 |
|
( |
History Lecturer Lane Fenrich and Weinberg junior Matthew Barbour advocated recognition of same-sex marriage, and DePaul Prof. Jane Rutherford and Weinberg freshman Latonya Starks expressed reservations about it.
Fenrich spoke first, giving a brief background about the “dynamic institution” of marriage.
“It wasn’t until late in the 20th century that women began to be considered full partners in a marriage, and not just extensions of their husbands,” Fenrich told an audience of 60 students in the Northwestern Room of Norris University Center.
But he focused on the same-sex marriage debate’s recent appearance in the political arena.
“Very few gay and lesbian people showed interest in legal marriage before the late ’80s,” said Fenrich, a senior lecturer in the history department. He attributed this growth in support for the legal challenge to several things.
“Partly I think the change is an accident,” said Fenrich.
He said that AIDS sharpened awareness of the need for legal status to visit dying partners in the hospital or to get custody of surviving children. He said that in the ’60s and ’70s, gays wanted to remain different, expressing pride in community church marriages that did not involve the state.
Rutherford, a professor of family law and a self-described “conservative defender of marriage,” agreed that “AIDS has driven the rush for marriage and increasing monogamy.” But she questioned the basis for gay and lesbians’ rallying for state support.
“I don’t have any love for the patriarchy of marriage, but I don’t agree with using the right to privacy as a reason to legalize same-sex marriages,” she said.
Rutherford spoke about intangible contracts as alternatives to marriage.
“The problem with contracts is that the two parties have unequal power,” she said. “One is very likely to lose more if the relationship ends. There’s one party with more bargaining power in all relationships.”
Starks, a Weinberg freshman and debate team member, said legalization of same-sex marriage would bring no benefits to gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transgender individuals.
“Just like emancipation laws were ignored in the period of Reconstruction, same-sex marriage laws would become ploys to give individuals a false feeling of security in thinking that they have legal support and mask the government’s true feelings,” she said. “Just because a law is enacted, it doesn’t mean that everyone will have equal rights.”
She concluded by asking, “Why should the love between two people be controlled by the whims of the government?”
Barbour, an anthropology major, said, “We have to grapple with the realities of our present.”
He spoke about the Texas case of a couple who sought to marry but were denied the right because they appeared to be two women. When it was proven through a chromosome test that one of the women was actually transgender, the state had no choice but to approve the union.
Barbour brought up other questions he said needed to be asked: “Can we talk about domestic partnerships with three people? Why are we so hung up on couplehood?”
