Marrying Heterosexuality and Government
The Washington Post [free reg. req.] reports that gays and lesbians are leaving the state of Virginia, which seems committed to insuring their second-class status.
Twenty states have amended their constitution to ban same-sex marriage since 2004. Virginia state legislators passed a law two years ago that prohibits “civil unions, partnership contracts or other arrangements between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage.” A proposed constitutional amendment, which will go to voters in November, excludes any “unmarried individuals” from “union, partnership or other legal status similar to marriage.”
Many gay people in Virginia and some family-law attorneys say they worry that the state law and proposed amendment are more far-reaching than simple bans on gay marriage — that the measures could threaten the legal viability of the contracts used by gay couples to share ownership of property and businesses.
The exact effects are unclear, and the 2004 law remains untested, but some gays say they fear the laws could affect their ability to own homes together; to draft powers of attorney, adoption papers or wills; or to arrange for hospital visitation or health surrogacy.
Married people get these rights automatically through long-established common law; gay people use legal documents to ensure they can leave their property at death to their partner or allow their partner, rather than the patient’s birth family, to make end-of-life decisions for them. Some gay people worry that hostile family members could use the language in the laws to seize their possessions or take custody of their children if they could prove the couple had a relationship that illegally approximated a marriage.
The article quotes Victoria Cobb, who is apparently very fearful of losing women’s monopoly on marrying men and the benefits that derive from it. She also provides an example of the whacky “reasoning” that shares a mind full of such fears.
Victoria Cobb, executive director of the Family Foundation, the Richmond-based group that backed the 2004 law and the proposed constitutional amendment, said the goal isn’t to drive out gay people. She said “extreme homosexual organizations” might be trying to frighten their members by circulating false information about the amendment. She said it wouldn’t add restrictions on gays but would simply underscore the ways their relationships are already restricted.
“I think it’s extremely sad they would leave because of something they were never allowed to do anyway,” said Cobb, who said she believed gays could go to court to defend themselves if a partner’s family members challenged their right to own property in common, arrange powers of attorney or visit each other in the hospital.
Very sad for whom? “Extreme heterosexual organizations”? Those who wish to preserve the marriage of heterosexuality and government just as the plantation owners of the south wished to preserve the marriage of the white race and government?
I can hear some plantation owner in the South voicing a paraphrased version of Cobb’s argument pre-Civil War: “I think it’s extremely sad the slaves would leave the plantation because they were never allowed to be free anyway.”
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