[Editor Note: I gave a call to New York law firm Belair & Evans to confirm that the comment to my post about Eastchester, NY revoking domestic partner benefits (and a prior "memo" document I received via email) is in fact from Raymond W. Belair. Because of the length of my response, I post it here instead of in comments]
Raymond W. Belair’s Emailed Memo
Mr. Belair responded to the end of my blog entry, where I write:
“Mr. Belair is right about one thing – marriage is important in our society. What I don’t understand is that two gay people in a loving, devoted relationship want to publicly acknowledge their commitment – and Mr. Belair wants to take that away.”
I will mainly address Mr. Belair’s “memo” to me because it is more comprehensive than his blog comment.
Mr. Belair starts the memo saying, “Eastchester’s repeal of the Same Sex Domestic Partner’s Law (SSDPL) should be seen in context” – and then alleges the following (I’ve summarized and broken it down into key points with my comments ([HW]) interspersed – my general argument follows):
[Belair] The domestic partner benefit was a political payoff to the homosexual lobby, and was not genuinely requested by Eastchester municipal union workers.
[HW] Without knowing these inside facts, I cannot judge them, but however politically motivated it may have been, that does not invalidate the argument that two gay people in a loving, devoted relationship should be able to publicly acknowledge their commitment and receive the benefits of this public commitment or marriage.
[Belair] “Despite strenuous opposition, the benefit was passed with less deliberation than is usually accorded the placement of a stop sign…. After the dust settled many Eastchester taxpayers concluded they had been involuntarily conscripted onto the wrong side of the culture wars.”
[HW] While I object to the “culture war” description, if the normal public process was circumvented, it should not have been, and I understand people’s anger. However, it does not change the principle that two loving, devoted people seeking public recognition of their commitment should receive the same benefits as any other married couple. A bad (or even illegal) process should not cause people not involved in illegal actions to be denied basic civil rights.
[Belair] There was no prior claim of discrimination to motivate the creation of the benefit.
[HW] None was necessary. It is a question of universal civil rights and the interest of the state in fostering social stability through marriage. Notably one person ended up receiving the benefits – or two (see 1/20/05) – so it appears the prior discrimination (no benefits for domestic partners) prevented them (and perhaps others who rejected jobs in Eastchester) from getting what they otherwise would have sought.
[Belair] “The benefit was written to effectively exclude unmarried persons living together, whether a man and a woman or persons of the same sex, unless they were homosexuals.”
[HW] The key to the argument is “public recognition of a commitment” – whether a religious marriage, civil marriage, common law marriage or civil union. Any two people living together are not necessarily “committed” and do not necessarily seek “public recognition” and so do not qualify.
[Belair] “The Eastchester police recently voted unanimously to accept the new contract, without the controversial benefit. The unions overwhelmingly approved.”
[HW] This is unfortunate and they made the wrong decision based on a universal principle. I do note, however, that they did preserve the benefits for those already receiving them and for an additional short period of time to cover any current workers seeking to get them.
[Belair] “Now there arises a falsetto chorus about rights, discrimination and inequality that was never heard in support of the benefit when originally passed.”
[HW] It is a pity if principled arguments were not made, they are the right arguments.
[Belair] “Government properly has no interest in strictly personal relationships. But marriage is not strictly personal. During hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act(DOMA), Congress recognized ‘Society has an interest in protecting the institution of marriage…because it has an interest in responsible procreation and childrearing…it is society’s way of signaling to would-be parents that their long term relationship is important-a public concern, not merely a private affair.’”
[HW] I wholeheartedly agree that “marriage is not strictly personal” and is a relationship where government has an interest. Congress and President Bill Clinton have misunderstood that interest as applied to gay people, and they were wrong to pass DOMA into law. While some have argued about DOMA’s legality and application, my argument is that it is wrong to deny people civil rights based on sexual orientation.
[Click below to read more on A Discussion of Gay Marriage]
A Discussion of Gay Marriage
Why does Mr. Belair’s argument about gay marriage not make sense to me? It’s because his real aversion, whatever it may be, goes unstated – and in fact he professes not to care about it, as when he states in his blog comment:
“You professed difficulty in understanding how I could be opposed to two people loving each other. I am not so oppsed [sic], and no one I know is. I don’t see how anyone could care in the least about how two people choose to conduct themselves. It is only when they attempt to hijack the institution of marriage and its benefits that we object.”
