Protect all marriages

October 2, 2005

RELIGIOUS FIGURES who are organizing ''Protect Marriage Sunday" in churches across Massachusetts this morning insist that their intent is simply to defend traditional marriage and is not discrimination against gays. But it is difficult to see it any other way.

Consider these events in the past few weeks: A California 14-year-old was expelled from a church school because her parents, together for 22 years, are lesbians, violating the school's rules against ''immoral practices." A Starbucks on the campus of the Baptist college Baylor University got rid of coffee cups with a quote from the gay author Armistead Maupin in order not to offend Baylor's ''culture." This backlash is reminiscent of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, when the dominant race in the United States reacted, sometimes violently, to the rising status of blacks.

The parallels don't end there. Opponents of marriage equality often complain that gay marriage in Massachusetts was driven by a slim 4-3 decision of the Supreme Judicial Court. In 1948, a California high court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional -- also by a 4-3 margin. Opponents say ''the people" should decide whether to approve gay marriage, and national polls show that somewhere between 55 and 60 percent are now in opposition. In 1948, nearly 70 percent opposed interracial marriage, and it took another 19 years before the US Supreme Court affirmed the California case. Yet few today would argue that prohibiting adults of different races from marrying would be anything other than discriminatory.

The churches participating in Protect Marriage Sunday will be advocating a secular act: urging parishioners to sign petitions to get a constitutional ban on gay marriage on the 2008 ballot. No one is demanding that any church be required to sanctify marriages of same-sex couples. Although it can include a separate religious ceremony, marriage is itself a civil institution. More than 40 percent of US weddings feature no religious component at all, and they are no less ''true" marriages than the religious sort.

But gay marriage opponents are right about one thing: Marriage is an important societal marker. When divorce was legalized, when contraception was deemed a private choice within marriage, when married women were given rights to their own credit and inheritance, and when interracial marriages were allowed, marriage was the crucible through which changes in society were forged. Each time, ''traditional" marriage was seen as being under attack.

Massachusetts voters are free to sign the petitions for the gay marriage ban. But if history is any guide, time will prove them to have been on the wrong side of justice and equality.