Sunday column: Aiming at Adam & Steve, or a lot more?

I had a hard time writing this column -- not on the underlying gay-marriage issue, but on the question of whether the proposed Marriage Protection Amendment might threaten health benefits or other existing legal arrangements among consenting parties.

I really do not want the supporters of the amendment to think I am just parroting the opponents' arguments. I would LIKE to hope that the supporters are right, and that the phrase "substantial equivalent" means only civil unions, or something close to the full panoply of martial rights and legalities.

On the other hand, I can see how a court could have the room -- as the Michigan court did -- to strike down existing arrangements as being "equivalent" to recognizing marriage. Such a ruling might be WRONG, but it's still possible. So I am afraid the opponents might have a valid concern. But I hope not.

* * *

Floridians have to decide this November whether to put a ban on same-sex marriage in our state Constitution.

Maybe you're thinking: "Huh? Didn't we already ban this in Florida?"

Yep. You bet. Our Legislature passed a law.

But the backers say the ban ought to be in our Constitution too. So they got enough petition signatures to put it on the ballot.

There are two levels of debate here, the first being simply whether you like this idea.

But the second question is whether the Marriage Protection Amendment — by accident or design — also might outlaw all sorts of other things, such as domestic partner benefits or legal arrangements made among long-time companions.

The question arises in the wording of the amendment:

Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.

Now, what the heck does "the substantial equivalent thereof" mean?

If it means, "any kind of rights that married people have," then we might be in trouble.

Florida Red and Blue, a group fighting the amendment, claims it would "take away the ability to visit loved ones in the hospital, harm our seniors, eliminate insurance benefits for non-married couples, and require government to take an even larger role in all our lives."

The backers of the amendment say this is nonsense. What they mean by "substantial equivalent" is something close to full-scale marriage, such as a civil union. After all, marriage involves more than 1,100 legal issues and rights, according to one estimate.

But ultimately, the decision of what this means will be up to the courts. Somebody is gonna sue, guaranteed.

This past week, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that same-sex benefits violated that state's ban on anything "similar" to marriage, and were therefore illegal.

What will the Florida courts say? We got one hint in 2006, back when the Florida Supreme Court approved the wording of this amendment for the ballot.

At that time, the Florida court said this amendment was not deceptive — its "plain wording" clearly deals with unions that are like marriage overall, and does not target individual legal rights.

Still, that ruling was about the ballot language only. The court could always rule differently later.

Not for the first time, I wish there were a way to "edit" proposed amendments after the fact to clear up such problems. If the backers are sincere about not wanting to outlaw existing benefits, it would take only an extra sentence or so to make it crystal clear.

But we don't get to edit. We only get to vote "yes" or "no" on the language in front of us.

I'm a wild-eyed libertarian on this topic — I'm for gay marriage with gun ownership. I think civil marriage is nothing but a state-approved legal contract that ought to be open to everybody.

But even if you believe that same-sex marriage should be illegal, the question here is whether this amendment — which outlaws something that's already illegal — risks a future court ruling that would intrude into the private affairs of thousands of Floridians.

Comments

[Jon McPhee]

Go forth, and sin no more!

Yet another late entry from the Red side’s Department of Redundancy Department.

Remember (or for you young ‘uns, have you read, or seen a YouTube entry about) when Red was Bad and Evil and a Sneaking Foreign Disease That Might Infect The Virility Of Real Americans And Pollute Their Precious Bodily Fluids? When Red, White and Blue was all about small government and States’ Rights and self-reliance and actual, non-national-socialist Free Markets, and the robust Constitution (complete with actual Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances,) and Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence, which Real Americans, asked to read them out of context, mostly thought they had been written by those arch-villains Marx and Lenin and Trotsky? When it was all about “Better Dead Than Red” and “America, Love It Or Leave It”?

