(NAME-MCE) On Same-Sex Marriage & Rights for All

[Blumenfeld, Warren [C I]]

On Same-Sex Marriage and Rights for All


A Commentary by Warren J. Blumenfeld


We can all be proud that the Iowa Supreme Court voted unanimously in declaring the state's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Summarizing the court's decision, Justice Cody wrote: 

"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."

This important ruling now sets the stage for same-sex couples to receive the societal recognition and over one-thousand rights and benefits accorded to married partners in legally-sanctioned unions. The many people who have worked tirelessly to ensure these rights and benefits are well deserving of our praise and our respect.

With this great victory here in the heart of the Heartland, we must not rest on our laurels, for the battle for equity is only just beginning. Not only must we guard against those individuals and organizations that have in the past and will continue to deny same-sex couples their rights, but we also must work to ensure that the rights and benefits now only accorded to married partners of all sexual identities are accorded as well to individuals regardless of relationship status.

While I fully support marriage equality, I am passionate about rights and benefits equity. We can look at the issue of marriage with its attendant rights, benefits, and privileges as comprising a boundary or a border, an oppositional binary frame, which establishes a polarization of exclusion on one side and inclusion on the other. 

In the state of Iowa, different-sex couples, and soon same-sex couples, will comprise the groups positioned on the inclusive side of the border (in a sense, same-sex couples are the new border crossers). On the excluded side of the border or binary, however, there are those who for many reasons either cannot or will not engage in the socially constructed institution of marriage. Many critical question remain: 

Why should non-married people not be entitled to the benefits and privileges accorded only to married couples? Why should, for example, a single mother not receive health and insurance benefits simply because she is not married to a partner who receives family benefits from a workplace? For that matter, why are health benefits tied in the first place to the workplace? Is not health care a human right, rather than a work-related benefit? Many of the over one-thousand benefits, for example, rights to child custody, hospital visitation, inheritance, tax breaks, and many others are entitled only to the married.

We as marginalized people know what it is like to be placed on the excluded side of the border, and therefore, we have an informed perspective to ensure that we do not perpetuate the binary frames of inclusion versus exclusion. We have a responsibility, indeed, an opportunity to not only cross the borders, but to tear down the very borders that continue to exclude so many. We must do our work so that all can receive the benefits, the privileges, and the rights regardless of whom we love, and regardless of how we choose to configure our lives.

 

 
Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld
Department of Curriculum & Instruction
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011-3192
Office Phone: (515) 294-5931
Office Fax:     (515) 294-6206
Home Phone: (515) 232-8230