March 07, 2004
(Updated) A Same-Sex Tour Through 'The Sunday Oregonian'
The Politics, The Personal, And A Little Bit Of The Process
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
First, we'd like to thank The Sunday Oregonian for comfirming a key element of our earlier analysis of the Defense of Marriage Coalition's lawsuit against Multnomah County. Leading off the paper's same-sex marriage Q&A is the following:
Can Multnomah County change its marriage license rules without a formal vote of the Board of County Commissioners?
In Oregon, counties administer marriage laws set down in state statutes. How the county performs that duty is known as an administrative function rather than a legislative function. The administrator in charge in this case is Diane Linn, chairwoman of the Multnomah County board. Linn has the administrative authority to interpret how the state laws are implemented in her county. Although she had the backing of three other county commissioners on the five-member board, she had the legal authority to impose the administrative change entirely on her own.
When we made this argument in our analysis, we were fairly confident of our research, but not absolutely certain that some other element of state or county law wouldn't turn up to refute it. It's important that the source of the County's authority to issue marriage licenses is confirmed, because it undercuts the lawsuit's first two complaints -- that there was a violation of Oregon's open meetings law, and that Chair Diane Linn acted outside her authority.
This doesn't dispel the political questions about the process, but it does undermine the legal ones.
Meanwhile, associate editor David Sarasohn reports a sublime moment between Mayoral candidate Tom Potter and Governor Ted Kulongoski.
It seems that on Friday, Potter asked the Governor is he would protect the recent same-sex marriage of Potter's daughter. "The governor," writes Sarasohn, "seemed unsettled by the question."
Such a question, of course, is unsettling because it underscores the new dynamic of the same-sex debate in Oregon: The issuance of same-sex marriage licenses by Multnomah County means we're now faced with the possibility of rescinding the rights of the County's same-sex citizens.
Proponents of so-called "civil unions" (as if all state-sanctioned marriage wasn't already a civil and secular, not a religious, union) need to do some serious soul-searching here. If they, like the Governor, are unsettled by the prospect of voiding the same-sex marriages which have been performed in Multnomah County, then perhaps that's the first step towards them recognizing that if different-sex marriage is a right, then same-sex marriage is as well.
Likely, the Governor (and other proponents of "civil unions") somewhere does possess an innate sense that the unequal granting of privilege is anathema to a free society. But because so many in our culture cannot seem to divorce (no pun intended) religious marriage from civil and secular marriage as provided for by the state, the political question of same-sex marriage becomes a minefield of cognitive dissonance.
Making the connection between the political and the personal helps to break through that dissonance. Once proponents of "civil unions" must confront the reality of married same-sex couples, it becomes that much more difficult to allow the privilege of civil and secular marriage be extended only to one class of citizens.
Which brings us to the public opinion poll published in today's paper. This statewide poll of 400 registered voters asked respondents to choose which of three statements best reflected their own point of view.
Thirty-four percent (34%) said, "I am opposed to any legal recognition of same-sex couples regardless of what form it takes or what it is called."
Thirty-two percent (32%) said, "I support the right of same-sex couples to marry in the same way and with the same legal rights as a woman and a man."
Twenty-nine percent (29%) said, "I oppose same-sex marriages but support the idea of civil unions between same-sex couples that would legally recognize their relationship."
What's the newspaper's take on this? "That means there could be a majority for some form of civil union."
Maybe not.
If the 32% who support same-sex marriage do so because they consider the equal granting of the marriage privilege to be a matter of fundamental civil rights, don't count on them to support a "civil unions" compromise.
But the poll numbers do suggest a different possibility: Outreach to the 29% who currently oppose same-sex marriage but support "civil unions." This group needs to become to target of a campaign to persuade them of the distinctions between religious marriage and civil marriage. We need to try to explain to them the folly of granting equal privileges but calling them by different names.
And that doesn't even address the fact that most legal definitions of "civil unions" (for same-sex couples or otherwise) don't extend the full panoply of legal rights as does what the state calls marriage.
Finally, on this particular aspect, the paper's editorial board, while still hammering away on the politics, does take a moment to briefly focus on the personal:
Now that the bell is rung, it's appropriate for Oregonians to reflect and consider the unabashed joy among the couples who've sought to marry.
The mood in the lines stretching around the Multnomah County administrative center in Southeast Portland last week was not one of anger or frivolity, but of quiet jubilation. Of the more than 1,200 couples granted marriage licenses by Friday, many have shared lives and homes in Oregon for decades; many had parents, siblings or children present to celebrate the day with laughter and tears.
"On television and from a distance, these unions may look political," the paper writes. "Up close, however, they seemed deeply personal and heartfelt." Which is precisely the connection that's been lacking by keeping this debate at the arm's length of intellectual hypothesis.
Before we leave this item behind for one focusing on the paper's coverage of the process question, we want to pull one more piece out of the article on the opinion poll:
Among voters younger than 35, 53 percent said gay couples should be able to legally marry; 25 percent of voters age 55 and older said that should be the case.
"Young people are growing up in an era when they know gay and lesbian people," [Roey Thorpe, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon] said. That, she said, makes them likely to want full equality for "people in their family and among their friends."
[Tim Nashif of the newly formed Defense of Marriage Coalition] said younger people may become more resistant to gay marriage as they grow older, marry and have children. But he said he couldn't predict that.
It would be a safe bet to avoid such a prediction. Young voters don't tend towards support for same-sex marriage because they aren't married or have children, but precisely for the reason Thorpe offers: To them, gays and lesbians are not some "other" which threatens the fabric of their medieval views of society, commitment, and love.
Update
Since we alluded to the differences between marriage and "civil unions" (let alone domestic partnerships), we direct readers to a one-page comparison chart provided by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.