APRIL 7, 2009
Why Gay Marriage Matters
The state should recognize our choice of partner.
By MICHAEL JUDGE
Iowa City, Iowa
I often tell friends that a part of me is gay, even though I've been happily married to my wife for 12 years. What I mean is that in April 2003 I donated a kidney to my older brother David, who is gay. The transplant took place at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics -- and it was, in a very real sense, a miraculous event for our entire family. So when David called me last Friday excited about the Iowa Supreme Court decision making same-sex marriage legal, I wasn't surprised. "You know what this means, don't you?" he asked. "It means we can visit those we love when they're dying in the hospital; it means we're finally treated like family."
Most hospitals in America only allow spouses and immediate family members to visit a patient during a medical emergency, when a patient is unconscious or in critical condition after a car accident, heart attack or kidney failure, for example. These are the moments when our spouses are most needed, the moments when life and death decisions are made -- and, if necessary, goodbyes are said. My brother, whose kidneys failed when he was in his 30s, understands these moments.
Of course, this is just one example of how Friday's decision changes the lives of gay and lesbian couples in Iowa. As the court wrote in its unanimous decision, the 12 plaintiffs (six couples) expressed "the disadvantages and fears they face each day due to the inability to obtain a civil marriage in Iowa." These include: "the legal inability to make many life and death decisions affecting their partner, including decisions related to health care . . . the inability to share in their partners' state-provided health insurance, public employee pension benefits, and many private-employer-provided benefits and protections," and the denial of "several tax benefits."
(snip)
My brother and I and millions of Iowans are proud of our state at this moment. Others aren't. There are many (some of them beloved family members) who believe marriage, civil or otherwise, should only be between a man and woman; others aren't opposed to same-sex marriage but don't think the courts should mandate it. Indeed, there's a movement here in Iowa as in other states to amend the state constitution to define marriage as a union solely between a man and woman. (Such an amendment couldn't get on the ballot here until 2012 at the earliest.) To this, I would simply ask why? Why blemish our constitution and narrow our definition of equal protection when our state has been a leader on such historic civil-rights issues as slavery, interracial marriage, women's rights, and desegregation?
As the court wrote in its decision: "We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification."
(snip)
Mr. Judge, a fifth generation Iowan, is a freelance journalist and a contributing editor of The Far Eastern Economic Review.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123906051568695003.htmlPrinted in The Wall Street Journal, page A13
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