Opinion: Culhane: How DADT repeal will help gay marriage John Culhane By John Culhane, Prof of Law

[WillParkinson]

Culhane: How DADT repeal will help gay marriage
John Culhane
By John Culhane, Professor of Law, Widener University
06.03.2010 7:44am EDT

Depending on whom you read and rely on, the DADT ban is or is not about to be history. Many stories have been written on the proposed law, but not much has been said about this point: If the repeal does go through, the case for marriage equality becomes rhetorically stronger. Why?

First, unlike many of the laws that seek equality for the LGBT community, DADT and the ban on same-sex marriages are instances where the government itself is doing the discriminating.

Thus, the rhetoric that’s used in one case applies to the other: Government should treat all of its citizens equally. Even an unreconstructed libertarian like Rand Paul – currently in boiling water because of his statements that the government shouldn’t tell private businesses whom they can and can’t deal with (including, say, African-Americans) – should support a principle of basic fairness and equality for all citizens. (He doesn’t, of course, so his libertarianism is born of convenience, not principle.)

Second, the most-often heard argument against allowing gay and lesbian soldiers into the military is that they will disrupt “unit cohesion.” But if this argument is ultimately rejected in the one area in which it at least sounds plausible (if only because of a homophobic atmosphere that has too often come from higher-ranking military), that rejection weakens a similar argument that’s advanced by many of those who oppose marriage equality: Allowing gays, lesbians, and transgendered people to marry will weaken heterosexual marriages – disrupt their “unit cohesion,” if you will.

More: http://www.365gay.com/opinion/culhane-how-dadt-repeal-will-help-gay-marriage/

[Unvanguard]

1. I think that's an over-optimistic analysis.

The argument we have used with respect to DADT is, effectively, "Sexual orientation has nothing to do with job performance." This argument works because the kind of naked homophobia that would advocate discriminatory employment policies is becoming less and less socially and politically acceptable: its last refuge, as the article notes, is the military.

But defenders of gay rights cannot say that "Sexual orientation is irrelevant to marriage": indeed, the only people making that argument are the ones who oppose same-sex marriage, the ones who disingenuously claim that it's not discrimination because a gay person can always marry a person of the opposite sex. The whole point of same-sex marriage is so that the diversity of sexual orientation can be recognized by law, that we who are in or want to be in same-sex relationships are legally equal to everyone else--and because that requires a kind of public acceptance and recognition of same-sex love as equal to opposite-sex love, it is a step significantly further than ending DADT.

Perhaps it could be put this way: the difference between ending DADT and legalizing same-sex marriage is the difference between tolerance and equality. Finally, our society is becoming tolerant. But we are still a long way from the point where we are equal.