To the Editor:

One is tempted to greet James Q. Wilson’s article, “Against Homosexual Marriage” [March], with the same kind of bumper-sticker response often given by pro-choice advocates: “Opposed to gay marriage? Don’t have one.” But his arguments—serious and full of thought (if not thoughtful) as they are—deserve much more.

The title is itself an attempt to frame the debate falsely. Gay people do not want “homosexual marriage” (or even “gay marriage,” though this is sometimes a useful shorthand): we just want marriage. . . . If marriage is indeed a right—which, contrary to Mr. Wilson’s apparent disdain for the concept, virtually all Americans as well as judges agree it is—it would be a very hollow right indeed if we were never able to marry the one person we actually love. . . .

It is telling that Mr. Wilson warns: “. . . We may be about to accept homosexual marriage.” Who is “we”? Heterosexuals who oppose gay-marriage rights? The last time I checked, rights were something you had regardless of what anyone else thought—even the majority. We as gay people do hope that the marriage issue will help educate other Americans about our actual lives, and thus increase their support for marriage and all other basic rights. But ultimately this is a question of civil justice, not subject to the shifting winds of popular sentiment. . . . Gay couples, who are similar to heterosexual pairs in all the ways that matter for marriage, cannot be denied the equal protection of the law. I do not say so; the Constitution does. . . .

Mr. Wilson’s allegation that public opinion on interracial couples is not comparable to attitudes toward same-sex couples leaves him more vulnerable to criticism than he suspects. In 1967, when the Supreme Court struck down miscegenation laws, the same (or an even higher) percentage of people across the country opposed mixed-race marriage as oppose gay marriage today. But this, too, misses the point: courts do not conduct opinion polls, they enforce justice. . . .

Mr. Wilson devotes much of his article to a discussion of Andrew Sullivan’s book, Virtually Normal. But I do not know whom either Mr. Sullivan or Mr. Wilson is referring to when they separately imply that male couples are more willing than heterosexuals to have “open” relationships. Even if this were true, it is irrelevant to this discussion because (enforced) monogamy is not necessary for legal marriage. (In some states adultery may be grounds for divorce, but even that is waning.)

Although Mr. Wilson seems to want to separate the institution from the way real people actually behave, it might be healthier to ask, first and foremost, that hypocrisy be put on hold. I am in favor of monogamy, too, but most heterosexuals—and perhaps homosexuals as well—would seem to practice a code other than the one they preach. But gay people, like most Americans, care far less about the particulars of the rules and laws applied to us than we do that they are applied to us equally. Unlike the meaningless phrases so often used to deny gay people our place in society, the bumper sticker for this cause might very well—and very accurately—read: “No more special rights for heterosexuals.”

Jeffrey Nickel
Forum on the Right to Marriage
Boston, Massachusetts

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To the Editor:

James Q. Wilson’s grab-bag of arguments against homosexual marriage veers from litigation to social policy by way of biblical exegesis, all enlisted in a querulous attempt to refute Andrew Sullivan’s Virtually Normal. But Mr. Wilson’s arguments ring hollow, because beneath the seemingly learned citations lies little more than incomprehension of what he opposes.

The strongest argument for homosexual marriage is that it preserves and promotes a set of moral values that are essential to civilized society. Like heterosexual marriage, it sanctions loyalty, unselfishness, and sexual fidelity; it rejects the promiscuous, the self-serving, the transitory relationship. Given the choice between building family units and preventing them, any conservative should favor the former.

In the face of that possibility, however, Mr. Wilson again and again confesses that he simply does not comprehend the implications of homosexual marriage. “Those are very large assumptions that no modern society has ever tested,” he sighs at one point. “There is very little research on the matter,” he writes of children raised by homosexual couples. (There is more than he thinks there is.) He is even boggled by something as minor as the inadequacy of terminology: “There is no settled language for even describing . . . such persons,” he clucks about sperm donors and surrogate mothers. Seemingly he cannot distinguish trivial issues from substantive ones.

