Opinion
 

Staff Editorial

                            Matt Dulin    Barrett Goldsmith    Zach Lee 
                Jim Parsons            Christian Schmidt           Blake Whitaker

Popping the question

In the gay marriage debate, almost everyone is invited -- only instead of in-laws, it's lawmakers. Instead of priests, it's pundits. Like an overcrowded ceremony intended to celebrate a couple's union, the debate is spoiled by politics.

One day after the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that gays are indeed entitled to all of the benefits of marriage, state lawmakers there are trying to find a way to circumvent the ruling. Some are busying themselves trying to find a "rational" basis for a ban on gay marriages.

They won't find one. 

The question that should be considered is not whether gays should be able to enjoy legal marriages, but rather, what is marriage? And how will the sanctity of marriage be harmed when gays exchange vows? What's the benefit of banning their union? What great evil does it pose?

Oh, we remember: the great evil that drives two human beings to fall in love with each other and envision a future united in marriage. Who wants that?

That's assuming, of course, that marriage is the product of love and mutuality, qualities that are hardly reflected in many heterosexual marriages today. In a time of formidable divorce rates and drive-thru wedding chapels, it's hard to imagine what great purity opponents of gay marriage are trying to preserve.

Any ban would constitute some form of discrimination, even if it permitted "civil unions" with expanded legal rights. Such a law would recreate the "separate but equal" environment that propagated racial segregation in mid-20th century America. 

For now, unless Massachusetts lawmakers succeed in postponing when the ruling takes effect, gay couples can set their wedding dates in May and beyond. Then the next hurdle would come when the state decides to pass a ban and tries to tell thousands of married couples that their union isn't valid.

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