Bay Windows - March 4, 2004
Laura Kiritsy, lkiritsy@baywindows.com.

Despite its title, the discussion was wide ranging as audience members peppered panelists - state Rep. Byron Rushing, Northeastern University Law Professor Taylor Flynn and David Wilson, a plaintiff in the lawsuit that paved the way for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts - with questions about a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, the relationship of the fight for same-sex marriage to the black civil rights movement and effective ways to lobby legislators on the issue.

The event was hosted by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the non-profit Multicultural AIDS Coalition and moderated by Mary Breslauer, a member of HRC's Boston steering committee.

The forum occurred as communities and churches statewide, as well as the Massachusetts Legislature, continue to debate same-sex marriage and whether or not to ban such unions through an amendment to the state constitution. The Black Ministerial Alliance (BMA), an influential body of historically black churches in the Greater Boston area, has voiced its support for a constitutional amendment, to the dismay of many black GLBT people and same-sex marriage advocates who see gay marriage as a civil rights issue. The BMA was joined in its statement of support for an amendment by the Boston Ten Point Coalition, an organization aimed at reducing youth violence in the black community, and the Cambridge Black Pastors Conference.

The forum was attended by one BMA member, the Rev. Martin McLee, pastor of the South End's Union United Methodist Church, a congregation that made history when it voted to officially welcome gay and lesbian congregants into the life of the church in 2000. McLee sat silently throughout the discussion and declined to be interviewed after the event.

In his opening remarks, Rushing made the case that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue, drawing a distinction between the civil and religious institutions of marriage.

"It's a civil rights issue because in the United States there has always been two forms of marriage," said Rushing. "There has been marriage that has been established by government ... civil marriage. And there has been marriage that has been described by some people as a sacred union, that had theological implications, that was necessary for your salvation. But all of those words are not the words that we have in our laws. There is nothing in the law of any state that says you will be saved if you get married," he said, drawing laughter from the audience. "Those rules are in some other institution's language."

"One of the ways that we realize that people do not have civil rights is when civil institutions are not open to them, or open to them equally," Rushing also stated. "And then the question becomes, can you argue that marriage can be denied to certain people in our state because when they choose who to love and who to promise to live with they want to choose someone of the same-sex? Can you do that? And the court said, 'Nope. You can't do that.'"

Rushing responded to a question about the divergent opinions of black clergy and black legislators, most of whom fully support same-sex marriage, by pointing out that the position of the black churches' hierarchy does not differ from that of many other church hierarchies - such as the Roman Catholic Church - a statement that drew a round of agreeable applause. Rushing said he believes black clergy who oppose same-sex marriage are in the minority.

He went on to say that almost all of the African-American legislators who support gay marriage have come through the black civil rights movement. And he asserted that that while black clergy influenced that movement, they do not have a lock on the language of civil rights.

"What I really argue with the leadership of the black church is not over their theology. It is the idea that they somehow can grab and hold as their own the civil rights movement. Because the civil rights movement does not belong to black people. It belongs to everybody," he said.

Addressing a common complaint that comparing the black civil rights movement with the gay rights movement belittles the centuries of indignity that black people have suffered, Rushing also made clear that he is "not saying that gays and lesbians in the United States have had the same historical experience as black people. That's really important."

Flynn, the Northeastern law professor, also said there are parallels and differences between the black civil rights movement and the struggle for gay equality. But she added, "I think that the main thing to realize ... is that you can't balance harms against communities. What the constitution doesn't require is that you say, 'I've been harmed in exactly the same way as some other group, or to the same extent, in order for the laws to apply equally. I think that in making the comparison in the way in which it's similar is this notion of the state being able to decide who gets what rights and how many of them.

"And one of the big points I think that sometimes gets lost here is that marriage has always been something that states have used to exclude people," she said, noting past restrictions on marriages between slaves, marriage prohibitions between Chinese laborers and white people and the anti-miscegenation laws of the South. "And so marriage has always been an institution where the state has decided that they're going to keep some people out and some people in, and by it make a really important statement about the people they've kept out," she concluded.

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