Mr. Wilson rightly places a great deal of weight on tradition and established custom, but he uses history and religion in disingenuous ways. He professes concern about religious injunctions “in a profoundly religious nation,” as if such injunctions prevented Jews from intermarrying, or stopped Catholics from using birth control.

His invocation of the biblical model of marriage—which he tries to use as a bulwark against gay marriage—conspicuously overlooks the polygamous character of many biblical marriages. (Polygamy has stood the test of time in numerous cultures; does Mr. Wilson endorse it on those grounds?) The Bible, of course, does not anticipate homosexual marriage, but biblical marriages themselves are neither as simple nor as wholesome as Mr. Wilson would have us believe. . . .

Homosexual marriage is hotly debated because it is symbolic. It is made to bear the weight of any and all fears about the decline of morality, the instability of the family, the fragmentation of society. “Marriage is in serious decline,” reports Mr. Wilson; he regrets the “contemporary outlook that makes law the search for rights.” These are grave issues, but creating a legal basis for gay marriage would not affect them at all, except to strike a blow for domestic stability and responsibility. More thoughtful people than Mr. Wilson can see beyond the false symbolism to the reality of the conservative values inherent in homosexual marriage.

Bob Goldfarb
New York City

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To the Editor:

James Q. Wilson attempts to take a high-minded, analytical, “moral” stance against the issue of same-sex marriages, but he has missed the practical point of the argument.

If one accepts that a homosexual orientation is set early in life, that it is not chosen, and that it cannot be changed, then one is left with two main options: either encourage the person to be the most moral person he can be or encourage the denial of his sexuality. . . .

Would Mr. Wilson prefer a (straight) child of his to marry a homosexual who had denied his or her sexual orientation? Or would he perhaps prefer that if his child were homosexual, he or she would have the courage to be honest and open with him and seek his blessing for the most stable form of relationship possible? This is a question of truth and honesty, not of dissembling and evasion.

Patrick Meade
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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To the Editor:

. . . Certainly the struggle of homosexuals for a place at the table of American society ultimately requires that society to reject its centuries-old moral proscription of homosexuality, and this will not be effected by judicial fiat. It will probably be won on a one-by-one basis, as individual heterosexual Americans encounter their fellow homosexual citizens and judge our morality in the sum total of our social behavior and demeanor, of which our sexual orientation is but a part. . . .

The point Mr. Wilson appears to be making is that whatever door is opened onto the promised land of wedded bliss for homosexual Americans, it should be the result of societal consensus and not of judicial diktat. As a conservative, I heartily agree with him; on the other hand, given the historic role of the judiciary to prod a reluctant majority to confer constitutional protections upon those whom the majority in its prejudice would otherwise fail to protect, I cannot rouse myself too much to sound alarms at the actions of the Hawaii supreme court in reversing a decision that would have denied a marriage permit to a same-sex couple.

It is a bit complacent to denounce judicial determination to protect minority rights when one is in the majority, with no experience of the discrimination that resulted in the petition for relief in the first place. It is, moreover, a matter of historical record that the first arguments against such judicial “activism” involve the simultaneous denial that the minority has any need of protection with the assertion that enforcing the protections would inevitably weaken and ultimately destroy the majority. . . .

Although the issues of racism and homophobia are not entirely equivalent, the reactions of the majority to the attempts of the minority to wrest legal equality as a precursor to moral equality have been similar. Mr. Wilson’s shockingly careless statements about homosexuals (“the great tendency of homosexual males to be promiscuous,” an assertion also made by careless whites about black males not so long ago) demonstrate precisely why gays have turned to the courts first rather than to the legislatures. Legislators are free to reflect and codify prejudices; courts must apply a higher standard. . . .

