The movement towards marriage equality in the United States has taken on a different tone in the year 2014. The term “marriage equality” itself is a seismic shift from the debate over “same-sex marriage” of only a few years ago, indicating that the question being asked is not one of gender, but one of fairness.The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) declined the opportunity to address the issue, apparently preferring to let it play itself out socially, and playing out it is.
!["Rainbow flag and blue skies" by Ludovic Bertron [CC lic/Wikimedia]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/640px-Rainbow_flag_and_blue_skies-500x332.jpg)
“Rainbow flag and blue skies” by Ludovic Bertron [CC lic/Wikimedia]
Buck is effectively a lifelong Pagan, having been reared that way since he was a child in the early 1980s. He’s not personally impacted by the question of marriage equality, since, “I have no desire to marry and am not gay, but I have been actively paying attention.” For Buck, following important legal struggles is a life-long hobby. Perhaps its because he’s a computer programmer; Buck’s “paying attention” involves a very close focus on the extreme details and complexities of a given case – including this one.
First, he was quick to point out that the ways this legal environment impacts people is quite nuanced: “I know folks … who have moved so as to be able to get married, who married primarily to get health insurance and other benefits, who live in pro-equality jurisdictions but don’t plan on marriage, etc. How each of those react to the developments is more nuanced than, ‘have been or are being denied marital rights.'”
For many people, what happened this month was anticlimactic. SCOTUS simply chose not to get involved in the debate. Five states, in which marriage bans had been overturned by federal courts, had those rulings effectively ratified by the decision of SCOTUS not to hear an appeal. Six other states with bans were drawn in by virtue of sharing a federal court district with the affected states. A flurry of legal activity followed and, when the dust finally settled, 32 states allowed same-sex marriage. That number has changed several times and could again soon.
“They took more action than I expected,” Buck said of the court. “For each of the 7 cases, their choices were (a) grant cert, (b) deny cert, or (c) hold on to them, doing nothing. I expected (c), a true lack of action. After no case was announced as being granted cert on Friday, I expected them to hold onto all of them, re-listing them for a later conference or generally waiting until a circuit split. I was surprised that all 7 were denied certiorari.”
The road to this point has been anything but smooth. A 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, received strong support in Congress as well as the signature of President Bill Clinton. This marriage act protected states and the federal government from being forced to recognize same-sex unions performed in other states where it was legal.
In 2000, Vermont was the first state to grant any sort of legalization for the union of same-sex couples. However, the legislature acted under a court order and called the product civil unions, rather than marriage. In 2004, another court case led Massachusetts to open marriage to same-sex couples. That year also saw protest marriages performed by the mayors of San Francisco, New Paltz, NY and others.
In reaction to the perceived “war on marriage,” state legislatures passed a number of laws expressly forbidding gay marriage, indicating a strong backlash to the trend. At the same time, several states either passed laws in support of civil unions or domestic partnerships, or were forced to accept full marriage by the courts. The year 2008 saw intense activity on this front, with actions in two states standing out. On the east coast, New York governor David Paterson signed the first-of-its-kind law to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages from a state that hadn’t legalized them. On the west coast, California’s residents voted to amend the commonwealth’s constitution to ban same-sex weddings, making it the first state to overturn court-imposed same-sex marriages.
In the following year, Vermont’s legislature took a leadership role by passing a same-sex marriage bill and overriding a gubernatorial veto. Other states, largely on the coasts, followed in using the word “marriage” in legislation. But the biggest blow to the fight to preserve so-called “traditional marriage” did not come until June 26, 2013, when SCOTUS hit it with a double whammy. The court invalidated a key provision of DOMA and turned away an appeal on behalf of California’s Proposition 8, which had been found unconstitutional by a lower court.
The court’s 2013 ruling on DOMA is an area the Buck was quick to clarify, saying, “Not all of DOMA has been struck down, just some of the more important bits. DOMA still says that states don’t have to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. Striking down DOMA was an important event legally, and certainly made the subsequent court cases across the country easier to argue. Without it, advancement of marriage equality through the courts would have been much slower (especially as the alternative to saying DOMA is unconstitutional would be saying it is constitutional, and thus making it harder to strike down the bans). More importantly, it got rid of the federal ban on marriage recognition, which for actually married couples was immensely important.”
