Just One Mormon's Perspective on Marriage Equality

Editors Note: What an exciting time to be in DC! I feel so lucky to be here and to see the on-the-ground reactions to the historical Supreme Court decisions today regarding gay marriage. As a Mormon, I feel like it is often assumed that I am anti-gay. A lot of people have a hard time understanding how I can feel so confident in my faith and have such close, loving relationships with gay people (which in itself says something, I think). Believe me, sometimes it’s hard to wrap my head around it myself, but I believe that loving people—truly loving individual souls—has the power to reconcile just about anything. And well, love is pretty much what this whole debate is about.

What’s in a name?

 “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Shakespeare famously wrote, meaning roughly that what we call things doesn’t matter nearly so much as what they actually are.  Putting aside for just a moment the issue of what we call legally binding lifelong commitments made by homosexual couples, can we first please agree that if marriage is a rose then, until today’s landmark decision,  gay “marriage” and civil unions actually looked more like, say, daisies?

I mean, daisies are great but they neither look nor smell like roses. Likewise, gay couples whose unions are recognized under state law do not have the same benefits and provisions of married heterosexual couples in that same state.  Instead, they have a number of financialdisadvantages and legal hoops to jump through.  Here’s an example:  gay couples cannot file joint federal tax returns and as a result are disqualified from a number of tax incentives their married heterosexual peers get to take advantage of.  Nevermind the wildly varying rights on things like making health decisions for a spouse who is sick or injured, or legal intricacies related to adopting children. 

That’s what makes today’s Supreme Court decision to strike down key provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act so important— it means that the federal government must recognize unions sanctioned by individual states, allowing legally joined spouses the access to federal benefits in states where gay unions already exists.

Equally important to note about today’s decision: It doesn’t mean that marriageequality has been achieved.  Still, just 18 states recognize gay marriage or civil unions, and today’s decision does not mandate legalizing gay marriage nationwide. In fact, it does nothing to prevent states from continuing to ban gay marriage if that’s what they really want to do.

Really, what’s in a name?

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to this sticky issue of what we should call these, um, commitments between homosexual spouses.  In May, New York Times bestselling authors Linda and Richard Eyre wrote in the Deseret News “Don’t call gay unions ‘marriage’”. This sentiment is by no means singular to Latter-day Saints (and in my experience, is a pretty divisive position among them anyways). While the Eyres raised a number of important points that I don’t necessarily disagree with, I would absolutely challenge them on one point: the value in the word.

Yes, “the gay rights movement cares because they know the emotional power and centuries of social legitimacy that the word marriage carries.” That’s precisely  why I am an advocate for marriage equality.

First of all, by definition, social legitimacy is not the same thing as moral legitimacy. There are many things that are socially acceptable that might not be what one group or another considers morally right-- some cultures think placing children for adoption is wrong, even if the baby’s mother is already a struggling single mother of three who could not provide for the child in the same way an adoptive couple could. Even if the broader society in which they live embraces adoption. This means that especially as a “peculiar people” there are going to be things that our society is completely okay with that do not conform to our own religiously held moral imperatives. We have to learn to live in this world and leave the judgment up to the Lord. The reality is that if gay marriage is seen as socially legitimate by a large enough part of the population (which I believe it does) then it has social legitimacy whether or not you want to lend them the word “marriage”.  

Any two people who legally and lawfully pledge their lives to one another not only deserve all the benefits and provisions the government provides a heterosexual couple , they deserve to call it the same thing, because from where I’m standing, love is love inasmuch as the state is concerned.

Secondly, I am not entirely worried about redefining this “ancient, important word” because to me, the core definition of the word marriage is a consensual, contractual and committed relationship recognized by law. This part has always been the same, as far as I can tell, even when, for example, certain laws permitted that relationship to extend beyond a man and just one woman. As far as I am concerned, anyone can have a marriage, but not everyone has the temple blessings of an eternal marriage. It is in the temple ceremony and the sealing of the Holy Ghost that a marriage between man and woman is ordained of God.

And you know what? Gay people, like anyone else who doesn’t live the full range of gospel standards to qualify for a temple recommend (including a great many Mormons), do not have that. So to say or insinuate that gay marriage would taint the sanctity of the union is bullhooey for two reasons. 1) Heterosexuals did that a long time ago. 2) The sanctity of marriage is not in its title, it’s in the eternal covenants made between a man, a woman and God at the altar of the temple and it’s in their faithfulness in living up to those covenants throughout the rest of their lives.

And, contrary to what some might have us believe, the government isn’t coming to take all our religious freedoms away from us just yet.

Part of the statement issued by President Obama in response to this morning's decision.

How we define and consecrate marriage is up to us—we just happen to believe that how we do it is how God himself wants it. We have the religious freedom to say and act on that… but that religious freedom also means that we do not have the right to willfully impose that on anyone else.

Defending Marriage

I do believe we should defend marriage—eternal marriage—by living the kinds of lives that enable us to marry in the temple, and investing in ourselves and our marriages in a way that lives up to the covenants made there. By all means, teach your kids correct principles, instill in them your own value sand morals, tell them why eternal marriage is so sacred.  But while you’re at it, make sure you’re giving adequate thought to the second great commandment. Heavenly Father loves all of His children, and we are commanded to do the same, even as Christ himself loves us.