PROVIDENCE – Last year, the Rhode Island Supreme Court decided that two women married in Massachusetts would not be allowed to divorce in Rhode Island. For many involved in the debate for or against same-sex marriage, that decision was only the beginning of an ongoing heated and controversial debate.
Last week, the St. Thomas More society, in conjunction with the Diocese of Providence, brought in two national speakers to talk with two groups that have a particular stake in marriage law – Catholic clergy and lawyers.
Maggie Gallagher is president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy and author of "The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off Financially." She has spent much of her career working to strengthen the cultural importance of marriage. Now she travels around the country speaking about the devastating impact that changing the definition of marriage could have on society.
"I entered the same sex marriage debate in 2003 because I thought the debate was too dominated by people whose primary issue was homosexuality pro and con and, as important as that debate is, we were also talking about changing the basic law and therefore, I believe, the public understanding of our core social institution for protecting children – marriage," Gallagher said during her talk last Tuesday.
Anthony R. Picarello, Jr. is the General Counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He previously worked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington, D.C.-based law firm that works exclusively to maintain the religious freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In both positions Picarello has dealt with the implications of broadening the legal definition of marriage to include unions of same-sex couples.
In their presentations to the clergy and then to the lawyers, Gallagher presented a case for the importance of marriage to society and Picarello outlined several of the potential legal ramifications religious institutions could face if marriage law is changed.
To Gallagher, changing the legal definition of marriage flies in the face of centuries of human behavior and social organization. "Marriage is a virtually universal human social institution," she said.
The concept of marriage, she said, rises out of "three persistant facts about human beings cross-culturally. The first is that the vast majority of us, human beings, are attracted – and not by our reason – to an action that creates human life... The second is that society needs babies... And, the third idea in which marriage is rooted is that children need a mother as well as a father."
Gallagher disputes the popular notion that allowing same sex marriage will only have an effect on gay couples. "The big myth is that this is going to affect only 'Adam and Steve,'" she said. "You want to ask me how is gay marriage going to affect you? Here's my answer, people... like you and me who think marriage is the union of husband and wife are [going to be treated] like bigots who opposed interracial marriage."
For Gallagher and others opposed to gay marriage, changing marriage to include more than heterosexual couples means changing one of the fundamental building blocks of our society. Also, the change will have a direct impact on the institutions that regularly celebrate marriages, such as the Church. "You have to mow down marriage to get to the point where they want to go, which is where orientation is treated exactly the same as race in law and culture," she said.
Gallagher was very clear that she does not consider sexual orientation to be at all similar to race, and that she has no objections to interracial marriage. But she asserted that those in favor of same sex marriage have made a point to speak about sexual orientation in terms similar to those used when talking about race.
"The architects of the gay marriage strategy are people who passionately, morally believe that good consists of orientation being treated exactly the same as race in law and culture... that being gay is exactly the same as being black," she said. Consequently, she fears, supporters of traditional marriage will be treated like racial bigots if same sex marriage is legalized.
"There's not one side that has a moral view and another side that doesn't have a moral view. The marriage debate is taking place between two sides, both of which have powerful moral views that are in conflict. They're contradictory."
The moral implications of changing the definition of marriage are where the debate has been largely centered. But, the legal implications of that same change are potentially very far-reaching and are beginning to be dealt with across the country, Picarello said.
The legal term “marriage” appears "everywhere" in law, he said, which means that changing the definition of who can legally be married will change countless other laws – from tax laws to employment laws to health care laws.
"Throughout the law, your rights hinge very often on whether or not you [are married]... so, to change the legal definition of marriage in turn is not to change one law but to change many, many at once. These laws, in turn, regulate religious institutions," he said.
For example, the Church employs many teachers whose rights are guaranteed by Rhode Island's employment laws. If one of those teachers were to travel to Massachusetts to marry a same-sex partner, the diocese would immediately be put into the difficult situation of retaining a teacher whose personal moral views were clearly at odds with the Church's and the school's moral codes. Or, the diocese could fire the teacher and likely face a wrongful termination suit.
Picarello provided many more hypothetical examples of the ways that allowing same sex marriage in Rhode Island could affect the way the Church is run. He also detailed the experience that Catholic Charities of Boston has had since Massachusetts legalized same sex marriage in 2004.
For more than a century, Catholic Charities ran the largest adoption agency in the state. When gay marriage was legalized, the change rippled through the Massachusetts legal code, as Picarello predicted would happen in Rhode Island. The diocesan-run adoption agency, which operated with a state license, was then forced to reconsider its entire mission. They needed the state license to provide adoption services, but they could not have the license if they practiced any kind of discrimination. Suddenly, the Catholic Charities’ moral view against gay marriage (which meant they would not place children with gay married couples) became a form or marriage discrimination.
Rather than abandon their moral compass the diocese decided to get out of the adoption business altogether. Several members of Boston's Catholic Charities resigned over the decision. A religious exemption to the law was put before the state legislature, and failed. In the end, it seemed, nobody won. Not the diocese or Catholic Charities. Not even the gay marriage supporters who wanted the Catholic agency to respond to the new law by placing children with gay married couples. And certainly not the many children who would have been placed in homes had the agency not been forced to shut down. Gallagher, who has written extensively on this case, said, "It's about whether you can be a good Catholic and a good citizen in Massachusetts."
Picarello sees potential for similarly disruptive and detrimental effects if gay marriage becomes the law in Rhode Island. "Religious institutions could well be additionally marginalized," he said. From hiring practices to providing employee benefits to tax exempt status to actually performing legal marriages, countless aspects of the Catholic Church's huge radius of impact in Rhode Island could be affected if the law is changed.
Even if these hypothetical legal decisions favor the Church's position, which Picarello sees as unlikely, the litigation will be costly for the Church in terms of money, time and reputation. "It seems that politically is where this needs to be stopped, because that's really the only place where there's hope, and I'd say there's good hope."
Gallagher said Rhode Islanders need to begin to act offensively against those lobbying for same sex marriage. "The crisis is precisely around this question of how committed we are as a culture to the idea that marriage really matters because children need their mothers and their fathers," she said.
She is planning to start a state chapter of the National Organization for Marriage in the coming months to help organize and empower Rhode Islanders who are against same sex marriage.
Gallagher thinks Americans, particularly Catholics, need to take marriage, and the potentially disastrous effect that changing its definition could have, much more seriously. "What's on the table now in this public debate on marriage is that our faith itself is a form of bigotry," she said.
A priest reacts...
PROVIDENCE – Father John E. Watterson, pastor of St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Narragansett, was among the many clergy members who attended the talk on gay marriage. Fr. Watterson said he feels it is his and other Rhode Islanders' responsibility to become informed about this issue and engage in discussion and debate.
Because gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts, he said, "We have an interest in what's in our back yard," Father Watterson said.
He sees the potential change as fundamental to the way society is organized and potentially disastrous to the Church.
"Before we do something that immense we should have a big, long, good debate and maybe there’s some other way to do this without changing the definition of marriage," he said.
The Church, he asserted, is not acting out of some deep-seated bigotry against homosexuals. "The people who are for gay marriage would love to paint the Church as homophobic," he said, but, "you can make a pretty good case that you are for homosexuals being treated with dignity but not [for] gay marriage.
"I was amazed at how what seemingly is a simple change in the law will have tremendously wide and unanticipated effects," he said. "It affects our whole society... because our definition of marriage has been so universal.
"I don't think that we have even started on the deep discussion of what this would mean to our society," he said. "This is a tremendous change for us as a society and we don't know exactly what it's going to mean."