From one perspective, the recent flurry of court rulings seems quick, but in context, the fight has been going on for decades. On the other hand, Buck points to a recent and eye-opening xkcd comic, comparing the acceptance of same-sex marriage to that of interracial marriage:
While same-sex marriage seems long overdue, particularly for those who have waiting a lifetime to marry, the trend towards general popular acceptance reached the mainstream in record time when compared to the popular acceptance of interrracial marriage. And this happened despite the deep ideological divisions in this country. Could full nationwide legal acceptance of same-sex marriage now be close-at-hand? Could nationwide acceptance of true marriage equality, across and between any social divisions, be not far behind?
*32 States include: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina,Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming (as of Oct 23 2014)
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Viewing this issue from Europe, I have to say that I was amazed about the swiftness of this change. While there’s still countries here (like Finland) that don’t allow same sex marriage, states like West Virginia are already on the go. It’s inspirational and neat.
Go America!
In reality, the change was not all that swift. Only the endgame was swift. What we are seeing in the last year or two on gay marriage is the result of 40 years of a nonstop, massive struggle for LGBT rights. I’m using the Stonewall Riot as the start point for the modern movement, but really we can project it back 90 years, when Henry Gerber started the first rights organization in the U.S. (and was promptly arrested for his trouble).
From those first present times stirrings in the 1970s, gay folk and their allies (damn few at first), stood up for themselves, first for the most basic rights to exist. It blows my mind today to realize that when I first came into this world, gay men and women were arrested and imprisoned and institutionalized as mentally ill simply for who they were.
Then in the 80s, they fought for their lives against a disease and a government and society which was indifferent, if not gleeful, about their suffering. For the last 25 years, those fights continued, but the movement, very wisely, took on the hearts and minds struggle. Largely by coming out, they put a human face on homosexuality. It was easy for America to hate gays when they could consign gayness to the other – some seedy guy in the back of an adult theater or cruising the public restrooms in the Castro. When they realized that LGBT people were their daughters and sons and lifelong best buddies and workmates, the calculation changed. They revealed themselves. Their opponents also revealed themselves as vicious religious zealots with no cogent arguments whatsoever. All of these pieces fell into place rather quickly when a critical mass of them came together, but it was a long and ugly struggle to get to that point.
This is why I constantly encourage and challenge pagans to “come out.” It works. We have gay marriage not because Americans suddenly changed their minds, but because a generation of folks put themselves out there and very often paid a heavy price for it – jobs, families, sometimes their lives. They would have nothing to show for 40 years had they not paid that price, and we will have nothing if we stay in the closet and take the path of least resistance.
That’s actually very true. I had forgotten about the stonewalls riots but you are completely right to hail those who stood up when it was actually dangerous to do so.
The city I live in is the fifth or sixth municipality in Georgia to establish a domestic partner registry…which could be construed as a direct defiance of the wording of the state same-sex marriage ban, but hasn’t been challenged so far. In any case, the whole question may become moot pretty soon.
The Georgia ban is being challenged in court as we speak. If it is
struck down, that affects the entire Eleventh Circuit (Georgia, Florida,
Alabama).
Well, let’s hope the GA goes bye-bye! I’d like to see my LGBTQ friends have the same rights I do in Alabama.
They will all fall soon enough. The Supreme Court has tread very carefully to make sure gay marriage doesn’t happen nationally by fiat in such a way that it would be deemed an illegitimate judical mandate. At the same time, essentially all federal courts have made it clear that they find the anti-SSM arguments utterly unpersuasive.
State and local politicians are playing to their bases. Younger politicians, and those with national ambitions, for the most part are embracing the change. Others in the most conservative pockets of the red states feel the need to maintain at least a nominal resistance until the end.
I remember when the Weavers’ Local Council of CoG first looked at this issue, back around the turn of the millenium, and decided to become signatories to the Religious Coalition for Freedom to Marry’s statement in support of marriage equality. I do remember that, initially, some of the members questioned what this question had to do with Wicca or Paganism. Why should we care? Why should we take a stand?
It seems so obvious to us now, in hindsight: whether we are straight or gay, cis or trans, marriage equality matters to Pagans because it is a simple matter of religious liberty to us. Since many of our traditions are more than ready to perform rituals of same gender marriage, it is in fact a form of discrimination against our religion by the government to deny us the right to perform such rituals, while recognizing the rights of clergy in other religions to perform weddings (or not) according to their internal rules. Since there are no rational reasons other than religious belief to deny same gender couples the right to be married by those religions who recognize that rite, it is a form of government establishment of religion to allow the religious beliefs of one sect in this country to dictate marriage law to all the others.
While the argument was new to us, I’m very happy to say that the Weavers LC reached full consensus on supporting marriage equality. Interesting, how freedom and fairness can be such close companions.