How can expanding marriage to include more loving, devoted couples be an “attempt to hijack” it? I am reminded of a Jon Stewart joke,
“I don’t want to marry another man.”
(he pauses, as he pretends to be hearing a voice in the ear-piece)
“What? You mean… it’s not mandatory?”
“Oh. So then what’s the worry?”
Gay marriage and heterosexual marriage are not a zero sum game. Heterosexuals can and will marry the opposite gender when gay marriage is legalized – it is unlikely to affect their intentions at all. If gay marriage were so destructive you might expect Vermont, which introduced gay civil unions in July 2000 to have experienced a spike in it’s divorce rate – instead Vermont’s 2001 divorce rate (the most recent I could find) is equal to the U.S. average – and 0.8 people/thousand less than it was in 1995, when Vermont’s rate was 0.4 higher than the U.S. average without Vermont’s civil union law. Notably Vermont’s 2001 rate was less than conservative states like Alabama (1.3 less), Mississippi (1.4 less) and Wyoming (2.1 less) – and neighboring state New Hampshire was higher too (Vermont was 1.0 less) – suggesting little dramatic impact or correlation. While Vermont’s marriage rate went down in 2001 (from 1995) – it had also gone down from 1990 to 1995 without civil unions – and went down less, year to year for all three years, than South Carolina, which now has a lower marriage rate than Vermont (from SC marriages being up 5.0 per thousand in 1990, to Vermont being up 0.6 in 2001). Vermont’s 2001 marriage rate was 1.6 per thousand higher than the U.S. average. There just doesn’t seem to be any correlation.
How do we restrict marriage other than for gay people? We mainly restrict it by age, familial relationship (close relatives cannot marry), and residency (it varies state to state). But as conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan points out
“The Constitution guarantees the right to marry to murderers, to prisoners, to people with a history of neglecting their children, to people who have remarried 10 times, to O.J. Simpson, to Elizabeth Taylor. If all these people have a fundamental civil right to marry, as I think they do, [gay people] do too.”
Mr. Belair’s objection seems to ultimately be an objection to gays, as evidenced by Belair’s objection to the 2002 passing of New York’s Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA) into law which, according to the Review Press, “essentially added the words ‘sexual orientation’ to the state’s existing human rights and education laws.” New York’s laws previously prohibited discrimination based only on race, sex, creed, color, national origin, disability, age and marital status. The Review Press quoted Belair,
“‘I think the passing of this bill is a sad sign of the times,’ said Bronxville resident Raymond W. Belair of the Family First Organization, whose mission is to preserve and protect the family and traditional marriage as it is now defined in New York State.
….
According to Belair, SONDA is a victory for a movement that was designed to incrementally chip away at traditional marriage. Belair and his supporters are concerned about the future of the institution and worry that teaching alternative lifestyles in the schools will cause parents, who object to alternative lifestyles, to be accused of illegal acts (bordering on hate crimes) if SONDA is carried out to its logical legal extension.”
If Mr. Belair is sincere in his concern for parental control raising children – why does he not advocate getting rid of the protection for gender? What of parents, perhaps out of sincere conviction, who discriminate against their children of one gender or another – such as believing girls and women should not be ‘too educated’ – of which there are plenty of historical examples? Why not “creed” too? What of the dangers to parental actions in a case where a fundamentalist Protestant or Catholic has a child professing the opposite faith? The disabled? Adopted children from other races/countries? Surely there isn’t a single example of a protected class listed where discrimination has not occurred in childrearing or other venues. That’s why they are “protected classes.” As Yvette Christofilis, executive director of The LOFT, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community center serving Westchester County says so clearly about the SONDA law, “These are not special rights no matter what they (those opposed to the law) say. How can anyone say that preventing verbal and physical abuse against people is a bad thing?”
