Gay Marriage Not A Basic  Right

                    by BOB WARD

             Editor of the Texas Journal



   Whatever Congress or the states do about same-

sex marriage, the issue  will inevitably reach 

the Supreme Court, and that's not reassuring.  

The Court's ruling against Colorado's amendment 

barring preferential treat-ment for homosexuals 

suggests they consider gays eligible for 

protected status as a "suspect class." According-

ly, denying their relationships equal status with 

heterosexual unions may be called discrimination.  

   But this view only considers the desires of 

individuals.  It is not the duty of government to 

endorse, solemnize and institutionalize every 

impulse or desire people feel.  Heterosexual, 

monogamous, permanent unions enjoy special status 

because they benefit the community

   One of the most pernicious notions to emerge 

in recent years is that no one should impose 

values on somebody else. But in fact that is 

exactly what civilization is, the imposition of 

values.  The government must sup-port the 

cultural values to which society has historically 

subscribed and which are the moral bases of its 

laws. That's why we may not steal, kill, or 

defraud each other, or refuse to defend the 

country.  And that's why there are rules about 

marriage.     When the Supreme Court in 1965 

struck down a Connecticut law for-bidding the use 

of contraceptives by married people, (Griswold v. 

Conn.)  Justice William O. Douglas called 

marriage "an association that promotes a way of 

life, not causes, a harmony in living, not 

political faiths, a bilateral loyalty, not 

commercial or social projects."

  To suggest this rules out all government action 

regarding  marriage is to mistake the individual 

marriage for the institution.  While the state 

may not, as in Griswold, regulate sexual 

relations between man and wife, it may define and 

regulate the institution of marriage.  It may, 

for example, prohibit marriage between close 

relatives,  or by children. It may bar multi-

party marriages, or (who knows where it will end) 

union between a person and an animal. 

   If the state may not define and elevate the 

kind of relationships in which the community has 

a stake, if all relationships, however bizarre, 

ephemeral and frivolous, enjoy equal status, if 

everything is marriage, the term means nothing 

and we have effectively abolished marriage.  

   It is, of course, possible to go too far.  We 

don't have to revive laws against interracial 

marriage in order to defend a one man-one woman 

definition. A useful test is found in Justice 

Arthur Goldberg's concurring opinion in Griswold.  

"In  determining which rights are fundamental, 

judges . . . must look to the 'tradition and 

(collective) conscience of our people' to 

determine whether a principle is 'so rooted 

(there) . . . as to be ranked as fundamental."  

(Snyder v. Mass).  A study of our history and 

traditions reveals no acceptance of same-sex 

marriages.