Civil Marriage is a Civil Right

Massachusetts' highest court is poised to issue a decision in the Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health case arising from the denial of marriage licenses to seven same-sex couples by their local town and city registrars.

We believe the court should rule in favor of the plaintiffs and grant all gay and lesbian couples in the state the right to marry under civil law.

Same-sex couples now live in every community in Massachusetts and are raising children who attend schools alongside other children. They are rebuilding our inner cities and populating our suburbs. They are working in nearly every type of job the state has to offer. These families deserve the same civil rights and protections of more traditional families in the state.

Various churches and religious groups will continue to oppose gay marriage, and certainly that is their right in a country that holds the separation of church and state as one of its dearest
principles. No church, synagogue or mosque shall ever be required to perform a gay marriage. But religious groups should not be able to determine the state's civil law on marriage.

Marriage emerged in human history out of religion, and has evolved as a civil institution intended to promote the social good. Here in Massachusetts, marriage has been governed by civil, not religious, law since the founding of the commonwealth.

Civil marriage, itself, has evolved in our legal system. At one time, it was illegal for a black or Native American to marry a white person in Massachusetts. Old marriage laws also stripped
women of their legal identity upon their wedding.

But the courts and society saw fit to change the law. That time has come again. In Goodridge vs. Department of Health, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has the
obligation to look at the Massachusetts Constitution, which is very clear on the issue of protecting individual rights and promoting equal rights.

The current situation for the members of a gay couple today are clearly a second-class position. They are denied a long list of rights and protections granted automatically to married
couples.

These families do not have the same access to health insurance for themselves or their children, the same guarantees to visitation at hospitals. They have no rights to medical
decision-making for their partners. They qualify for no death benefits available to spouses. They have no inheritance rights and must take elaborate legal steps to jointly adopt their children.This discrimination can be as simple for a gay couple as going to rent a car at an airport car rental agency and having to pay extra fees so that both partners can drive because the two people are not married, even though they might have been partners for decades.

Down through the ages, marriage has been viewed as a forward step for two people in love, a way for them to join forces to build a stronger, more mutually supportive relationship, or better create more secure conditions to raise children.

Gay men and lesbians have as much need and as much right to the benefits of civilly recognized unions as any heterosexual couple.

By affirming that publicly, the state's highest court will be sending a strong message to the nation. Massachusetts would be a leader in the same way as the province of Ontario, where a
similar lawsuit was recently decided and marriage was opened to gay people. Now the entire nation of Canada is poised to grant that right to all people seeking to marry in Canada, making Canada the third country after the Netherlands and Belgium to legalize same-sex marriage.  This country will surely not be as quick to make same-sex unions a nationwide right. Reform in the United States, especially civil rights reform, including the rescinding of laws banning interracial marriage, typically begins in the most progressive states and then spreads south.

Vermont took a bold step in 2000 when its highest court ruled that the state could not exclude same-sex couples from the benefits and protections that its laws provide to opposite-sex married couples.

That court demanded the state legislature establish either the right to marriage or a civil union that provided the same rights and protections of marriage.

After much debate, the legislature passed the civil union law despite strong opposition from the Catholic Church.

A state report nearly a year later found that, despite grim predictions, the law had very little effect on the general population. Some 1,500 same-sex couples had been married in towns across the state. The couples tended to be older and better educated than the general population of newlyweds. Significantly more women took advantage of the law than men, and Massachusetts residents were among the top group of out-of-staters to travel to Vermont to register their civil unions.

Now it's time for Massachusetts to give that right -- marriage in this case and not a separate-but-equal civil union right -- to its thousands of same-sex couples who are an integral part
of the state.

And we predict we will find that the law has little effect on the general population of Massachusetts, but it will have a profound effect on the state's gay and lesbian people who will
finally have the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of the population. That's not too much to ask.