Cross Race and Same Sex

Something some in favor of legally recognized, sanctioned, and licensed marriage between between people of the same sex have expressed varying degrees of astonishment, disappointment, and anger at African Americans who do not favor such legally recognized, sanctioned, and licensed marriages.  This has led to many harsh words.  Are these justified?

To those who believes that legal marriage should obviously apply to any two people who choose to be married and that laws that don't apply equally to same-sex couples as to opposite-sex couples are discriminatory, anything that prevents a same-sex couple from marrying is the equivalent of anti-miscegenation laws.  Contrary positions would be the equivalent of racism.  As African Americans have been sorely hurt in the US by racism for hundreds of years, they should be natural allies - and failing to agree is hypocritical.

Those who believe that by definition marriage is between exactly one man and exactly one woman (at any one time) have a fundamentally different view.  To begin with, sex (from the genetic basis to physical characteristics) is a well accepted distinction between people.  By contrast, race and ethnicity are arbitrary constructs.  Anti-miscegenation laws had to be enacted because it was quite obvious that people of different races could marry; until very recently, there was no effort to create anti-same-sex-marriage laws because, well, the very definition of marriage didn't allow for that in a fairly fundamental way.

Of course, there are some parallels.  Socially, couples that cross different ethnic groups are more accepted than at some earlier times in US history (though there are still groups within society who  disapprove of these) - the same is true of same-sex couples.  While most religions recognize inter-ethnic marriages, some don't; one might argue the opposite for same-sex marriages.  However, it is neither a well justified assumption that African Americans must be in favor of same-sex marriages, nor is it good politics to take people to task for a betrayal that is only in the mind of the beholder.

Here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine

Lee at Lee's Blog wrote a well reasoned and insightful commentary quoting from some of my posts starting with "What's love got to do with it?".  In the first of these posts, Lee posits that the legal marriage has significantly less meaning than it had in previous American history.  And this is doubtless true - before the 1960s, divorce was difficult (and frequently scandalous) and sex outside of marriage was scandalous (and frequently difficult) by current standards.  The term "palimony" was coined (and apparently abandoned - but the concept remains) since the '60s, and fatherhood rights for unmarried male parents have been repeatedly sought in the courts.  Many employers now provide benefits to unmarried partners.

So what is that piece of paper, really?

Aside from it being a "permanent" contract (in the sense that it has no defined term and requires deliberate court action to end), it's legal shorthand for many things including:

• a quick way for one (or in some jurisdictions, both) parties to change her (sometimes his) legal name
• a different set of tables on income taxes
• a presumption of parenthood for children (unless proven otherwise)
• a defense against having to testify against another person in a court of law, sometimes
• a default way of passing on someone's assets after death
• a way to expedite someone's application to come to or remain in the country
• a default power of attorney
• a default combining of assets and incomes

There are also a lot of things that aren't necessarily set by law but by convention and policy - things like who can visit in a hospital (e.g. family members), who can make funeral arrangements, who will necessarily be included in a social invitation (when spouses are invited someone might still be forgiven for not inviting the significant other of an unmarried person), and so on.