I’m a bit curious here. I know the majority of Pagans, regardless of denomination, support Gay Marriage, but are there any notable organisations that oppose it? I can’t think of any myself.
There’s a sui generis outfit called National Organization for Marriage that constantly agitates against it. There’s the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Several Protestant denominations have disciplined clergy who performed same sex marriages against denominational rules. The Mormon church was implicated in the support structure backing an anti-marriage-equality ballot issue in California, though the church was not a formal party to the dispute. State Republican organizations put several anti-marriage-equality issues on the ballot in 2004 to pump Republican turnout and defeat Kerry, and it worked — Ohio passed its ban, defeated Kerry and Kerry lost the national election through losing Ohio. That’s just off the top of my head with no Internet research.
I have heard about this national org. for Marriage. I was maybe more interested to know if there were any Pagan Organisms that opposed gay marriage.
Organizations? I’ve never heard of any. Overall attitude seems to have evolved. I recall hearing J Gordon Melton speak at a CUUPS event, relating that he once was told by a Pagan leader that he (the leader) could see no place in Paganism for homosexuals, given the theological sexual dyad invoked in every Wiccan circle. This was in the late 1980s, and the thrust of Melton’s talk was that Paganism had evolved enormously since he began his research. (Even so, Heathenry had not yet emerged, so the facile equation of Paganism and Wicca went unremarked.) He was speaking to an audience organized by the then leaders of CUUPS, a lesbian couple one of whom was trans*.
I imagined that it would be hard to find any Pagan organizations that would actually reject gay marriage. It’s a good thing IMO but I am also a bit more unsure about Heathenry. Do you think that there is, besides the obvious white supremacist pseudo-religious organizations, any Heathen org that publicly oppose gay lgbt rights?
I have no idea, sorry.
Maybe it’s just that there aren’t any?
Could be. Pagans have it tough enough building religious institutions to spend time on other institutions that do not address survival needs like the Lady Liberty League. Perhaps conscious disconnect from Abrahamic sex values enables Pagans to ponder the question, “What difference does it make to me and my marriage?” and candidly answer, “none.”
I’ve not heard of any Heathen organisation opposing LGBTIA(etc) rights. Possibly due to stories of gender role blurring on the part of some of the gods.
There are a whole slew of fundamentalist Christian groups that do so. NOM is the most prominent, but also Focus on the Family and a bunch of other similar things. They keep schisming. New groups split off because somebody decides they need to be even more hardline. And there are a ton of Republican politicians who campaign on standing against marriage equality.
Or do you mean notable pagan organizations? I’m not aware of any.
ETA: Ah. I see. Answered below.
Massachusetts, Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania are commonwealths. California is a state.
Commonwealth is just a fancy word for state.
Oh, Lordy. Don’t start that argument up in here.
Word.
California is an extra-dimensional state of consciousness to which we happen to assign political and geographical borders and a legal existence!
European here: What’s the difference between a State and a Commonwealth? Does it matter?
There is no practical difference. There sort of was at one point, but there is not now.
None, when referring to any of the 50 states (it’s a historical oddity). “Commonwealth” is also used to describe Puerto Rico and the North Marianna Islands, which are not states.
Okay so it’s just a fancy empty word?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_(U.S._state)
Pretty much. They’ll still correct you in a minute, though.
At the time of the American Revolution, it was a political statement. The government derives its powers from the people and is supposed to act in the interests of all the people. A distinction was being made from some historical republics such as Venice which were oligarchies.
In modern political parlance, the equivalent to commonwealth might be “people’s republic”.
Wow. The People’s Republic of Pennsylvania…
I get it now, thank you !
Why interview a straight person who doesn’t want to marry for this piece? Do queer people not count as “pagan on the street”? Or at least why not interview a variety of people, some of whom are queer, which is much more common in pieces that do that at all — since it comes from TV journalism, where interviewers literally stopped various people who were actually on the street.
Absence of agenda, I presume. What does a straight person with no personal investment in the institution of marriage have to directly gain from supporting same sex marriage/marriage equality?
The problem is that much too often, straight cis people are considered to be “unbiased” about LGBT issues (regardless of whether they are or not), while actual LGBT people are considered “biased” and therefor are not asked. The effect is that straight cis people’s voices are prioritized again, and are especially being prioritized when talking about our lives.