Dude, like, wassup? The Gummint’s all about prying into your bank account and the movies you rent and (for those that know how) liberry books you check out and listening in to every phone and Internet and fax that goes out or comes in, and Big Business is moving to Dubai or the Caymans while shedding any ties to or responsibilities for the messes left at home, or hanging around to see how much more they can take off the local suckers before moving on. And of course the Gummint, having been seized by those doughty pioneers of social engineering in the megachurches and grab groups like Mr. Dobson’s, often led by toe-tappers and staff gropers and men and women who breach God’s Sanctified Covenant at the drop of a Thong Panty, is now all about who gets to kiss whom.

But these Pillars Of Righteousness, who are smart enough to parlay a hypocrisy so vast that it boggles the critical mind, into what the physiologists call a “reflex arc,” action without thought, in response to Pavlovian stimuli imprinted on the bitter brains of the fearful masses, unsure of their place in the cosmos without a Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker or Oral Roberts to show them the way, via this-here personally blessed bottle of holy water and this-here boxed set of 10 CDs full of inspirational sermons and soaring music that will preserve your immortal souls and lead you in paths of richness, for a seed offering and love gift of only five monthly blessings of $59.99, Visa and Mastercard accepted, Prayer Partners are standing by the phones waiting for your call to glory.

Sometimes it seems like God’s Law for humanity is just the Law of Unintended Consequences, and the best we can manage is a sanctimonious “Do as I say, not as I do,” and our “leaders” need spin meisters and “interpreters” to follow them around like the guy with the shovel and the broom that follows the elephants in the circus parade, telling us “what (s)he MEANT was….”

The cynic would maybe think that the ambiguity in the language of this proposed amendment was intentional. Having had years to stack the deck in the courts by filling the benches with “strict constructionists” who still manage to find interpretations that reward the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, impose behavioral rules that don’t apply to them as patrons of D.C. Madams, find waterboarding is just a toy from Wham-O and strip searches at airport security points are just peachy under their view of the 5th and 14th Amendments, they will no doubt prosper from yet another way to steal our liberties while proclaiming them. Yep, we had to destroy that village in order to save it.

Makes perfect sense to me.

[Reality]

The problem with this entire situation really boils down to a couple things; the GLBT community fell right into the political issue-framers game. This argument started out as one of ‘Civil Unions” with approximately 80% nationwide support. After some polling, those opposed to the concept found a 73% disapproval of the issue as framed using the term “Gay Marriage (ala: Estate Tax versus Death Tax).

Add in the fact that Gay Marriage is an “exclusive” action that cuts out all other relationship styles, and you have the making of the perfect shut down. The GLBT community would do wise to get this issue back on track as one of equal rights for all, and Civil Unions.

[Allan]

May 12, 2008, Monday: Vote against the marriage ban. Howard's right: it's an anti-libertarian, anti-freedom nightmare. It's the right-wing religious totalitarians' effort to cross the Thomas Jeffersonian-"wall of separation between church and state" so they can impose a kind of American or Floridian Christian Taleban here in America similar to Osama bin Laden's Taleban he envisions bringing back as a 7th century Islamic caliphate. I'm a gun owner, but I support gay rights, lesbian rights, and transgender rights -- even though I'm so comically "straight" that every time an attractive and well-built woman in tight jeans walks down the street, I turn around and gaze at her. But I also support bringing back and passing the Equal Rights Amendment for women, and I support equal pay for equal work, free 24-hour childcare centers, keeping abortion legal, free abortion on demand, no forced sterilization, and, yes, affirmative action for minorities and women. The marriage ban is an anti-civil libertarian and anti-freedom nightmare. It hurts gay people, lesbian people, old people living together to try to get some kind of economic break, many kinds of people who are not even so-called "gay" or "same sex" types of people. Vote against it. And, yes, as I said, I'm a Second Amendment supporter, a gun owner, and a holder of a concealed firearms carrying license here in Florida -- even though I'm an instinctive pacifist, and even an opponent of the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Chicken Little]

The Sky is falling!
The sky is falling!

ohh no, the gays and transtesticulars won't have rights!

Boo freakin' Hoo