OXFORD — It will happen in Mississippi. Sooner or later — probably a lot sooner than anyone thinks — this state will join the 30 others where, as of last week, men may marry men and women may marry women.
The societal shift has been at lightning speed. (Actually, it has taken 18 years, but that’s lightning speed measured against the thousands of years wedlock was for heterosexuals only.)
No one in public life has been punished at the polls on the topic.
During the 2007 presidential campaign, vice presidential nominee Joe Biden apologized to Barack Obama after a kerfuffle. Biden made a strong statement in favor of same-sex marriage, which rankled campaign staffers who insisted Obama’s thinking on the topic was “still evolving.” (Actually, Obama had made a strong statement in favor of same-sex marriage way back in 1996, meaning he was for it before becoming ambivalent at best and then, after Biden’s statement, becoming for it again.)
And it was also in 1996 that then-President Bill Clinton agreed wholeheartedly with Congress and signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which decreed that gay people in America would never, ever legally marry.
But Clinton changed and so did lots of people, including Dick Cheney, sometimes referred to as Darth Vader for his menacing scowl. One of the Cheneys’ daughters is gay, and in 2009 the man who had served as vice president to George W. Bush said she should be free to marry anyone she wanted to marry.
Last year, President Obama instructed Eric Holder, his attorney general, not even to bother defending Clinton’s “DOMA” when it was challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court. Few seemed to care that this duly passed and signed statute would “self-repeal.”
But even though voters haven’t freaked out over political flip-floppers, there is very little chance that when change comes to Mississippi it will emanate from the Governor’s Mansion or the hallowed halls of the Legislature.
Gov. Phil Bryant is polite, but he’s adamant on the subject. In an extremely rare legal maneuver, the governor has filed to intervene in what would normally be litigation between two private individuals. The parties in the case are two women who married in California, but seek to divorce in Mississippi. The Alliance Defending Freedom represents the governor and argues that a state court allowing two women to divorce is an admission they were legally married in the first place. And that shouldn’t happen, Bryant’s lawyers argue.
The Legislature is of much the same thinking or, in the alternative, is not willing to roil the waters.
Interestingly, the public opinion trend in Mississippi is not far behind the national trend on the topic — and might not be behind at all.
A Public Policy Polling survey about this time last year found that 66 percent of Mississippians believe gay people should not face any discrimination in the workplace. While only one in five voters endorsed same-sex marriage, half support “civil unions” or some form of legal recognition or same-sex couples.
Again, that was a year ago. Last week, the Supreme Court’s inaction on bans overturned in Indiana, Wisconsin, Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia added them to the “OK to marry” list. Bans in Louisiana and Texas are on expedited appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals are also evidence of momentum, most likely irreversible.
To date, opponents have grounded their objections on a couple of points.
One is economic, saying the traditional man-woman-child(ren) economic unit is key. The problem there is that while they are biologically prohibited from making their own, same-sex couples may certainly adopt (in most places) and form the same household unit.
The other, more dominant objection is religion-based, specifically that same-sex coupling is unnatural.
This fails to recognize the dual nature of the marital bond. It can be (1) both sacred and legal or, for the non-spiritual, (2) merely a legal contract. The courts have not and will not tell churches they have to bless same-sex marriages. The courts have stuck to their province — legal rights and responsibilities — and left God out of it. (Same as divorce, for example. Courts may break the legal bonds, but churches are under no obligation to recognize or accept couples’ decisions to cancel their sacred oaths.)
In the big picture, what’s happening is that fewer Americans — and that includes Mississippians — see any reason to fear allowing men to marry men and women to marry women. One state will be last to provide legal recognition, but the pattern is clear: All 50 will ordain same-sex marriage — and it won’t take long.
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