Gay rights explode on social scene
By JACK SPILLANE
Standard-Times staff writer
February 15, 2004
The first American gay couple to win notoriety for trying to get a marriage license were an Air Force veteran and a librarian from Minneapolis in 1971.
Jack Baker was a law student at the University of Minnesota when he tried to obtain a license to marry Michael McConnell.
He was denied the license and took the matter to the courts, where he lost repeatedly.
He and Mr. McConnell also lost their jobs in the face of mounting publicity as their case wound its way to the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Mr. Baker and Mr. McConnell did win a photo spread in Look Magazine for their efforts, but they never attracted much support even with the gay community.
In fact, attempts by gay men and women to marry in the 1970s and '80s were routinely marginalized by the early gay rights movement.
The initial movement was more focused on access to independence and vocational opportunities for lesbians and sexual freedom for gay men, according to gay rights historians.
"There were feminist-lesbians who criticized marriage for being patriarchal and oppressive and there were gay male sexual liberationists who rejected the patterns of monogamy that marriage historically entailed," said Dale Carpenter, a professor specializing in sexual orientation law at the University of Minnesota.
In addition to the ambivalence of some in the gay community about marriage, even gay activists who endorsed the concept in the 1970s and '80s saw it as a longer-term goal, he said.
"It was seen as something way off in the future because of the basic issues of (gays) being criminals and employment discrimination and hate crimes," Mr. Carpenter said. "It was seen as a loser, a guaranteed loser."
But that was then and this is now.
A third of a century later, the movement for gay marriage rights has arrived not only in Massachusetts, but across the country and in much of the Western world.
Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands have legalized same-sex marriage. Last week, as the Massachusetts Legislature debated the issue, San Francisco authorities performed at least 15 same-sex weddings last week and issued about a dozen more marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples in an open challenge to California law.
The issue has become the preeminent social debate of the day.
"There is a large amount of agreement now that as an ultimate goal, the option of gay marriage ought be on the gay rights agenda," Mr. Carpenter said.
Two developments over the last two decades are said to have changed the attitude of the gay community toward marriage: the rapid growth in the number of lesbians raising children and the effect of AIDS in the community of gay men.
As they raised children, lesbians realized they needed greater financial protections connected to child care responsibilities and benefits afforded other parents.
After the onset of AIDS, gay men wanted greater proxy rights for health care and inheritance issues connected to their sick partners.
"I think that the culture has been moving steadily toward greater acceptance of gay people, more equality in the law for gay people and more recognition in the law of the general needs of gay people and their children," Mr. Carpenter said.
A catalyst for the movement toward marriage rights among gays, according to many, was Andrew Sullivan, a gay man and national conservative analyst.
Mr. Sullivan, an editor of The New Republic, one of the most influential political magazines in the country, put the issue on the national agenda in a 1989 groundbreaking article titled "Here comes the groom: a conservative case for gay marriage."
In the article, he argued that civil gay marriage was needed in order to avoid the bureaucratic mess of increasingly popular domestic partnership contracts.
Unlike domestic partnership laws, gay marriage doesn't open up avenues for heterosexuals to get benefits without the responsibilities of marriage, such as two men living together as roommates or a brother and sister, he wrote.
Mr. Sullivan contended that legalizing same-sex marriage would prevent nightmares of litigation from domestic partnership laws.
He also endorsed the concept on the grounds of societal stability.
The same culture that criticizes gays for being promiscuous cannot rationally argue for excluding them from the institution that encourages monogamy, he said.
"Gay marriage is not a radical step," he wrote. "It avoids the mess of domestic partnership. It is human. It is conservative in the best sense of the word. It's about relationships. Given that gay relationship will always exist, what possible social goal is advanced by framing the law to encourage those relationships to be unfaithful, undeveloped and insecure?" he asked.
Mr. Sullivan's point of view may have gained acceptance in most sectors of the gay community, but it has been extremely controversial in society at large.
