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Gay Marriage

DENVER POST, June 1, 2000

PROTECTING TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE?

by Reggie Rivers (retired from the Denver Broncos)

So much for courage.
I was still hoping that Gov. Bill Owens would do the courageous thing and veto the same-sex marriage ban.... I suppose I shouldn't have been too optimistic. Homosexuals are an easy target.
...The espoused goal of this bill is to protect "traditional marriage," but I still have no idea what that means. What protection does marriage need?
Gov. Owens is married. Did he sleep easier this week knowing that his marriage was protected from same-sex couples? If two men get married, would that somehow undermine the bond between the governor and his wife?
If Mike and David getting married damages everyone else's marriage, does that mean that we all have a role to play in the marriages of other people?
If John and Mary get a divorce does that weaken marriage for everyone else? Is divorce contagious? Does infidelity in one marriage weaken every other marriage? Does every abusive relationship reflect abuse onto other relationships? What about people who get married five or six times? What about people who appear on shows like "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-millionaire?" Have they undermined traditional marriage? Do we need laws to stop them?
I'm assuming Gov. Owens and his wife have a traditional marriage. How could the marriage choices of any other couple on the planet threaten the governor's traditional marriage?
We have a long history of choosing groups of people and discriminating against them because we don't "like" them.
It's just in this past century that women got the right to vote, the right to be educated, the right to work the same jobs as men, the right to take care of themselves, the right to be recognized independent of their fathers, husbands and children. It's just in this past century that blacks and other ethnic minorities earned the right to be treated equally under the law.
Now we're legislating the same type of discrimination against homosexuals.
We're telling them that they don't have the same rights as the rest of us because they're different, because they make us uncomfortable or because God ordained it.
Over the years, we've created nearly 1,050 governmental benefits and responsibilities for married couples. So any couple who wants to tap into that need only buy an inexpensive marriage license. But gay couples who want to access those same laws are either prohibited from doing so or must pay a hefty sum to an attorney to create the same contracts.
Why shouldn't they have the same access as the rest of us?
Gay people are taxpayers, so they're equally deserving of all benefits and responsibilities that we finance with our tax dollars.
Should we tell homosexuals that because they're gay they're not entitled to Social Security or that they can't claim deductions for a home office? If that doesn't make sense, then why should we tell them that they're not entitled to the same exemption from property tax upon a spouse's death that heterosexual couples get?
The same-sex marriage bill the governor signed into law on Friday is an embarrassment to the state. "Traditional values" is the stated motivation, but we know that traditional values supported slavery and second-class citizenship for women.
Maybe we need to re-evaluate our values and let the concepts of fairness, compassion and equality be our guide.

___________________
Former Denver Broncos player Reggie Rivers (rrivers@denverlink.com) writes Thursdays on The Post op-ed page and is a talk host on KHOW Radio (630 AM, weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m.).

Will it destroy the fabric of our society?

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