I’m really, really sick of that. It’s privileging straight people on topics that don’t effect them. I don’t care what straight people have to say about same sex marriage, which is also to say my marriage. Not unless they’re somebody whose opinion I have to care about on a personal level. This totally random straight guy “on the street” supports my marriage? How nice. Why is his voice given preference in the press over mine? Why is he being asked to speak on the history of the marriage equality movement, when they are lots of queer people who are even more knowledgeable about it, who li
I find it kinda harsh to bash this guy who’s essentially your ally. Sure, the article could have featured a Gay man instead, but the author has his reasons. Maybe he didn’t knew a Gay guy that was available at the time he was writing the article. Maybe he asked one but got no answer. Maybe he thought that this mere “hetero-cis” had actually an interesting perspective on this whole issue. I don’t know really, but I found the article enlightening, regardless of Buck’s sexual orientation. And who knows, maybe he did weep when DOMA and SSM passed. There’s no way for me to know, but there’s no way for you either.
So criticism is bashing? (Do you fucking know what “bashing” means to queer people? Have you ever been physically attacked for your sexuality? Have you ever even seen a gay bashing in progress? Then do NOT use that fucking term here. Criticism is NOT the same thing as us being beaten and killed.) I’m not allowed to say that an “ally” has unintentionally done harm? This is an ongoing problem, and “allies” (and btw, straight people don’t get to declare themselves or other straight people “allies”; ally is a verb, and you have to actually be doing things that are positive and in concert in order to be allied with us, and giving preference to straight people is not positive) need to know that it’s a problem is they want to be allies.
Buck didn’t have a perspective. He recited some bits and pieces of what’s happened. There was nothing of interest that couldn’t have been found online, nothing that merited an interview with this person, particularly. I’m sure he’s a fine fellow, it’s not a criticism of him. But to interview one single straight person for an article on LGB issues, one who has nothing new or exciting to say, is part of a pattern that supports oppression. It’s analogous to interviewing only one cis man who’s not even in medicine about abortion. His opinion is not relevant to the situation.
But I suppose that you’d insist that men have relevant thoughts on abortion, and that they’re important and need to be heard, and how dare I bash someone for being a mere man, or some such. You’re missing the fucking point. Journalists are ALWAYS interviewing straight white cis men for their opinions on people who aren’t all of those things, and thereby treating the opinions of straight white cis men as the only ones that matter.
And if TPW couldn’t find a queer person to give an opinion, then he needn’t have included an interview at all. All of the things that Buck had to say could easily have been found online. There was no structural need for an interview with anyone at all in this story. That information could simply have been included with the rest of the stuff in the article.
The choice, the specific, active choice, to include only the opinion of a straight cis man is part of a pattern that damages LGBT people. If TPW is genuinely an ally to us, he needs to be aware of that pattern and make choices accordingly.
I actually have been gratuitously harassed and physically attacked for years, not on ground on my sexuality (I’ma good’ol straight-cis guy) but still on grounds of pure red-necked intolerance, so yes I understand a bit what it might mean for LGBT people to be harassed.
Otherwise, you do indeed raise a interesting point :Journalists are ALWAYS interviewing straight white cis men for their opinions on people who aren’t all of those things.
Not being an expert in Media and/or Journalism, I lack the data to really analyse this problem but I would tend to think that you’re right and that it’s an issue that need to be addressed. If you had actually any articles or study on the subject, I would be curious to check those out.
Still, I think that attacking an article on TWH on such grounds is maybe a bit much. TWH has a rather diverse crew and I think everyone would agree to say that they very much try not to discriminate when it comes to people they interview or report on.
If you had done any kind of very simple research on the LGBT issue on TWH you would have encountered numerous articles featuring a wide wide variety of People of different genders and (possibly, because not everyone’s deem it noteworthy to mention it) sexual orientation.
Overall, the majority of articles on the LGBT issue on TWH feature numerous people being interviewed, some of them being, or potentially being LGBT themselves. When it comes to the cis thing, well, as far as I know (link Link), there’s less than 5 per cent of people in the US that identify as cis so one could understand that it might be a bit difficult to find one every time an article is being written.
Otherwise, I hope you will try to see this issue a bit differently. TWH is, as far as the world wide web goes, quite the supportive place for LGBT and if you may not have been “bashing” this article you still appeared extremely hostile in your comment, and I will repeat, I think it’s a rather unproductive thing to do.
Not harassed. BASHED. Go look up “gay bashing” if you don’t understand what I’m talking about. Go look up Matthew Shepherd. People DIE. Go and look at the list of trans people alone who have died this year. Do NOT tell me I am bashing anyone.
I have been queer in a small conservative town in Florida, a place where the hoods and the white sheets come out and circle the gay bar. I have been pagan in that town. I know which was fucking well worse for me. Don’t tell me you know what it’s fucking like.
