Lose some, win some

Voters in California and Maine, and the legislature in New York, have voted down same-sex marriage.

Yet Houston, the 5th largest U.S. city, has just elected a lesbian as its mayor. And, I would add, Atlanta had a lesbian City Council president more than 10 years ago in Kathy Woollard, who then went on to come in second in her race for mayor. She probably would have been elected if she had been African-American, because the dirt thrown at her was that she was not black enough in this black-majority city, not that she was lesbian.

Meanwhile, the Victory Fund which promotes the election of LGBT candidates, saw the election of 54 of the 79 openly gay candidates it supported in 2009. And the Episcopal Church has just elected its second gay bishop, a lesbian.

What do I conclude from this? Homophobia is not dead, but it's growing weaker at the ballot box and in the pulpit; but it's still quite strong at the marriage altar.

The trouble is that we're not asking that religious marriage be mandated, only civil marriage with all the rights and responsibilities of legal contract that heterosexuals have.

In the wonderful anecdote told in the debate in the New York senate by a legislator who supported the same-sex marriage bill, she was stopped at a traffic light that morning, when a bicyclist stopped next to her and put his head in her car window. Seeing her NY State Senate decal, he wanted to know if she was going to vote for the bill. When she said she was, he asked why on earth she would do that. To which she replied: "Because you and I, who have just met and exchanged only a few words, could go down to City Hall right now and get a marriage license. Do you really think that you and I are ready to get married? And yet my friends who have been together in a committed relationship for 16 years cannot." He said, "I see your point." That is a very good, rational argument; but it didn't sway her colleagues.

I'm not sure it's accurate to call the opposition to same-sex marriage 'homophobia.' Some of it undoubtedly is, but I'm willing to acknowledge that many people oppose it who are 100% supportive of gays and lesbians in every other way, including as teachers of young children -- perhaps the other most sensitive area.

Is that homophobia? Or is it really a fear that a cherished institution is being changed -- as they say it is? Not that Adam and Steve getting married will actually change John and Mary's marriage (we trivialize the argument when we reduce it to that); but that somehow the meaning of "marriage" will change. We can argue the facts that, in states and other countries that have adopted gay marriage, there are no measurable changes in other people's marriages or in the institution itself. But this opposition is not measurable by statistics but rather by feelings.

Of course opposition based on feelings is not an argument that should stand up in a court challenge. But I think we make a mistake when we lump everyone who opposes gay marriage in the same category of homophobia and try to argue facts with them. This opposition isn't rational. We win a rational debate; we lose when people vote with their emotions. Perhaps that's why we're making more progress in courts than in legislatures, and more progress in legislatures than at the ballot box.

Ralph