Marriage changing across New England

by Scott Williams

Advocates of same-sex marriage have targeted New England as a place where their definition of marriage can be accepted and embraced as early as 2012. It appears they are well on their way and may be ahead of schedule.

On Tuesday, the Vermont Senate voted 26-4 to legalize same-sex marriage after a bill passed unanimously out of committee. It now goes to the House, where it is expected to pass. The only question is whether Governor Jim Douglas, a proponent of traditional marriage, will veto the bill.

So where does same-sex marriage stand in the other New England states?

Massachusetts. The State Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that it was unconstitutional to allow only heterosexual couples to marry. There have been unsuccessful attempts to pass a constitutional amendment to define marriage traditionally, the last one in 2007, which means that same-sex marriage will be legal, at least into 2012.

Connecticut. After a court battle that lasted more than four years, the State Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that prohibitions against homosexual marriage violated the state constitution.

New Hampshire. The House this week will debate whether to legalize same-sex marriage after the bill saw a 10-10 deadlock in committee. In 2008, the state legalized civil unions between homosexual couples.

Rhode Island. Last month, the Senate held an open hearing on legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage. Currently, the state does recognize the same-sex marriages of other countries.The public sentiment about same-sex marriage is evenly split.

Maine. Next month, Maine follows the lead of Rhode Island with an open hearing on the merits of same-sex marriage legislation. Since 2004, the state has recognized domestic partnerships between homosexual couples.

Traditional marriage proponents like Kris Mineau of the Massachusetts Family Institute admit that they are losing ground to when it comes to legal recognition of other forms of marriage in New England, but they continue to sound the warning about the future of the culture. Quoted from the Boston Herald:

He said opponents of same-sex marriage have had a harder time making their case, because of what he called "the long-term impact of this radical social experiment."

"The cost of eroding marriage will manifest itself in future generations," he said.

Of course, New England isn't the only place where the face of marriage is drastically changing. The Supreme Court in California just got finished hearing arguments about whether to overturn the new constitutional amendment, which overturned the Supreme Court ruling which overturned the constitutional amendment which defined marriage as one man and one woman.

Author Maggie Gallagher, in her ongoing National Review blog post, "The Amazing Power of The Culture," equates what is happening with the same-sex marriage debate to what started in 1970 in California with the call for no-fault divorce. Proponents claimed that legislation was necessary to provide for the specific individual rights of a few people, and that no one else would be negatively affected. In reality, Gallagher points out, the marital vow has given way way to personal happiness as the culture goes.

I can still hold the view that divorce is wrong—that I have no right to divorce because I made a vow to stay married. But with the advent of unilateral divorce, my views became a privatized view of marriage, not part of the shared reality defined by the law. We privatized this view of marriage precisely when the law privileged the progressive view of divorce.

Gallagher also makes the point that accepting homosexual marriage further deconstructs the understanding of marriage that has held together societies. She draws the logical conclusion, as I have for years, that the cultural understanding of marriage is ripe for even more redefinition as a result.

It takes a while for the new meanings encoded by the law to percolate and permeate the culture. Also, the law in one state can certainly affect the cultural meanings in other states (making isolating the effects of legal change more problematic). If polygamy were legal in, say, Oregon, that would almost certainly affect the understanding of marriage in Massachusetts. Monogamy might remain the most common public understanding of marriage, but, by definition, no longer a core or essential feature of marriage in American society. Similarly, when California adopted unilateral (no-fault) divorce, something visible had changed in our understanding in the U.S. of what the marriage vow meant—even if it was another ten years or more before say, Louisiana adopted a similar law.

Gallagher wonders if those of us who hold to a traditional, biblical understanding of marriage will eventually be seen with suspicion.

First, this set of ideas about marriage will necessarily be privatized: that male and female point to each other, that marriage has deep roots in the necessity of bringing men and women together, because society needs babies, and babies need their mother and father in one family.

Next, because the prime argument for gay marriage is an equality argument, this traditional view of marriage will also be stigmatized: that is, treated as a discarded and discredited relic of bigotry that we have happily overcome.

If Gallagher's predictions come to pass, it's a good possibility, based on recent events, that it will happen in New England first.