Regarding a proposed amendment to the Constitution to ban gay marriage, you write that "President Bush proposes to radically rewrite the Constitution" (editorial, Feb. 24). Since when is adding an amendment radically rewriting the Constitution?the letter got me thinking about the "established definition in law" of the word "marriage."
And what is "mean-spirited" about reaffirming the definition of "marriage," an institution that has formed an essential part of human society for centuries?
Once you tamper with the definition of "marriage," any combination of members can constitute a marriage, and who is to say it can't? How exactly will one argue against this?
Also, if the definition of marriage changes according to society's fluctuating views, what is to keep society from redefining other words, like "slavery" or "religion"?
Just because we all agree on what these words mean now doesn't mean that they cannot be redefined to conform to one particular group's agenda.
It's not about gay rights but about tampering with established definitions in law.
when sir william blackstone wrote his definitive commentary on the laws of england in 1765 he noted that the act of marriage, legally speaking, means the eradication of the wife as a separate legal entity. as he explained:
By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover she performs every thing; and is therefore called in our law-french a feme-covert; is said to be covert-baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her covertureunder this doctrine of coverture, married women were no longer separate legal entities. they could no longer own property (unless special provisions were made prior to marriage), could not sue or be sued separately from their husbands, nor could they enter contracts on their own. thus, the legal definition of marriage was the eradication of the woman as a separate legal actor and the incorporation of her abilities as a legal actor into the husband. for hundreds of years this was what marriage meant in english common-law countries, including the u.s.
it wasn’t until "activist legislatures" started messing with this traditional definition of "marriage" in the mid-19th century when they passed married women’s property acts which abrogated the traditional doctrine of coverture and granted married women the right to own property. within a few decades, every state in the union had passed one.
now obviously, this was a big change to the legal definition of marriage, upsetting hundreds of years of precedent. it reflecting both society’s "fluctuating views" concerning what marriage means and was made to conform to a "particular group’s agenda." could you really say that the married women’s property acts were not about women's rights, but about "tampering with established definitions in law?"
in fact, they were both. they both tampered with the common law definition of marriage and advanced the cause of women's rights. but how many people today would really like to argue that the 19th century reforms were a bad thing? i submit that lots of us would think that the abrogation of coverture was a good reform that justified tampering with traditional common law definitions.
likewise, allowing gays to marry is a change in the traditional definition of marriage. but that alone is not enough to reject gay marriage. contrary to ms. del rio, i see nothing wrong with changing our legal definitions if the cause justifies doing so. it's not enough to say that gay marriage diverges from tradition. we all know that. the real issue is whether such a change is worth doing. unless you address that second point, you're not really making much of an argument.
