Why are Americans so hung up on gay marriage?

November 10, 7:12 PMInternational LGBT Issues ExaminerKelvin Lynch

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  Gay marriage works in other countries, why not the U.S.? (Photo: Reuters)

Gays are not popular in the United States.  We make up only about 2% to 10% of the general population, depending on whom you ask.  It's no wonder that in all 31 states where the issue of gay marriage has been put to popular vote over the years, it has gone down in flames.  Americans just have a big, nasty hang-up over gay marriage at the ballot box.

But why is same-gender marriage so successful in other countries?  Gay people make up the same percentage of the population worldwide.  An argument often spewed by the most vehemently anti-gay opposition is "send them all to an island somewhere, get them out of my country." (Don't they realize this is every citizen's country? I suppose not.)   But really, even if that were possible, wouldn't those same opponents continue to have gay children or grandchildren?  Would they send those gay children to fantasy island too?

For the record, gay marriage is legal in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden. In the U.S., it is legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont.  It is recognized in Dutch Aruba and Antilles, Israel, Washington, D.C., New York, and California.  Several other countries perform civil unions for same-gender couples that fall short of marriage.

A piece in The New York Times Magazine looks at gay marriage where it began - the Netherlands.  The Dutch were the first to legalize national gay marriage in 2001 - in fact, they had registered partnerships for same-gender couples by 1998.  But it didn't come without a fight.  According to UCLA law professor M. V. Lee Badgett, gay activists worked for 15 years against religious groups, most notably Christians, to get equal rights.  And even today, not every Dutch citizen is on board - there are civil officials who refuse to perform gay marriages in the Netherlands on religious grounds.  

Similarly, in South Africa, where gay marriage was legalized in 2005, it still faces opposition from religious leaders, who refuse to perform same-gender unions.  Oliver Meth, writing for Women24.com, blames opposition to same-gender marriage on a larger popular misunderstanding about homosexuality, and flawed assumptions that gay people enjoy the same civil rights protections as everyone else. He notes that there are also many stereotypes about gay relationships that are simply not true.

Meth writes, "The stereotype has it that gays are promiscuous, unable to form lasting relationships, and the relationships that do form are shallow and uncommitted. However, just like in straight society, where such casual relationships also exist, they are a small minority, existing primarily among the young. Indeed, one of the most frequent complaints of older gay men is that it is almost impossible to find quality single men to get into a relationship with, because they’re already all "taken"!"

Meth points the finger of blame for opposition against same-gender marriage in South Africa squarely on social conservatives:

Conservatism, as a political movement and a way of life, needs to come to grips with the reality of gay relationships in precisely the same way it came to grips with its errors regarding to racial segregation: own up to its mistake, and simply expand its moral boundaries to include gays and gay marriage.

Most older conservatives now acknowledge that they once erred in "keeping blacks in their place." They should make the same acknowledgment for gays and their right to marry, and live happy, open and contented lives in each other’s arms, without fear or discrimination.

There are those who want to prove that homosexuality is a “deviant lifestyle” and are anxious to show that the rights demands are lopsided to the number of demanders, as though the right to fair treatment depended on a head count.

Sound familiar? 

The evidence suggests socially conservative, relgion-based views about same-gender marriage are woefully misguided.  In the Times article, Badgett said,

I looked hard in the Netherlands for evidence of changes in the cultural idea of marriage and for evidence that heterosexuals and gay and lesbian couples have different ideas and behavior related to marriage — but I couldn’t find any. The trends in marriage and divorce didn’t change. The ideas about marriage expressed by lesbian and gay couples lined up with the ideas of their heterosexual peers: marriage is about the love and commitment of two people who work together as equals to weather life’s ups and downs, become members of each other’s extended families, and often (but not always) raise children together.

Badgett concludes that all of the evidence suggests that same-sex couples will fit right into our current understanding of marriage in the U.S.  Marriage itself will not be affected. Dutch heterosexuals appear to have adapted to the legal change by changing how they see same-sex couples, not how they see marriage. Now they see gay couples as people who should get married, and they are happy to remind their gay and lesbian family members of that fact!

He also says he sees why the word “marriage” matters. "The Dutch same-sex couples I interviewed saw their civil union-like status as 'a bit of nothing,' or as a political compromise that an accountant might invent," he said.  "Only marriage has the social understanding to back up the legal status, and the social meaning is as important as the legal rights. Civil unions just don’t have that social meaning.

One woman he interviewed put it this way:

'Two-year-olds understand marriage. It’s a context, and everyone knows what it means.'"

As in Europe, the most liberal U.S. states — the most tolerant of homosexuality, the least religious, and the ones with more family diversity — take the earliest action through courts and legislatures to legally recognize same-sex couples. That’s not surprising, of course, but it suggests that we’re going at about the right pace for social change.

So what is your take on the U.S. majority's hang-up over gay marriage?  Why can't religious and social conservatives let go of the idea that same-gender marriage somehow subverts the so-called "sanctity" of marriage?  Is it simply the word "marriage" we are fighting over, or the fear that same-gender marriage is somehow a threat to religion and society?

It seems that as long as religious conservatives are allowed the right to vote based solely on their distorted ideas about homosexuality and gay marriage, it will never be a reallity in every sovereignty in the United States.  The only way this country will see natiionalized same-gender marriage is through federal legislation or a federal court ruling, as in other countries that have legalized gay marriage.  Forget the ballot box, forget trying to sway majority public opinion. It's just so much wasted time and money, and the continous defeats simply result in dejection, heartbreak, anger, and infighting in the LGBT community.  This battle must be fought, and won, in Washington, D.C. 

There will always be opposition from social conservatives, but through all the rhetoric and muckracking, one truth remains crystal clear - we deserve our equal rights, now.

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