Majoritarian complacency and irrationality toward minorities are precisely the concerns that led the Founding Fathers to incorporate the Bill of Rights into the Constitution. If Mr. Wilson is truly alarmed at the prospect of homosexual marriages, he would do his cause more justice if he subjected his assumptions regarding homosexuals to a much more rigorous analysis. Only then could he focus fairly on the underlying point that the distinctions between hetero and homosexual Americans “involve the nature of marriage and thus the very meaning—even more, the very possibility—of society.”

Marty Keller
Sacramento, California

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To the Editor:

I do not believe that same-sex relationships are inherently immoral. If it is good for society when heterosexual couples make a vow to be faithful in lifetime commitments and settle down in permanent, legally sanctioned relationships, why is it bad when gay couples do likewise?

Out of one side of their mouths, members of the religious Right suggest that gays are promiscuous, engaging in repeated sexual acts with unmarried partners. Out of the other, they say that allowing gays to many will be the end of civilization.

James Q. Wilson says that many people justify their opposition to gay marriage by invoking longstanding tradition. However, tradition has been used in the past as a rationale for slavery and for denying women the right to vote. But reason has prevailed and we are all better off today because of it. . . .

Society has a compelling interest in encouraging stable, monogamous relationships between adults—straight and gay. It is time for reasonable people to look beyond stereotypes and face the facts: gay people have the same human needs for genuine affection and committed companionship as do heterosexuals. And so they deserve the same rights and responsibilities in the eyes of the law. What is truly immoral is the religious Right’s constant campaign of slander against decent, taxpaying, law-abiding gay Americans who want nothing more than to live happy lives.

Alan L. Light
Iowa City, Iowa

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To the Editor:

James Q. Wilson, heretofore one of the calmest and most reasonable analysts of our social condition, pulls out all stops in his attempt to discredit homosexual marriage. . . . Nowhere in his argument does he resort to homophobic outbursts, but the outcome is the same, i.e., the denial to gays and lesbians of that which is granted to all other—that is, heterosexual—Americans: the right to state-sanctioned marriage. . . .

Further, Mr. Wilson’s argument that the exclusion of homosexuals from the mainstream would lead to stability leaves one nonplussed. When, one may ask, has the advocacy of second-class citizenship for one group ever led to anything but anti-social behavior? . . . Same-sex marriage would enhance the stability of our society, an end to which Mr. Wilson in his distinguished career has given so much laudable advocacy.

Frederic Wile
New York City

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To the Editor:

James Q. Wilson states that “long before the civil-rights movement, many Southern states had repealed [their miscegenation] laws.” In Loving v. Virginia, decided on June 12,1967, such statutes were held to be unconstitutional. Speaking through Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Supreme Court of the United States noted that Virginia was at that time “one of the sixteen states which prohibit and punish marriages on the basis of racial classification.” A footnote to that passage listed Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. The footnote was prefaced by the statement that after the initiation of that litigation, in 1967, Maryland had repealed its prohibitions against interracial marriage. But surely 1967 was not “long before” the civil-rights movement, and Maryland is one border state, not “many Southern” ones.

Hans W. Baade
School of Law
University of Texas
Austin, Texas

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To the Editor:

James Q. Wilson . . . first states that the Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled that under the “equal-protection clause of that state’s constitution, any law based on distinctions of sex was suspect and subject to judicial scrutiny.” . . . He then goes on to discuss the “full-faith-and-credit” clause in the Constitution and says that

a homosexual couple in a state like Texas, where the population is overwhelmingly opposed to [same-sex] unions, may soon be able to fly to Hawaii, get married, and then return to live in Texas as lawfully wedded.

Mr. Wilson seems to have little understanding of how constitutional law works. Simply put, the full-faith-and-credit clause of the Constitution does not give one state unlimited power to bind other states to its particular public policy. Any state court may launch a collateral attack on the jurisdiction of any other state to control a matter in dispute.

Let me give three examples of how the system might work.

