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CU's Aren't Enough, Part 2
CUs Aren't Enough,
Part 2
by Laura Davidson
We
all went through a lot in 2000. Many of us don't want to go back. We came
out of 2000 with a new law that represented an unprecedented breakthrough
for gay rights in this country. But the law also falls short of genuine
equality in significant ways. Our desire not to go back to 2000, and the
turmoil we experienced that year, should not stop us from looking forward
to the future, and educating ourselves and others on the ways in which
the civil union law falls short of the full equality it was supposed to
be.
The Legal Status of Being "Married" Is a Benefit of Marriage
Like it or not, the term "marriage"
is widely understood, not just in Vermont and Massachusetts, but around
the world. By plugging into that universally understood language, it gives
us all a frame of reference. We all have an understanding of what a married
couple is. The word alone also establishes a set of expectations between
the committed partners themselves. That simply isn’t true for "civil
union," or any other new legal status created to avoid the use of
the word "marriage." You can't assume that someone in Arizona,
Japan, or New Zealand has ever heard the term "civil union,"
or has any idea what it means. The social significance of the term "married"
is one of the significant benefits of marriage.
There are members of our community
who wouldn't ever choose to adopt the social content that comes with the
term "marriage." Given the choice, they'd rather not plug into
the centuries of history and international recognition that comes with
the term. But the fact is, right now, they don't have the choice. Those
in our community who value the concept of marriage, and who seek the intangible
but very real social recognition that accompanies that legal status, have
no way of attaining it. The state guards the gate to the legal status
of "married," and so far, we're barred from entering.
"Separate But Equal" Cannot Be Equal
Whether we would choose the label
"married" or not, many of us recoil at the message inherent
in a set of laws that sets us apart as unworthy of full inclusion. Although
there are many differences between anti-gay discrimination and the racism
of the mid-20th century South, the analogies are undeniable. It wasn't
until the groundbreaking 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case
of Brown v. Board of Education that the law finally recognized that "separate
but equal" is, by definition, unequal. The mere fact of separation
stigmatized the African Americans who supposedly were included even though
separated. Even if the seats in the back of the bus were functionally
the same as the seats in the "white-only" front of the bus,
we intuitively understand that isolating a group of citizens in order
to avoid commingling is stigmatizing, immoral, and unconstitutional.
These principles apply as well to
the marriage apartheid we’re now living in Vermont. As the Massachusetts
Supreme Judicial Court recently acknowledged in ruling that a civil union
law like ours would be unconstitutional, "The history of our nation
has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal." We're
not allowed to marry because some want to protect "traditional marriage,"
meaning "heterosexuals-only" marriage. The civil union law was
an attempt to split the difference between those seeking full equality,
and those who reject our claim to recognition and inclusion altogether.
The homophobia underlying the law isn't limited to those who openly admit
to an anti-gay agenda. Many of our traditional allies in the political
sphere pursued civil unions with zeal while also insisting upon our exclusion
from marriage. This suggests that even many of our straight "friends"
believe we're entitled to rights, but in the end, our love and families
aren’t really entitled to quite the same recognition and respect
as theirs.
The civil union law is cheered by
some of our community precisely because it creates a separate status,
untarnished by whatever baggage they associate with marriage. But for
others, our willingness to settle for a law that repeats in several places
the mantra of our exclusion (the law reiterates that we cannot marry)
reflects our own internalized homophobia. It suggests that we're grateful
for some truly tasty scraps rather than insisting on our seat at the table.
That's a message we cannot send.
This is the second in a three-part
series. In the first part, published last month, Sherry Corbin of the
Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force described the changes in the national
landscape since Vermont's civil union law passed and called for further
movement toward marriage. In the final part, to be published next month,
the Task Force discusses the tangible legal disadvantages of civil unions.
Laura Davidson is a member of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force,
and lives with her partner in Braintree.