Extending equal rights

Editorial

With Lawrence vs. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court declared state laws criminalizing gay and lesbian sex unconstitutional.

The implications of the June 26 decision reach beyond rights of privacy and the protection of sexual behavior behind closed doors.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said the court's decision was based in part upon equal protection of the law as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court held that if consenting heterosexual adults' sexual behavior in the privacy of their homes is not the purview of civil authorities, then neither should be consenting homosexual adults' private sexual behavior.

The next appropriate step would be for our nation's civil authorities to grant committed gay and lesbian couples equal protection under the law so that they can qualify for the same insurance policies, tax benefits, inheritance privileges and even adoption opportunities as married heterosexual couples.

Civil sanction of homosexual marriage is not a question of religious morality; it is a matter of granting and protecting equal liberties and freedoms for every United States citizen, as stipulated by the 14th Amendment.

Civilly sanctioned homosexual marriage is not meant to compete with marriage in a religious context, whether Jewish, Catholic or Protestant; religious institutions already face internal debates about whether and how to accept or reject same-sex unions. Nor ought civilly sanctioned marriages be viewed as a beachhead in preparation for a battle to obtain religious recognition.

However, in the civil arena, as long as committed homosexual couples continue to be denied the same rights as committed heterosexual couples, then gays and lesbians will remain second-class citizens.

In the Lawrence vs. Texas opinion, Justice Kennedy commented that the writers of the 14th Amendment "knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress."

In the not-so-distant past, laws in many states forbade interracial marriages. Over time those laws have been removed from the books. Though state legislatures only now are beginning to struggle with the issue of civilly sanctioned homosexual marriage, the court's decision sets the stage to end a form of oppression against gays and lesbians and to grant equal protection to all our citizens.

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