The first involves two homosexuals, residents and domiciliaries of the state of Hawaii, who enter into a marriage according to the laws of the state of Hawaii. Later, one of them commits a crime in another state. That state attempts to force the “spouse” to testify at trial. The “spouse” attempts to invoke the “spousal-immunity” privilege to be excused from testifying. In this case, the full-faith-and-credit clause would probably force the forum state to recognize the marriage and excuse the witness spouse from testifying.

The second example is one in which two homosexuals, residents and domiciliaries of Hawaii, enter into a valid Hawaiian marriage. They move to another state and seek to force that state to recognize their marriage. Here the result is not at all clear. Some liberal judiciaries might accept the “marriage,” but conservative state judiciaries might not.

The third example is the one Mr. Wilson offers and is the easiest one to deal with. That is where two homosexuals, residents and domiciliaries of one state, travel from that state to Hawaii, enter into a Hawaiian marriage, and then return home and hope to force their home state to accept the validity of their marriage. In this case, no state court would find itself compelled to honor the marriage because the two parties to the marriage were neither residents nor domiciliaries of Hawaii when the marriage was entered into. . . .

Although I find myself in general agreement with Mr. Wilson’s policy arguments, I am compelled to point out his errors because they are being read and repeated by other journalists. For example, Frank Rich in the New York Times repeated Mr. Wilson’s claim that other states would be forced to recognize homosexual marriages “consecrated” in Hawaii.

In his conclusion, Mr. Wilson attacks the policy of leaving difficult social problems to the courts, and says that we would be better served if the controversial areas (abortion, marriage, military service) were dealt with by the legislatures. He is, of course, right, but he misses one point. Judicial activism does not exist in a vacuum. Judicial activism has been permitted only when the legislatures have been controlled by forces which favor certain policies but are unwilling to enact them themselves and have left it to the courts to do it for them.

But this can change. . . . The best example of how This can happen is the Rose Bird court in California, which ruled the state with complete disregard for the laws written by the legislature or the will of the people until three of its members were defeated in a recall election in 1986. Since then, the California court has been quite conservative. . . .

Susan Jordan
Los Angeles, California

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To the Editor:

. . . An article in USA Today about homosexual marriage reported that a homosexual man had this short explanation of why he should be allowed to marry his boyfriend: “We love each other.” My sister and I also love each other. If the government approves of gay marriage, why not brother-sister marriage? If same-gender sex is normal, why not same-family sex?

Culture teaches people how to act. A culture that celebrates brother-sister marriage will produce many brother-sister marriages. A culture that celebrates homosexuality will have many homosexuals. A culture that celebrates heterosexuality as the norm will be overwhelmingly heterosexual and the most stable and creative society, I believe, because heterosexuality is most in tune with human nature.

No religion or folk tradition claims that heterosexuality and marriage are the magic keys to happiness; such things are simply considered the basic building blocks of social stability.

Michael Flanagan
Chicago, Illinois

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To the Editor:

Throughout history, most societies have organized themselves in terms of kinship. Every individual had rights and duties, obligations and privileges, depending upon the persons to whom he was related. Without relatives, a person was not a social being; to become a social being, the person had to be among kin, by adoption if not by birth. This is a process with which the anthropologists of my generation were familiar, although it can also be seen in the Bible. For these societies, marriage was not simply about what happened between a heterosexual couple; it provided a woman’s children with relatives beyond her natal family.

Children always have a genitor; marriage was a declaration that children would have a pater as well. They would then be recognized by a man who assumed responsibility for their welfare, and, even more important, it also ensured that the children would be incorporated within the group of relatives on the paternal side, and this regardless of who had (sexually) sired them.

In many legally recognized situations in the U.S. today, marriage has been redefined as a contract having to do with the welfare and the division of economic responsibility between two people who feel bonded by affection and sexual relations. This has been exacerbated by the decay of kinship obligations, and the concomitant notion of single-parent families. Whether or not children have a pater or other kin, they now acquire a social identity through formal institutions such as schools and other governmental agencies. Meanwhile, marriage has come to be defined as sharing such items as a residence and health insurance, and licensing sexual relations.

