“Not long into the oral argument before the California Supreme Court in March over whether gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry, Chief Justice Ronald M. George showed his hand.

Three times he quoted from the court’s 1948 decision in Perez v. Sharp that struck down a state ban on interracial marriage, a high point in the history of a prestigious and influential court.

“The essence of the right to marry is freedom to join in marriage with the person of one’s choice,” Chief Justice George said, quoting Perez.”

So opens Liptak’s piece on the California Supreme Court’s decision striking down the ban on same-sex marriage.  For many younger people today, it’s impossible to conceive of a time when a black man kissing a white woman would cause outrage in America.  But it wasn’t that long ago.  And it indeed caused outrage. 

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner might seem shamelessly quaint now, but it was cutting edge in its time.  In the 1960s, a song by Janis Ian, Society’s Child, reminded us that we were far from ready to accept racial lines being crossed.  It was a painful, shameful song.  Are we passed it today? 

But is it really the same as same-sex marriage?  Opponents say no.

Opponents of same-sex marriage say they are uncomfortable with the analogy to interracial marriage bans. “It’s well suited to a sound-bite culture,” said Monte Stewart, president of the Marriage Law Foundation, which supports traditional marriage.

“Sure, it works at the surface level,” Mr. Stewart continued. “But it is actually defeated by the deeper reality of marriage itself. Marriage in its deep logic has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the union of a man and a woman. To apply Perez in the genderless marriage context is actually to betray it.”

When one relies on such fuzzy concepts as “deeper reality,” it’s hard to understand the point except on a visceral level.  Either you believe that it’s a man-woman thing or not, because the inability to explain it in rational terms belies an absence of logic. 

If one perceives marriage as being the proper legal qualifier for procreation in the scheme of good policy, then the male-female thing makes some sense.  Obviously, same-sex couples have procreation issues, putting scientific advancement aside for the moment.  To encourage continuation of the species, society provides benefits to couples who join together for the purpose of having children and providing them with a stable environment in which to grow and develop.  It’s not entirely crazy.

Marriage is a word loosely thrown about these days, but to lawyers encompasses a bundle of unique rights of great consequence.  It entitles one spouse to a portion of another’s estate, no matter what they say.  It impacts property rights.  It gives power to see someone in the hospital and make decisions.  It allows people to claim a education on their tax returns.  Love aside, there are rights involved.  These rights are given by the government to encourage marriage, to encourage having children and to allow the married folk to raise and protect those children in the manner the government thinks best.

The problem is that same-sex marriage doesn’t diminish the importance of marriage, as an institution for men and women.  Allowing gays to marry doesn’t mean straights can’t.  Once we get past the Puritanical idea that gays are “diseased” or just unbearably “gross”, we can recognize that they aren’t going to join into the traditional marriage dance with someone of the opposite sex if we just stop making it too easy to be gay, and thereby save the world from converting little boys and girls to their “disgusting” lifestyle.  It’s not happening.  That’s just not the way it works.

So gay marriages will not produce natural offspring.  So what?  It’s not like they are using up a limited resource that denies it to anyone else.  Much has changed about society’s vision of the perfect marriage over the past 50 years.  Ozzie and Harriet is off the air.  Al and Pat replaced them.  It may not be better, but we can’t go back.  Divorce is prevalent (which significantly undermines the procreation argument).  Should we force married couples to stay together and live in misery?  Hey, if male-female couples can get married and find out they are miserable, shouldn’t same-sex couples be able to make the same mistakes?

The comparison of same-sex marriage to cross-racial marriage is an attempt to find reason to contrast with those who reject the notion of moral equivalencies.  Morality is not rational, it’s what someone feels.  Opponents of same-sex marriage believe it is immoral.  They don’t want their children seeing men kissing men because it offends their heterosexual and religious sensibilities.  Frankly, it’s not my thing either.  But there’s nothing more rational to it than that. 

So bite the bullet and turn your head away if it bothers you.  In time, it will be nothing.  We’ve overcome prejudice before, and we will overcome this.  It won’t happen quickly, but it will happen eventually.  Yes, it is nothing like race, and it is exactly like race.  We’re still working on overcoming racial prejudice.  We have room to work on homosexual prejudice too. 

And for those of you who may have forgotten (or never heard) Janis Ian’s song, written and performed when she was a mere 17 years old, this is really worth a few minutes of your life.