Is Gay Marriage Like Civil Rights?

Originally published by the Daily Press

Is Gay Marriage Like Civil Rights?
By Hugh Lessig
Thursday 11.02.06

Debate on a proposed Virginia amendment strikes a chord in the black community.

RICHMOND—One of the more striking pieces of campaign literature in the fight over gay marriage has come from the NAACP.

It shows civil rights marchers from the 1960s, and it makes the case that a proposed Virginia constitutional ban on gay marriage would return the state to the dark days of government-sponsored discrimination.

People who support the ban simply because they don't like the gay lifestyle should keep that in mind, said Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, D-Newport News, Virginia's only black member of Congress. "When you're talking about discrimination," he said, "the victim is always unpopular. That's just the way it works with civil rights."

But the Rev. William Owens - who favors the ban - has a different opinion of gays and lesbians who say they are fighting for justice.

"They haven't hung from any trees," he said. "They can get a job anywhere they want to. They can get an education. They've always had the right. Marriage is the issue. So it's not a civil rights issue. I marched for civil rights."

The question of whether Virginia needs a constitutional ban on gay marriage stirs the passions of many citizens. But it strikes a particular chord in the black community, where segregation was once a fact of life and where conservative churches follow the Bible as a literal script.

This week, those two views collided at a feisty forum sponsored in part by Hampton Watch, a citizens group. The same arguments have played out in smaller meetings and news conferences as the campaign - which seems surprisingly close in traditionally conservative Virginia - heads to the wire.

Virginia law forbids same-sex marriage now, but supporters of a constitutional ban say a law isn't enough. Judges sympathetic to homosexuals could undermine the law, they say. They point to New Jersey, where the state Supreme Court said same-sex couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples. The court left it to the Legislature to decide whether New Jersey will honor gay marriage or another type of civil union.

Critics of the ban say the proposed constitutional amendment, as written, even goes beyond bigotry. It's confusing and broadly worded, and if passed, it would threaten all types of legal arrangements between unmarried couples, gay or straight.

A recent Mason-Dixon poll found that 52 percent of those surveyed favored the ban and 42 percent opposed it. In other states, amendments have passed by much wider margins.

Black voters polled in Virginia supported the amendment 51 percent to 36 percent, with a significant 13 percent undecided, the same poll found.

In Virginia, the proposed same-sex-marriage amendment will share the ballot with two other amendment proposals.

One would delete a provision that forbids the incorporation of churches, something that has been ruled unconstitutional. Another would authorize legislation to lower taxes on property with new structures and improvements in conservation, redevelopment or rehabilitation areas.

Outside Virginia, the debate over same-sex marriage is growing. Eight states, including Virginia, have votes scheduled for next week. Voters in 20 states have approved constitutional bans.

In one sense, the questions over gay marriage that play out in the black community are the same questions that everyone asks:

Is homosexuality a lifestyle choice, or is one born gay? What are the consequences for families? Should society fear judges' rulings?

The first question gets to what Owens was talking about. He's president of the Coalition of African American Pastors, based in Memphis, Tenn. Other Virginia pastors have addressed this in the past few weeks.

Apostle William Carter of the Cross of Calvary Deliverance Ministries in Richmond put it a different way at a recent news conference in his hometown.

"God created me black," he said. "But he did not create male and female to be engaged in same-sex relationships. I assert that no man and no woman have a right to be homosexual. Yes, you may have a problem, you have a malady. You're suffering from a psychosis or whatever, but you don't have that right under God."

Those arguments trigger a very personal rebuttal from Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, campaign manager of the Commonwealth Coalition, who spoke at the Hampton forum. The group opposes the proposal.

One of her brothers is autistic. When she went to college more than 30 years ago, she recalled a lecture in a psychology class.

"I listened to a professor with a Ph.D. say - with a passion - my brother was the way he was because my mother made him that way," she said, "because his first experience with life was so painful, he withdrew. And now ... no one would stand up and stay that."

The fallout on the family came to mind for former Del. Winsome Sears. She's a conservative black Republican from Hampton Roads who attended the same forum and fielded a question on how the marriage amendment would affect the black community.

The black community is suffering now from too many one-parent households, she said. Two men in the home or two women in the home will not fill the void "because a father loves in a certain way and a mother loves in a certain way," she said.

"If you look at the black community and see what's going on, do we want to say, 'Let's bring it to the rest of America'? Is that what we want to say? I don't think so."

State Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, said that conservatives liked to talk about values when it came to bolstering families but that they didn't support more direct help. Conservatives don't push for additional education money or stronger crime programs, she said. They don't fight to raise the minimum wage or want more gun control. "Let's get emotional about crime and poor education," she said.

Finally, the two sides disagree about whether judges can step in and undermine the state law that now bans same-sex marriage and civil unions.

The Rev. Ray Johnson is pastor of Dominion Ministries in Newport News. He told the Hampton audience that the New Jersey court decision amounted to "a legal precedent that is already set into place, that can move into Virginia."

Locke countered that Virginia judges were to thank for striking down a law that forbid interracial marriage. "So I say, 'Hurray for those rogue liberal judges,' " she said. "Otherwise, we'd still have discrimination between the races."