NOMAS-Boston | No Referendum on Marriage

No Referendum on Marriage

By Ben Atherton-Zeman, NOMAS-Boston At Large Member

Astronomers across the world agree:

The sky has not fallen.

Here in Massachusetts, gay marriage has been legal a little over a year. So far, despite what the radical right would have us believe, the world hasn’t ended. Life as we know it goes on.

My wife Lucinda and I had the privilege of attending our friends’ lesbian wedding this year. Gretchen and Tori had a beautiful ceremony – the minister’s words were moving. The cake was good.

After the wedding, Lucinda’s and my marriage didn’t suddenly break up. Gretchen and Tori’s marriage actually enhances ours, it doesn’t threaten it. By them getting married, it made us feel better about our marriage – now we don’t feel like we belong to an exclusive club.

The so-called “World Church of the Creator” in Kansas, who recently visited Massachusetts, has begun picketing the funerals of those service people who have been killed in Iraq. Their point – the deaths of these GIs are God’s punishment for our country’s harboring of gays, lesbians and feminists. They hold signs saying “God Hates Fags” outside these funerals, much as they did when they picketed our schools in Massachusetts.

Hate groups and right-wing radicals like these try to equate gay marriage with immorality, the dissolution of the family. There is nothing immoral about Gretchen and Tori’s marriage – the immorality is a society that discriminates against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The immorality is homophobia and heterosexism. The immorality is a legislature or a state referendum that would take away the marriage license of this wonderful couple.

In our nation’s past, segregation was the daily norm. Whites and people of color drank from separate drinking fountains, went to separate schools, rode at different parts of the buses. As a white person, I’ve often wondered what I would do if I was asked to ride at the front of the bus – would I refuse? How would I feel?

Lucinda and my marriage, until this year, was a product of Jim Crow laws. “Civil Unions” is this legislature’s excuse for segregation – it’s the equivalent of hanging up a giant “Whites Only” sign above Massachusetts courthouses. If we take away the equal rights of everyone to get married, Lucinda and my marriage will be, once again, a product of that segregation. And it’s this act that will shame our marriage, not the fact that gays and lesbians can get married.

When my grandchildren ask me, “What did you do to prevent the repeal of the gay marriage laws,” I’ll have a ready answer.

The ballot question recently approved would do even more – it would take away Gretchen and Tori’s marriage license without offering them the Jim Crow alternative. Both options are immoral – both options should make any Massachusetts resident squirm with shame. We won’t be the only state to make gay marriage legal – the bill sitting on California governor Arnold Schwartzenegger proves that – but we may be the first state to repeal it.

When my grandchildren ask me, “What did you do to prevent the repeal of the gay marriage laws,” I’ll have a ready answer. On September 14, our state legislature convenes once again in a Constitutional Convention. They will decide if Gretchen and Tori’s marriage license should be granted, or should be put to a statewide vote through a referendum. I’ll be at the State House, along with many other heterosexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender people. I’ll be letting our legislators know that this wonderful couple deserves to keep their marriage license. I’ll be letting them know that you don’t put a marriage vow to a vote. I’ll be letting them know that the sky hasn’t fallen this year, and that the institution of marriage has been strengthened, not weakened, by marriage being equal and open to all.