The movement toward gay marriage resulted in the federal 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that in turn allowed some 40 individual states to ban gay marriage.
But the movement has also resulted in lawsuits that ended with courts in four states -- Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont and now Massachusetts -- ruling that gays have the right to marry or have civil unions. Some states -- most notably Vermont and California -- granted either the right for civil unions or many of the benefits associated with them.
Gay rights historians contend that even with vehement opposition, things are changing.
While it took a century for blacks to win full civil rights after the Civil War, the gay rights movement has only been around since the 1970s, Mr. Carpenter said.
"As cultural transformations go, the march to gay equality has been unusually fast," he said. "In the space of 40 years or so, we have gone from every state in the country criminalizing gay sex to many states and cities and companies recognizing domestic partners and protecting people from discrimination," he said.
Forty years ago there were no positive gay characters in television in the movies and now there are many characters, he said. During the same period, the country has gone from having no openly gay politicians to hundreds of them holding office all around the county, he said.
If gays begin to legally marry in Massachusetts in May, the public might be fully used to the idea as a non-event by the time any constitutional amendment is voted on in November 2006, he said.
"The optimistic view is that if people have two years to see that it doesn't bring about the end of the world, then it might be an example for the rest of the country," he said.
Mr. Carpenter acknowledged, however, that the other result could be that gay marriage so disturbs the rest of the country that a federal constitutional amendment will be adopted.
"That amendment would probably not be repealed in our lifetimes if it passes," he said.
Whatever happens, according to Mr. Carpenter, it is most likely that the decision in Massachusetts will affect only Massachusetts. That's because the U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to wade into the contentious same-sex marriage issue until there is more consensus on it, he said.
For the time being, the federal Defense of Marriage of Act will probably result in each state deciding the issue for itself, he said.
"It's too hot an issue right now," Mr. Carpenter said. "The court tends to shy away from contentious social issues, the exception being the abortion issue."
In the meantime, Greg Johnson, a sexual orientation law professor at Vermont Law School, said that the civil union law instituted in that state was a major step forward for gays.
Although most states refused to recognize the benefits Vermont granted to same-sex united partners, some did, he said.
In addition, civil unions offered gays the option of defining their relationships in a way totally different from heterosexuals, free from many religious traditions that have condemned them, he said.
"Some say that civil unions speak directly to the lesbian and gay experience in a way that traditional marriage does not," he said.
Whatever happens in Massachusetts, the same-sex marriage movement has advanced because far more people are now familiar with the legitimate needs of gays, Mr. Johnson said.
"The whole debate in Massachusetts has greatly, greatly advanced the national movement," he said. "I think we'll see more same-sex cases because of it."
Mr. Carpenter, who also teaches courses on constitutional and sexual orientation law, does not believe that gay marriage will necessarily develop into the politically divisive issue that many predict.
He wrote a brief on behalf of the Republican Unity Coalition, a national organization of Republicans, both straight and gay, committed to making sexual orientation a "non-issue" within the Republican Party and in the nation.
He noted that despite President George W. Bush's hinting that he might endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the president has been careful to not say that he definitely will. That's because Republican leaders realize that many moderate voters have no appetite for an amendment that would seem like gay bashing, he said.
Mr. Carpenter predicts that the Defense of Marriage laws enacted in 38 states will hold and that the issue will largely become relegated to the individual states.
For the foreseeable future, he envisions a country in which gays may have marriage or civil unions in some states but not in others.
"Many conservatives who oppose gay marriage also oppose a constitutional amendment because they believe in federalism, the right of the states to determine for themselves their own policies on important matters like marriage and family," he said.
"A lot of conservatives believe that this is something that ought to be resolved in Massachusetts, however it's resolved," he said.
[This story appeared on Page B1 of The Standard-Times on February 15, 2004.]
Response by Tim Campbell
Standard-Times gay marriage predictions too dire
By Tim Campbell
Written June 2, 2004.
