Yesterday Maine voters dealt a blow to LGBT rights, with 53% of those who voted in a referendum opting to repeal Maine’s state law recognizing the right of same sex couples to get married. While New England is considered the region of the U.S. most supportive of the right of same sex couples to marry, the outcome of this referendum whittles the number of U.S. states recognizing this right down to a measly five. Yesterday’s election day was “a deep and bitter disappointment” for the families in Maine seeking legal recognition and for LGBT advocates and allies around the U.S. who were watching Maine with hope.
Last week the U.S. was shocked when a justice of the peace from Louisiana refused to marry an interracial couple. It is hard to believe that such a practice would still occur, living on long after a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling outlawing racial discrimination as an obstruction to the right to marry. The justice of the peace in question resigned the very same day that Maine voted against gay marriage. The Governor of Louisiana called the resignation “long overdue” and further stated that his resignation upholds “the will of the vast majority of Louisiana citizens and nearly every governmental official in Louisiana.” Just as it is disturbing that anyone at all could wish prohibit interracial marriage, it is extremely unsettling that so many Americans continue to believe that they have a right to restrict the marriage of other people on the grounds that the couple is of the same biological sex.
At one point in time, interracial marriage did not fit into the “tradition” of American marriage or indeed marriage around the world. It was a fight to remove restrictions to marrying someone considered to be a different race than you. Many opponents to gay marriage claim that they are defending the “traditional” family by protesting the rights of same sex couples to marry, with this family having a woman and a man at its center. But why does this tradition need a defense in the first place? Our definitions of family continue to evolve and the law evolves to recognize this and to support family as an important institution within society. We are much less likely to live in extended families than we were a hundred years ago; we divorce and we re-marry at a frequency unimaginable only a few decades ago; we adopt children from around the world, made possible by globalization; we live with step-children and step-parents in modern “blended” families; we care for aging parents in a multigenerational home because we are living longer. Our family structure changes and changes significantly as the world shifts around us. It is curious that those who cling so tightly to marriage as only between a biological woman and biological man cannot see these changes, many of which have already redefined the relationship between family and biology.
The freedom to marry whom we choose is a human right because the choice of a marriage partner is one of the central choices in a person’s life. Under U.S. law, we see support for this right in many contexts, such as the freedom to pursue what makes us happy; the rights of privacy in our family homes and that these privacy rights extend to how we arrange our personal relationships; and the right not to be unfairly discriminated against relative to our fellow citizens. Same sex couples are not different from male-female couples in a way that can justify treating their unions differently under the law. Some would say they are different because they cannot biologically reproduce, but clearly reproduction is not a requirement for marriage being recognized in law. For those who rely on the religious heritage of the U.S. to distinguish same sex couples, the separation of church and state will not allow an encroachment of some people’s religious values into a civil recognition of the right to marry.
While November 3 was a disappointing day for same sex couples in Maine and around the U.S., history remains on their side. It may take a few more years, but eventually the law will catch up with the right of same sex couples to marry, to sanctify their relationships, to obtain the legal benefits that correspond to legal marriage, and to raise children in an environment that is rendered more stable through these legal entitlements.