A gay man sat in a hospital waiting room in Maryland unable to see his ailing partner before he died because their domestic partnership was not recognized by the state.
A woman became pregnant while an undergraduate at Yale University, moved in with the baby's father and raised her child for three years before the father walked out and was never heard from again.
The men are Davina Kotulski's close friends, and the woman is Maggie Gallagher. Their experiences shaped the starkly different views they presented at yesterday's same-sex marriage debate in Salomon 101.
While Kotulski, executive director of Marriage Equality USA, emphasized the suffering of homosexuals unable to marry, Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, warned a largely hostile audience that redefining marriage would hurt all American families.
The debate was part of the Masha Dexter Lecture Series, which was created to honor Masha Dexter '06, who passed away from Hodgkin's disease in 2004.
Gay marriage is a civil rights issue, and courts and legislators should support it because most Americans are reluctant to recognize the rights of a minority, Kotulski said. "If we voted on issues like this, would women have the right to vote, and would slavery be over?" Kotulski asked. In 1968, one year after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of interracial marriages, only 20 percent of Americans agreed with the decision, Kotulski said.
The 1,138 rights denied to gays at the federal level include hospital visitation rights, social security benefits and immigration benefits, she said. "Just one law keeps thousands apart because the immigrant partner can't be in the (United States) legally," Kotulski said, referring to immigration laws that make it easier for a spouse to come to America.
"You never know how 1,138 laws will affect your life," she said. Kotulski then placed two jars on the table she sat before - one full of 1,138 small, colorful, plastic hearts and the other completely empty - to further her point.
The same-sex marriage debate "has nothing to do with gay people," said Gallagher, who spoke after Kotulski. "It's about what marriage is, and what it's for," she said, adding she has "no problem with Davina getting benefits." Marriage as it is currently defined serves the couple it has officially brought together, a society that needs stable population growth and the children who "flourish best" in a traditional family.
But marriages in America are troubled, Gallagher said, pointing out the high rate of divorce. Legalizing gay marriage will further erode belief in traditional marriage because government officials and society at large will unfairly make critics of gay marriage feel "like bigots," much like critics of interracial marriage are considered today, Gallagher said. The government will marginalize these detractors, she added.
"We can't hold marriage between men and women as bigotry," she said, adding that legalizing gay marriage will change the definition of marriage so that it does not recognize the benefits of a family structure. Such an ideological blow to marriage will not remedy the failure of American families.
Kotulski disagreed. "Whether or not gay people marry, children will still go to bed without a father," she said. "Every minute we debate, there is a couple being harmed by inequality."