(Not published by S-T yet)
Please let me respond to some factual errors and pessimistic predictions in Jack Spillane’s February 15, 2004 article “Gay rights explode on social scene.”
For starters, Jack Baker and Mike McConnell won notoriety for applying for a marriage license on May 18, 1970, not in 1971 as Spillane states. Their 1971 marriage got very little news attention and was never dealt with by the courts--yet.
The courts will, however, surely deal with that marriage in the near future since McConnell just used that later marriage license to sue the Bush administration and the IRS over a joint income-tax return.
The lawsuit is McConnell v USA, Minnesota District Court, May 18, 2004. McConnell filed the lawsuit on the thirty-fourth anniversary of his first application for a license to marry.
Next, Spillane alleges Baker and McConnell both lost their jobs over the gay marriage issue. Not so. Baker was elected student body president at the University and beat off an attempt by some Minnesota authorities to deny him a law license. Only McConnell lost his job. He had been nominated to a position with the University of Minnesota library system.
Third, Spillane repeatedly refers to “gay historians” without naming his list of such experts. I concluded that Dale Carpenter, a gay Republican faculty member at the University, was nearly Spillane’s only authority on gay history. One wonders how Spillane and Carpenter connected for this reporting.
Spillane’s sentence that really ticks me off is this: “Even gay activists who endorsed the concept in 1970s and `80s saw it as a longer-term goal….It was seen as a loser, a guaranteed loser.” Spillane is quoting Carpenter.
Who in hades do Spillane and Carpenter mean by “gay activists.” I lived through those years as an instructor at the University of Minnesota and Jack Baker and Mike McConnell were known as the “gay activists.”
The people who called gay marriage a “loser” were low-level local Democratic politicians seeking office and trying to coopt the gay rights movement by promising they would take care of gays eventually. They hated the name “activists.”
The primary culprit was University history professor Allan Spear. Spear also liked to call Baker and McConnell “the lunatic fringe.” Ironically, Spear won his first election to the Minnesota Senate only because Jack Baker endorsed him.
Am I right in guessing Spillane and Carpenter are now canonizing Spear as a gay historian and a “gay activist”? That’s really queer. Spear was dragging his feet back then. Today, his tail is in Jurassic Park.
Finally about Cartenper and Spillane’s negative predictions that the courts are going to leave gay marriage up to the states.
Two things are self-evident: First, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act has already federalized the gay marriage issue. It'’ too late for the courts to leave it to the states.
Second, the current U.S. Supreme Court already bit the bullet on the hardest gay rights issue: the sodomy laws. More over, sodomy is now referred to as a “Lewinski.” Nobody bats an eye over sodomy anymore.
Let me predict that longterm gay relationships like Baker and McConnell’s, are simple not going to freak out this Supreme Court. They may even be impressed with their 38 years together, as most are. They dignify the very idea of marriage.
And super finally, I do not buy Carpenter’s analysis of gay history. Yes AIDS may have helped gay marriage gain popularity. Yes, a lesbian baby boom may have helped lesbian marriage gain popularity. Still, Carpenter misses the biggest cause: gay marriage is popular now because closetry is dead. Contemporary gays and lesbians instinctively seek recognition of their relationships, just like all other lovers. Halleluja!
I hope the Standard-Times will continue to cover the gay marriage issue. Maybe you will even recognize that your predictions are too dire.
Be advised that a response to McConnell v USA is due June 7. That court is on-line.
Tim Campbell, Director
FirstCoupleXyXy Fan Club
4326 Brookfield Drive
Houston, TX 77045
832-282-9104
timcampbellxyx@yahoo.com
[Tim Campbell taught French at the University of Minnesota from 1970-1972. He also published the GLC Voice newspaper in Minneapolis from 1979-1992.]
[Baker-McConnell website is www.may-18-1970.org]
[Fan club email: firstgaycouplefanclub@yahoo.com]
[Campbell blog: www.timcampbellxyx.blogspot.com]
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