Does government have a right to interfere with childrearing to protect children? In Mr. Belair’s memo to me, he quotes DOMA congressional hearings, “Society has an interest in … childrearing.” I agree. It seems Mr. Belair does too, except when it comes to protecting gays from discrimination.
Conclusion
Mr. Belair and the organization Family First that he represents, seek to “preserve and protect the family and traditional marriage as it is now defined in New York State.” I support them in this goal – and hope they will work with me on real reforms that will really help families, instead of symbolic discriminatory gestures that help no one. I hope they will join me in supporting a living wage so that traditional families can afford food, clothing and shelter – and spend time together, instead of working extra jobs to make ends meet. I hope that they will support national healthcare to protect the traditional family from illness, and to protect them from destitution should an illness come that would bankrupt them in today’s healthcare system. I’m a big supporter of traditional marriage for those who seek it – and would love to have affordable, quality childcare available for those who need it to prevent one of the major stresses on family life, worry over who is caring for the children. I want retirement security for traditional families, including guaranteed Social Security benefits, for parents when they retire – and for their kids when they retire. I want the kids from traditional families to go to great public schools – and college too!
While I’m with Belair and Family First (I hope), wanting traditional families in New York State to enjoy all these benefits – I go further in hoping that all traditional families in America, including mine, will enjoy them. And I go still further than Belair and Family First in wanting all American families to enjoy these benefits. Even the gay ones. It’s the moral thing to do – it’s the American thing to do.
Comments 1
REPLY TO HIRAM WURF
Mr. Wurf responded to my e-mail memo which itself was a response his mention of my quote in the New York Times regarding the repeal by Eastchester, New York of homosexual partners’ benefits for Town employees. Herewith my reply to Mr. Wurf’s response.
In replying to Mr Wurf I will try to use words in their ordinary and usual meaning. However, I immediately depart from that rule in the sole instance of writing of “homosexual marriage”. This term is oxymoronic and ignores both the nature of reality and the reality of nature. Having said that, I can see Mr Wurf’s candor in his passionate support for homosexual marriage as singularly refreshing.In the local debate here, proponents of the homosexual benefits were at pains to deny any linkage between efforts to secure homosexual benefits and homosexual marriage. Of course, this was properly seen as ludicrous, since the various websites of the homosexual lobby identified this precise linkage as an incremental step toward the ultimate goal of marriage. One homosexual activist, who “didn’t get the memo” about keeping this strategy below the radar publically, spilled the beans after a county-wide domestic partners’ registry was established. He thanked Eastchester for its efforts which, with the registry , would “help” to achieve homosexual marriage. The fallout from that destroyed any vestigial credibility of the homosexual lobby.
But Mr.Wurf, while having none of that particular deception, blithely assumes agreement about “rights” which are not agreed, are without legal recognition and are overwhelmingly rejected by the American people. In speaking of such nonexistent rights, Mr. Wurf thus attempts to create rights out of his own imagination. Moreover, he attempts to hijack language as well as institutions when he refers to “homosexual marriage”.There is no equivalent to true marriage because so-called homosexual marriages are incapable of the ends of marriage. While such relationships are capable of many types of acts, they are incapable of marital acts.It is this critical faculty of true marriage which is the ancient and enduring foundation of marriage and the reason that society and government accord it the special rights it receives. It is the only union capable of begetting and nurturing children. It is inextricably bound up with preserving and protecting our generational integrity. While Mr.Wurf posits a loving relationship as the sole principle upon which to confer the benefits of true marriage, loving realtionships alone are of no interest to government.The bearing and rearing of children are.Government assets are always scarce and should be limited to those relationships in which government has a legitimate interest. True marriage is unique in this regard.
Furthermore, Mr. Wurf’s imagined basis for the benefits and rights-a loving relationship- creates a host of nightmare scenarios. Were marriages and benefits to be available on the the sole criteria of love, there could be no principled objection to polygamous or incestuous marriages. Neither could marriages between adults and children be denied if love alone is the only basis. Lest you think this is a fanciful concern, you should be aware of the evidence to the contrary. There are any number of groups advocating these “nightmare unions” which have been formed and are waiting to take advantage of developments. This was discussed at great length last year during a debate broadcast on C-Span and hosted by the Boston University Communications School. In this regard, your attention is also invited to the many publications of Professor Hadley Arkes of Amherst College.
