Let the People Vote--On Hetero Divorce

New York's State Senate voted against marriage equality by a decisive margin. After the result in Maine, should we be surprised?

Indeed, was an outcome that bolsters our civil rights truly the point of the exercise? And--perhaps most important, though no one talks about it--wouldn't it have been too easy if New York suddenly became the next sixth state to embrace marriage equality? (For those keeping count, New York would have been the eighth state where our families gained full equality before the law, had California and Maine not put our families up to a popular vote.)

What I mean is this: gaining and protecting our civil right to marriage has been like a game of Twister: left foot on an anti-gay constitutional amendment; right hand on the legislative courage in Iowa that led to marriage equality in the heartland. It would have been wonderful for a victory in New York, but somehow I found myself doubting that the game would proceed that smoothly.

Then there's the mundanity factor. The targeting of our civil rights used to be as shocking as it was outrageous: now we've sadly gotten somewhat accustomed to it. Then it was seeing our existing rights stripped away by voter initiatives that was new and terrifying; well, it's still terrifying, but the newness has worn off, and no doubt we can expect to see it become a well-worn tactic before the battle is over.

Rights-snatching by right-wing and religious groups has already started to seem disappointingly commonplace. California's rescinding of marriage equality made major headlines for weeks; the shock wave rippled through our community like a tsunami, and then rippled again with aftershocks as the jubilant religious right kicked us while we were down, trying to paint our overwhelmingly peaceful nationwide rallies as massings of anarchists.

The outcome in Maine was another sharp shock; the anti--gay right foamed and grinned, but though the loss stung, especially for Maine families, our community, on a national level, bounced back quickly--and without the hundreds of rallies that Prop. 8 excited. The New York vote didn't go unnoticed, but neither did it excite tremendous commentary--except from Maggie Gallagher, the leader of anti-gay group (and, some say, front for the Mormon church) the National Organization for Marriage. Gallagher was quick to make sweeping pronouncements about the New York vote serving as a shot across the bow of progressive politicians in New Jersey and New Hampshire.

Moreover, with New York's senate having weighed in, the focus--split since the election between New York and New Jersey anyway--shifted back to the Garden State, where marriage equality has a rapidly vanishing window for success. If lawmakers there run out the clock on Gov. Corzine's tenure, the man who takes his place--Chris Christie, an anti-gay pol--will ensure that no such family-friendly law comes into effect under his watch.

The drama in New Jersey is even more piquant than it was in New York. Did we really expect to win in New York? After the winding, wearing drama in Albany, the vote itself was almost destined to be anticlimactic. It would have been nice for New York's senators to have stood with us, but even before the vote that seemed like wishful thinking. But there was a more practical and immediate use for the vote, which was to identify who, among the senate would actually stand up and be counted as friends to our families. With midterm elections due next year, it's good to know these things.

New Jersey politics have also involved a long, drawn-out, and frustrating path, though it's not been as high-profile. The state's drama hasn't run a voltaic current through the nation's attention the way California, New York, and even Washington and Maine (briefly) did--until now, that is. Now, even Jersey's Ultra-Orthodox rabbis, generally content to render unto Caesar and confine themselves to the world of spiritual matters, have seen fit to do a bit of politicking against other people's family rights.

But whether the vote happens or not, and whichever way it might go if it does take place, New Jersey will fade back into being... well, New Jersey... even faster than Maine and New York's anti-gay choices faded from headlines. Meantime, California still draws our eyes with every quiver of a report: will there be a repeal vote next year? Or in 2012? Yes? No? Inquiring minds want to know, and culture warriors seem set to strap on their megaphones and their money belts as soon as the word is given.

Better yet, one creative California citizen, John Marcotte, has started a movement to bring real protection for the institution of marriage to the state--by seeking to put an initiative on the ballot to ban divorce. Does this measure, which would have a discernible real-world effect on marriage, stand a chance of being passed by the very same voters who sought to "protect" marriage by denying it to their gay and lesbian neighbors, relatives, and co-workers?

It would only make sense in a world where people vote according to their consciences, rather than their egos. But radio rhetoric notwithstanding, that's not the world we live in: any vote that constrains even the morally questionable freedoms of the majority will not be approved by the majority; that's why we don't see ballot initiatives being funded by the Catholics and the Mormons that would outlaw drinking, gambling, or adultery. Don't look for the married heteros who snatched marriage rights away from gay families to actually go ahead and approve a law that would put teeth in the duration and enforceability in those "till death" vows, and deprive themselves of divorce.

Frankly, I wouldn't want divorce to be made illegal. That's too cruel even for people who wished, and enacted, genuine and monumental cruelty on our families with Proposition 8. But I do hope that the measure makes it to the ballot. It might do our hetero fellow citizens a little bit of good to feel what we feel come every election cycle: to feel what it's like to have their sovereign rights over their own homes, their own families, and their own bodies put up for a vote by people who have absolutely no stake in the matter, and no true right to constrain the private consensual conduct or the domestic decisions of others--to be treated, in short, like the property of "the people" rather than like human beings. The novelty and the shock of it might wake people up to the harm their votes have done to our families.

That's why I say: Let the people vote--on divorce rights.

Meantime, let's be realistic about the zig-zag course that marriage--and all of our legal rights--will take. And let's embrace that two-step legislative and judicial tango by remembering that the harder the battle, the sweeter the eventual victory will be, for ourselves or, if it comes to that, for our children.

In other words, this game of marriage Twister can only go on so long before it collapses in a big, giggling pile. It might just about be time to tickle the straights who don't comprehend why putting people's rights up to a vote is offensive.