(cross-posted from Loaded Orygun, Oregon's progressive community)
I know it will shock all of you to learn this, but occasionally I peek at other blogs, and even more occasionally I find something inspirational or just plain useful there. So it was with the New York Times' Freakonomics blog a few days ago.The blog entry is called "Swimming Pools and Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The author is Yale professor Ian Ayres. He's talking about the US military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy but the underlying principles are applicable to any form of de jure discrimination. Details below the jump.
Professor Ayres writes:
There are always two ways of ending de jure discrimination: you can level up, or level down. In the late 1950s, the estimable city of Greensboro, N.C., operated a whites-only swimming pool. When a group of African Americans petitioned the city council to end the segregation, the council relented –- by closing the pool to both whites and blacks.
In case you're not following him, he elucidates.
As such, there are also two ways to end the military’s de jure discrimination based on sexual orientation. We can either repeal DADT, or we could extend its application to heterosexuals as well. If extended, no soldier could talk about his or her orientation without risk of exclusion.
This, of course, would be leveling DOWN.
While we imagine the prospect of forbidding heterosexual members of the military from talking about their husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, and children -- and remember, these restrictions are the reality of daily life for gay servicemen and women -- he moves on to the next obvious application of this principle: marriage equality.
My own church, St. Thomas Episcopal in New Haven, tried a version of this strategy. In 2004, the church vestry adopted a resolution “calling for St. Thomas’s clergy to treat same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples equally in administering the sacrament of marriage,” as the church Web site describes it. The Bishop was not amused, and within 3 days he called an emergency meeting warning our rector, Father Michael Ray, that he risked being defrocked if he performed marriage ceremonies for any same-sex couples inside the church. Ray responded by honoring both the request of the vestry and the demands of the Bishop by announcing a moratorium on the celebration of all marriages.
Some argue, and have argued vigorously in Jeff Merkley's defense, that the correct solution to the "problem" of marriage equality is for the government to level down and deny "marriage" to everyone, reserving "marriage" as a religious sacrament only. Most churches would not respond the way St. Thomas Episcopal did, and would continue to perform marriages for members of their congregations. The result, then, would be that the unchurched could not be "married," however much such couples might desire or aspire to the marital state. While I confess to a moment of enjoyment of the prospect that a gay couple who are members of a liberal congregation might find themselves able to attain a marital status which was being denied to countless straight couples, such a result is untenable religious discrimination. In addition, such a "solution" would require the rewriting of more than a thousand Federal laws and regulations (and new Federal regulation of countless private contracts of insurance, annuities, etc.) to ensure the equal protection of all those unchurched couples.
It would be immeasurably worse than closing that swimming pool. It would be even worse than extending DADT to married servicepeople.
The only sensible course of action is to level UP. Open up the civic institution of marriage to all committed couples who wish to partake of it. Offer other commitment options if you wish, to protect the children and the property of couples who do not wish to be civilly married. But let's not use twisted logic to prevent committed same sex couples from accessing the basic benefits and privileges of marriage that the rest of us take for granted.
Steve Novick understands this.
Jeff Merkley does not.
It's just another reason to support Steve Novick.