Even as to the benefits given here in Eastchester, Mr. Wurf is not consistent. Here he abandons the “love alone principle” because it fails. The Same Sex Domestic Partners Law(SSDPL) was written in such a way that only homosexual persons could take advantage. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, aunts and neices, etc.(as well as all heterosexual persons), were excluded from the benefit, even though they otherwise qualified on the basis of financial co-dependance,commitment, etc. Does Mr. Wurf believe that members of the same family do not love each other? Or is it only a certain kind of love, identifiable only by certain distinctive physical activity which ought to be singled out for special benefits otherwise only given to married couples? His only possible answer is his mention of “public recognition” of a commitment. But government has no basis for issuing “public recognitions” of arrangements that, unlike marriage, do not make its unique contribution to society.
There is a glimpse of what is really going on here, however, with references to public recognition. This is about “empowerment of the individual homosexual” at the expense of an institution. Now really, this is truly a frivolous basis for government involvement.
Mr. Wurf’s silly suggestion that homosexual marriage is not “mandatory” is merely grotesque without being humorous. It is unworthy of him. Marriage is injured by homosexual mimicry of it in the same way that counterfeit currency devalues authentic currency. There is only so much of value to go around, particularly of taxpayer money.
Although Eastchester taxpayers are opposed to the benefit, the employees and the unions never really wanted it in the first place and the Town employees voted unanimously to relinquish it, as did the unions, Mr. Wurf ignores all this, simply proclaiming that they were wrong. This reveals a fairly typical,paternalistic,poltically correct elitism. Mr. Wurf and his fellow travelers know better what ought to be done than the people actually concerned.
This would otherwise have been a good place to end, but Mr.Wurf provides a “target rich environment”, particularly when he professes psychic powers to discern my motive in attempting to discern the “real reason” for me trying to preserve marriage. It is very simple, Mr. Wurf. I am trying to preserve marriage. We are not “opposed to gays”, as you suggest, unless Bill Clinton, Senators Charles Schumer, Joe Biden, John Glen, Joe Lieberman, Carl Levin, Barbara Mikulski, Tom Daschle, Chris Dodd, Frank Lautenberg, Pat Leahy, 85% of the Senate and the House and 90% of the Illinois Congressional delegation(all of whom voted for the Defense of Marriage Act) are so opposed, because we advocate nothing that they did not legislate and sign into law.
The Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Act mentioned by Mr. Wurf was indeed another piece of legislation passed to address a problem which never existed. It was again championed by the homosexual lobby as part of the homosexual marriage campaign. Everone knew the existing legal protections against child abuse were sufficient, but this was never about a real problem. It created another “special right” and specially protected status not because a group needed special protection, but because the homosexual lobby needed another legislative victory. It unashamedly sought not its publicly proclaimed purpose of protection, but a pulpit to sanction lectures about acceptance of “appropriate, alternative, lifestyles”. Indeed, there were threats that parents who objected to such indoctrination of their children, about what they may properly have found abhorrent, would be subject to prosecution. Does Mr. Wurf wish to join ranks with this cultural Gestapo in the culture wars he claims do not exist? The other protected categories(sex,creed, age, etc.) are groups about which there is near universal consensus; and these are hardly role models for the promotion of the homosexual agenda. Mr. Wurf’s comments may not have been seriously intended.
And speaking of children, Mr. Wurf and his friends( I assume he has some, he looks friendly enough in his online portrait)have overlooked one big problem. If ever there were widespread acceptance of homosexual marriage, children adopted by them would have one guarantee: never to have both a mother and a father. Even dissident social scientists do not bother to deny that children with both a mother and a father do much better than those who do not. Perhaps that is why the United States Supreme Court recently let stand Florida’s prohibition on adoption by homosexual couples. Some forms of self-aggrandizement, empowermnent and “public recognition” must yield to the general welfare of society. Our generational integrity is too precious to be sacrificed at the altar of a false equivalence.
Raymond W. Belair
Posted 21 Jan 2005 at 11:34 pm ¶90 Overhill Road
Bronxville, New York 10708