A quest to discriminate

THE 27 AMENDMENTS that have altered the US Constitution range from the mundane (regulation of congressional salaries) to the Bill of Rights -- the chief ornament of our founding document. Those passed in the wake of the Civil War secured the rights and liberties of the recently enslaved and provided a guide for reconstruction and the modern civil rights movement. Among those never enacted were amendments to prohibit interracial marriage, and the more recent Equal Rights Amendment. There was also the prohibition amendment -- promulgated in a frenzy of moral activism and after a tumultuous decade on the books it was repealed.

ADVERTISEMENT

It is within this historical context that present proposals to amend the US Constitution and 11 state constitutions to define marriage must be considered. Those who value the integrity of American freedoms watch the debates over the issue with intense interest and concern. Under the ruse that marriage is under attack, the president and the Republican congressional leadership have determined to "defend" marriage against "activist" judges and to use the proposed amendments as the newest blunt instrument in the prosecution of a culture war.

Although the federal amendment was rejected in Congress twice this year, the Republican congressional leadership and their backers have vowed that this was only the first round of a bitter battle. The battle continues in 11 states where voters will decide whether to add discrimination to their state constitutions on Nov. 2. President Bush has repeated his call for the amendment several times over the past year -- including in the debates -- and the issue continues to strategically murmur through the final stretch of the presidential campaign.

First, despite rhetoric to the contrary, marriage is not under attack. No one has argued that marriage is a bad thing. No one has said that men may no longer marry women, no penalties are attached to heterosexual marriage, and it is unlikely that the heterosexual marriage rate will change in consequence of court actions.

The institution of marriage has far more to fear from the rate of heterosexual divorce.

Second, it must be remembered that in the United States, marriage is a civil and not, in the first instance, an ecclesiastical matter. Nothing in the movement to accord the civil right of marriage to homosexuals affects how religious institutions provide for marriage under their rubrics. The Catholic Church is free to define marriage as it always has: Its tenets are not subject to legal review. Unfortunately some religious institutions wish to give their denominational convictions the force of civil law.

Certain custodians of the civil rights movement in this country argue vehemently that in this debate there is no moral equivalency to the high ground of the civil rights movement. They speak as if the movement to extend civil rights to all Americans was almost exclusively a "black thing" frozen in a moment of noble endeavor, and not extendable to persons whose victimhood cannot be equated with those for whom Martin Luther King Jr. lived, worked, and died. It is almost as if the notion of civil rights was a form of private intellectual property, patented and protected against infringement by those not entitled to it.

Not only does this position fail to remember that civil rights is an "American thing" and not just an "African-American thing," but it also produces strange and unlikely alliances. It is a wonder of contemporary wedge politics that the heirs of the civil rights movement are seen to be in league with the most conservative elements of the Republican Party -- with whom the interests of most African-Americans are not usually found.

What then should we do? Certainly, we should not amend the federal or state constitutions. In the over-heated and partisan climate of the debate on the nature of marriage, now is no time to inhibit the rights of the several states to do what they do best, which is to make just and equitable laws for their people. Amending the federal and state constitutions is the wrong solution to an ill-defined problem.

Peter J. Gomes is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church at Harvard University.