Gay marriage/An advance for equality

Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial, 11/21/2003

When someone you've never met gets married, does it bother you?

Does it make any difference to you whether this someone marries a lout or a limnologist, a philanderer or a philanthropist? Most likely not, for few of us care to monitor the personal lives of strangers. Live and let live, we say, and we mean it.

We mean it, at least, until a touchy topic arises like the desire of gays and lesbians to marry. Then many people get stirred up and want the state to prohibit such behavior, as most long have done. But as the Massachusetts Supreme Court said Tuesday, in some spheres of human interaction, the state just can't tell people what to do. Then the "live and let live" philosophy isn't just a good idea; it's the law.

So it goes with gay marriage. That opinions about its morality are divided is beyond doubt, and beyond the consideration of lawmakers. So said the Massachusetts high court, which found that the right to marriage isn't properly governed by public sentiment or history or moral scruple - but by the constitutional demand for equality under the law.

The finding troubles many who insist it flouts the very definition of marriage - which, they maintain, involves a legal union between a man and a woman. But sympathy for that traditional view can't trump the constitutional declaration - in Massachusetts and every other U.S. jurisdiction - that all citizens should be able to enjoy the "protections and benefits" of any civil entitlement.

In the eyes of government, after all, marriage is nothing but that - a licensing law that confers privileged legal status on those who make use of it. To adherents of many faiths, marriage carries powerful spiritual significance as well. But nothing in the court ruling insists that any religious group bless a marriage its beliefs do not sanction. All it demands is that, in the civil realm, all citizens receive equal treatment.

This ruling is consistent with many others recognizing the humanity and human rights of gay and lesbian Americans, and is but another step in acknowledging that sexual orientation cannot be invoked to limit liberty. This plain recognition - the strongest and clearest of any in the nation - is likely to stoke a political firestorm in the presidential race now heating up. But if candidates use this issue to inflame passions over whether gay marriage is right or wrong, they'll be ignoring what the Massachusetts court said: It isn't up to government to decide moral questions of this sort. Its task is to treat people as people.

'Freedom to Marry Rings' image upper right © H. Mitchell.