I am not attacking TWH. If you think that criticism is attacking, you seriously need some perspective. And it is precisely because they try not to discriminate that I am talking about this: so that they know that this is a problem, and can try not to repeat it. I dunno about you, but I appreciate it when I’m told I’m making a mistake, so that I can fix it. I don’t understand why you are so much against simple criticism.
I read TWH every day, and comment a couple of times a week. The only person making me feel unwelcome here just at the moment is YOU. Otherwise, I’m just trying to let the staff know that they are replicating something which is an issue.
“Cis” means that you identify as the gender you were labeled as at birth. Most people are cis. I think you mean that trans people (and genderqueer and other non-cis people) are rare. Yes, they are. But there are at least four or five I can think of off the top of my head who comment on TWH fairly regularly, and indeed I believe there are a couple who have written for it. You can find many blogs by trans, genderqueer, etc, pagans and polytheists online, and indeed entire communities of them. Just as it is responsible journalism to go track down an expert in whatever you’re writing about — and there are far fewer experts in the world on some of the topics TWH writes about than there are people who aren’t cis — it is responsible journalism to find someone who is actually a part of the group under discussion to interview, if you are interviewing anyone.
You are knee-jerk defending TWH, but I am not attacking them. I am trying to give them feedback to help them improve their generally very good coverage of LGBT issues, because this time, they fell short of their usual mark. You don’t seem to be able to wrap your mind around that.
Out of respect, courtesy and because you seem to be both extremely passionate and extremely angry about this issue, I shall not comment on it any further.
Well now I feel like a terrible homosexual for not getting horribly offended at someone using the word ‘bashing’. I don’t feel particularly damaged or oppressed by TWH interviewing a Pagan who is passionate about the subject of the article. Why is this?
You get to feel how you feel, but I get to feel how I feel. You’re not bothered by it, fine, not everybody has to be bothered by the same things.
In the online world, “bashing” is commonly used as a informal synonym for criticism, yes.
For the record, I have seen a “gay bashing” in progress. Myself and my friends drove the scum off, scraped the poor lad off the ground and escorted him home. Fortunately, his injuries were minor – we arrived in time to prevent the half a dozen youths from repeatedly stamping on his skull.
At the time, however, I didn’t consider it “gay bashing”, I considered it a serious assault against a person. I didn’t even know it was a gender-motivated attack until after the event. I just figured it was just another casualty of “Friday night”.
My point? Possibly that people sometimes just dislike persecution.
Straight cis people were the whole game, politically and culturally in the gay marriage debate and really the larger LGBT rights struggle. What they think matters, not because their opinion is more knowledgeable or worth more than a queer pagan living it, but because of their sheer numbers. None of the changes which have happened could have happened unless the straight cis majority could be led to a place where they could see and respect justice.
Convincing them matters, sure. Not what I was talking about. Letting them talk about us instead of letting us speak for ourselves is oppressive. You’re missing the point and defending privileged people who don’t need defending.
Yes. Agreed. The absence of “gay bias” would be “straight bias.”
It’s absurd, actually, to think that we can find a voice to speak on this topic that would be better qualified than that of the men and women who are directly affected by the laws on same gender marriage.
I suspect, though, that Buddha Buck was chosen because the author knew him and knew he was well-informed and articulate on the subject. I think, in other words, that he was a convenient source, rather than one chosen for deeper reasons.
I like and respect both the writer and Buddha Buck, but I’d be much more interested in what he has to say on, for instance, what it’s like to have been Pagan from birth. I think that it was a misstep to cite him here.
Thank you for your comment. We do choose our interviewees very carefully and with extreme sensitivity to the subject. In Terence’s search for some new voices for this report, he found that this particular interviewee had some interesting points to offer. Since the article was an update on the legal progress only and not really a community response piece, we moved forward.
Regardless, I am very cognizant of the concerns that you raise regarding mainstream reporting and we do strive to do the best we can to offer a diversity of voices and opinion. I appreciate your feedback on this issue.
Thank you.
Thank you Heather for the response, and thank you Mad Gastronomer for bringing up the issue. I, too, found myself pulled out of the article’s reporting and wondered why a straight pagan voice was the only one chosen, when so many queer voices are available who have not only fought on the frontlines of the political struggle, but who have informed or founded various pagan and polytheist trads. Those voices could teach us the history from the inside. I would love to see a follow-up article with some of them included. A further suggestion – if possible, look outside the blogsphere for some of those voices.