Wednesday, 25 June 2003: The United States Supreme Court struck down the so-called "sodomy" law in the case of Lawrence v. Texas. The effect is that all comparable laws in the 13 states which still had them are nullified. To be sure, not everyone thinks this is a good thing.
The following statement from an op-ed piece in
USA Today of 27 June by Ken Connor of the Family Research Council is a good representation of the conservative opposition's viewpoint. Universally, I hear these folks absolutely thundering about a "threat to marriage:"
The U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 decision striking down Texas' law against homosexual sodomy is a direct attack on marriage . . . it also threatens the legal foundation of marriage.
What is the threat?
Did this gentleman misunderstand the Supreme Court ruling? Nothing in it said he could not get married or stay married. If this ruling is the first step toward legal, state-sanctioned partnerships of some sort between same-sex couples (which seems feasible), then does he imagine on the day homosexual couples can legally marry, that he and his wife will be forced immediately into divorce court?
What is the threat?
As best I can intuit -- and someone please correct me if I'm wrong -- Mr. Connor and those who share his belief are suggesting that the cancellation of "sodomy" laws will make it somehow easier or more attractive for people to become homosexual. Without even getting into the fact that someone doesn't "become" homosexual, but rather, it is an innate characteristic -- I would like to ask: Is there nothing about heterosexual married life (with children, in most cases) that is attractive? Don't people get married for the joy of having a spouse and kids? Don't they get married because they're in love? Surely they don't do it solely because alternatives were prohibited by law. Does Mr. Connor (or Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, to use another recent and famous example) suggest that the only reason he married his wife is because there was a law that prohibited him from becoming intimately involved with a man?
What is the threat?
Maybe some of these folks imagine they are among the very few with enough will power to resist the raptures of same-sex relationships absent a legal boundary. After all, isn't that what they're implying? That without the force of law to prevent them, the average person would find the delicacies at the banquet table of same-sex relations irresistible?
I had no idea so many of them were suppressing their appetites.
What is the threat?
No one, and I mean
no one has seriously suggested that heterosexual persons should not be allowed to marry, just the same as they always have. This is nothing but an out-of-control, paranoid fantasy that traditional marriages will become extinct if people are not coerced into them by law -- or if not actually coerced, then legally prevented from any alternative relationships. It is an attempt to use the weight of law to force people to channel their sexual energies in only one direction. But isn't that a very private choice which should be left up to the individual? And I repeat: Do they truly imagine that so few people will naturally gravitate toward, and be happy in, a heterosexual married life that we must craft laws to force them? Must we subject the whole of society to a gigantic "shot gun wedding?" I don't imagine anyone is ever happy with something they've done under duress. And if some folks get married only because they felt the law would come down on them if they didn't, then that might help explain the current 50% divorce rate.
What is the threat?
Well, there really is no threat at all -- other than the threat to certain religious fundamentalists that they can no longer exert control over other peoples' lives.
And for that, I am profoundly grateful to six U.S. Supreme Court justices. My partner and I (together over 13 years as of this date) will invite Mr. Connor to our wedding in the next year or so, whenever it become legal, as seems inevitable.
And that's not a threat -- it's a promise.
WHAT IS THE THREAT?
