pave the final stretch of the path to marriage equality.

Prop 8, like DOMA, has its roots planted firmly in what Justice Kagan called “fear… dislike… [and] animus.”  In fact, in drafting DOMA, House lawmakers stated, “Civil laws that permit only heterosexual marriage reflect and honor a collective moral judgment about human sexuality.  This judgment entails… moral disapproval of homosexuality.”  Moral disapproval based solely on an immutable characteristic like sexual orientation is plain intolerance.  It has no place in a nation founded on the precept that “all men are created equal.”

The public largely agrees, more and more so every day. This February, a national CBS poll revealed that 54 percent of adult respondents approve of same-sex marriage, marking a continuation in the trend of increasing support: Starting in 2010, statistics first began to show a majority of Americans in favor of allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally. And young people, defined as between the ages of 18 and 29 in a November Gallup poll, stand behind gay marriage in even greater numbers, with 73 percent voting in favor. This sea change in public opinion only reinforces the need for a Supreme Court decision that enshrines marriage equality.

The Supreme Court must not duck the issues it heard last week. Gay citizens and their families cannot afford to wait until little by little, bit by bit, states and lower courts open their minds and city halls to all marriages, regardless of the brides’ and grooms’ sexual orientations. Same-sex couples across the country deserve and need the benefits, both tangible and intangible, that straight couples reap from marrying right now.

The United States has a history of both prejudice and progress. The fight for gay marriage carries on the tradition of the civil rights movement and the struggle for women’s equality. Today, gay couples are barred from pursuing happiness for no reason but bigotry. Tomorrow, we hope all citizens will be free to live, love, and marry as they choose.