Happy "Protection of Marriage Week," everybody!
President Bush issued a presidential proclamation declaring Oct. 12-18 "Marriage Protection Week," which emphasizes building strong and healthy marriages. The Week comes just after National Coming Out Day, celebrated by many students on campus last week.
"We ought to codify that," Bush said recently, indicating that he believes marriage is between a man and a woman, and certainly not between homosexuals. He also said it is important for society to welcome each individual, but his blatant disregard for the entire gay and lesbian community throughout his tenure has lost him the tag of "compassionate conservative."
Bush, just as in the case of the illusory WMDs, has taken it upon himself to protect the nation against the evils of homosexuality without any proof that homosexuality has been a detriment to society.
"Protection of Marriage Week" seems to run counter to a recent movement toward broader acceptance of the idea of gay and lesbian unions: State laws banning sodomy were struck down this year by the Supreme Court, and Canada legalized gay marriage. Though the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act allows states to disregard marriages of gay couples performed in other states, some states like Massachusetts are working to legalize gay marriage anyway.
The Defense of Marriage Act grows out of a "not in my backyard" syndrome, which promotes sexual discrimination by effectively barring married homosexual couples from pursuing their life goals and contributing to society as an economically productive unit beyond the borders of a single state.
Homosexuals are denied more than 1,000 benefits that married heterosexual couples have, including hospital visitation rights, survivorship benefits and custody of children mutually raised.
Bush said he would not compromise on the issue of marriage, effectively throwing tolerance and equality out the window. He cites the sanctity of marriage but disregards that marital benefits are primarily of a legal nature. The commitment and love between two people can exist outside of the framework of marriage and are separate from the benefits a marriage license provides.
In his article "Red Eye on Marriage," columnist Steve Farrell quoted Benjamin Franklin as saying that marriage "is the most natural state of man, and therefore the state in which you are most likely to find solid happiness." If the 50 percent national divorce rate is any indicator, Franklin was quite mistaken.
While the family unit of a man and a woman and a child is the traditional model, it is not the only model for happiness in a nation where there is such a diversity of backgrounds, philosophies and ambitions. There are plenty of couples, heterosexual and homosexual, that do not want children and also plenty that do. Offspring is not necessarily the goal of modern marriages but rather an often welcome byproduct.
National decrees do not make families, as the incidence of divorce, domestic violence and neglect show. Marriage does not make families, as any unmarried or widowed parent can tell you. The love and commitment between the members of the social unit make the family, as any sorority or fraternity member can tell you.
The movement to legalize marriage for all humans who wish to love one another is not a revolution against marriage but rather a celebration of marriage as the ritual of spiritual, emotional and legal bonding between two people.
Divorce rates already prove that the problem with marriage isn't homo- or heterosexuality, but rather marriage for the wrong reasons and a system that is based on legal and economic incentives rather than what it should be - unconditional love for another human being.
Audra Baker is a journalism and biology senior. Reach her at audra.baker@asu.edu.
