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Evan Wolfson: ANALYSIS: Is now really the right time to fight for the freedom to marry?

Freedom to Marry
March 18, 2005

In 2004 we ended the exclusion of committed same-sex couples from marriage here in the United States by winning the freedom to marry in Massachusetts. Thousands of U.S couples have gotten married in Canada as well as in Massachusetts, and the sky has not fallen. We have shown non-gay people we can do this, and we are also showing that families are strengthened and no one harmed when the exclusion comes to an end. All across the country, hearts and minds are opening as the fair-minded majority of Americans get the information and time they need to embrace fairness.

But it does take information, and it does take time.

Our opponents are trying to stampede people into making hasty, ill-informed decisions out of prejudice, ignorance, anxiety, discomfort or fear. History tells us that in the early stages of a civil rights struggle such as ours, opponents will have some successes.

As I've described elsewhere, the classic American pattern is that civil rights advances come in what I call "patchwork." As described in my book, Why Marriage Matters, during patchwork periods, we see some states move toward equality faster, while others resist and regress, pressured by pandering politicians into adding additional layers of discrimination before — eventually — buyer's remorse sets in and a national resolution comes. We cannot move the middle — we cannot end this exclusion — if we collude with our opponents in depriving those who are reachable (but not yet reached) of the time and information they need and deserve. This means we must not take "no" or "not now" or "not so fast" for an answer — any more than others in our nation's past who sought to end discrimination did. We must not fail to push past discomfort to give people the real stories and the time to absorb them.

Nor is it our job to make it easy for politicians to do what they want. Rather, it is our job to make it easier for politicians to do what we want — and what many of them in their hearts know is the right thing to do. We should not expect them to do all our heavy lifting, but we must get in and enlist allies, stiffen the spine of our friends, help those whose causes we share to see that our common success depends on articulating a position of authenticity and shared values that lead to the right results. Most of all, we must raise our diverse voices to explain how the unjust exclusion from marriage and its responsibilities and protections harms us, our kids and our country itself.

In a shorter period of time than most people imagined, we have won the freedom to marry in America. We have made it real, which is the most important step in helping people to live with it (or realize they don't care). Yes, we face a moment of peril as the opponents of equality assault us in fulfillment of their own anti-gay and broader ideological agendas, and we will take hits. But we have also seen the majority of Americans move toward accepting marriage equality, with a solid majority of young people supporting it.

In Massachusetts last November, voters who had a chance to live with marriage as a reality for even a few months rejected anti-equality candidates and reelected every pro-marriage legislator who ran. The key is making it real, not running away.

Democrats; progressives, fair-minded Republicans; and our other friends and potential allies will never be anti-gay enough to satisfy our opponents. We must help them find the authentic moral case for ending discrimination in marriage — well-expressed by yet another court this February: "Marriage, as it is understood today, is both a partnership of two loving equals who choose to commit themselves to each other and a state institution designed to promote stability for the couple and their children. ... Similar to opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples are entitled to the same fundamental right to follow their hearts and commit to a lifetime partnership with the person of their choosing ... [which] cannot legitimately be said to harm anyone."

Equality under the law. Fairness. Commitment. Love. We must not doubt that we can reach most Americans on these values with patience and persistence — but we cannot reach them if we do not do the reaching. We must not shortchange them or ourselves.

Time and information are what they need, and now is the time.

Published in Planet Out, March 11, 2005.