Murray L. Wax
Department of Anthropology
Washington University
St. Louis, Missouri

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To the Editor:

I suspect James Q. Wilson is correct in asserting that most Americans would reject state sanction of homosexual marriage. I believe this is equally the case here in Canada, notwithstanding recent legislative measures introduced by the government in Ottawa which would ban discrimination based on “sexual orientation” (could this serve to protect pedophiles, too?) and which represent one more step toward granting homosexuality full legitimacy.

So far, however, this silent majority of Canadians—in the face of an aggressive lobbying campaign waged by determined homosexual activists and their liberal cheerleaders in the media, and from fear of appearing “intolerant” in a dominant culture ruled by relativism—has completely abdicated the moral argument. . . .

What the now-impoverished and one-sided Canadian debate desperately needs is precisely the sort of reasoned and compelling argument put forward by Mr. Wilson, one which still has, even at the end of the 20th century, enough self-assurance to label something as just plain wrong.

Congratulations to COMMENTARY for once again standing firm on an issue that has, apparently, intimidated too many of us. . . .

Hillel Neuer
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

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James Q. Wilson writes:

I did not expect to change me views of anyone with my essay on homosexual marriage, and die letters printed above confirm that prediction. It is difficult to say much more here, because the issue rests on radically different assumptions about society. Jeffrey Nickel says that marriage is a matter of individual rights, and Patrick Meade says it is a matter of honesty; I say it is in fact a matter of moral order. I have not persuaded them; they have not persuaded me. Bob Goldfarb says, rightly, that marriage is about moral values, but then sees no arguable difference between mixed-sex and same-sex marriages. I believe there is a difference, one that leads the great majority of people to oppose die latter in ways that are quite different from the now departed objection to trans-racial marriages.

Marty Keller says he is opposed to making changes by judicial diktat except in the case of same-sex marriages, because there the courts can “prod” a “reluctant” majority to do the right thing. That is an interesting thought, but I do not believe it is an accurate one. Marriage differs from slavery or the franchise in ways I think most people understand even when they cannot express it any better than I. (I should add that Mr. Keller’s objections to my reference to the promiscuity of homosexual males was not the result of my “careless” invention; it was taken from Andrew Sullivan’s book.)

Alan L. Light is convinced that tradition was equally wrong in defending slavery, limiting voting to men, and opposing homosexual marriage. I think there are important differences among these, but since I have not convinced him yet, I doubt I can convince him now. I would urge him, however, to ponder Michael Flanagan’s letter: “tradition” also opposes brother-sister marriage, even when the man and woman love each other. Should that tradition also be swept aside whenever someone asserts a “right” to incestuous marriages?

Susan Jordan criticizes me for not understanding how the full-faith-and-credit clause of the Constitution would affect the interstate standing of same-sex marriages. She may be right, but my reading of the case laws suggests that her view is contested and uncertain. I doubt that anyone now can predict how the Supreme Court will eventually decide this matter, which is why there is so much legal uncertainty about proposed state statutes limiting marriages to mixed-sex unions.

Murray L. Wax makes an important point that clarifies, more sharply than I did, the utter transformation in the meaning of marriage that has occurred in the last few decades. For millennia marriage meant a sacred union that assured each child of a legally responsible father and a place in a wider network of kin. Today it is, as Mr. Nickel puts it quite baldly, an arrangement of rights that courts ought to enforce (but only so long, I suppose, as each party wants that “right”). The result of that transformation has been a social catastrophe evident in high rates of divorce, the end of any public censure of adultery, and the rise of single-parent families. I doubt that extending the marital union (as opposed to other unions, informally agreed to by the parties but not licensed by society) to gay and lesbian couples will do much to reverse the rapid decline in what that union was once supposed to mean.

Finally, I would like to thank Hillel Neuer for his comments.