An educational forum on same-sex marriage that took place at the Malcolm X Library on March 29 featured a diverse five-member panel debating the moral and legal aspects of same-sex marriage, its connection to the civil rights movement and President Bush’s proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. The San Diego branch of the NAACP, along with the Malcolm X Library, the ACLU, APICAP, Equality California, GLBT Vote 2004, The Center, the San Diego Democratic Club and San Diegans Against Marriage Discrimination sponsored the event. An extensive question and answer session with the audience afterwards allowed for a broad range of beliefs, theories and political strategies to be discussed.

NAACP Education Chair Pat Washington and Vice President Keith Morgan moderated the panel, which featured the Rev. Charles Lanier of Unity Fellowship of Christ Church, Sharon Elise, a professor at Cal State San Marcos, Dale Kelly Bankhead of the San Diego ACLU, the Rev. Art Cribbs of Christian Fellowship Congregational Church of San Diego United Church of Christ, and Douglas A. Oden, president of the San Diego Branch NAACP. Each panelist was given five minutes to argue their position before the floor was opened up to audience questions.

“As a person whose soul mate was murdered 15 years ago, I know what it’s like to get the knock on the door and to know that I had no rights to view the remains,” Rev. Lanier said. “I know what it’s like for the family to come in, and go through personal property and divide it. I know what it is like to be the only one made to stand at the gravesite burial service.”

“I was raised in a very simple notion of relationships,” Elise said. “That was to treat others as I wanted to be treated. And I have, after many, many years of study and teaching, never been able to understand any way around that. It is so simple.”

Bankhead outlined the current political climate regarding same-sex marriage, beginning with last November’s Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that denying same-sex couples marriage licenses violates the state constitution; San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Feb. 12 directive to his staff to begin issuing marriage licenses regardless of gender; and the handful of other states that have gotten involved since then, including Oregon, New Mexico, districts of New York and New Jersey.

“What is wrong with this measure? First of all, it’s wrong; secondly, it is unnecessary; and finally, it is purely and simply a political act,” Bankhead said of the proposed constitutional amendment. “We have a constitutional tradition in this country of expanding rights and protecting rights. Instead, this measure restricts rights. It is not right to inject politics and the political morality of the day into the United States Constitution.”

Primarily, the Equal Protection Clause in both the state and the federal constitutions prohibits discrimination, Bankhead explained. The Fourteenth Amendment is the foundation of almost all of the social and legal progress that has been made against discrimination. “In addition, there are arguments in court about the depravation of liberty and also the violation of privacy rights, which are an extraordinarily important part of the Constitution,” she said. “For those of us who support marriage equality, no matter what the outcome of these cases may be, even if we are successful, all of it will mean absolutely nothing if this federal constitutional amendment [banning same-sex marriage] is adopted.”

Oden, a prominent local attorney, played devil’s advocate that evening, voicing the legal and political arguments in favor of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. “There are individuals out there who support a ban on same-sex marriage,” he said. “And they do that for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that this country is a democracy. In a democracy, the people elect the government, and the government does nothing but represent the people. …”

“My father used to say that if everybody’s doing it, it’s probably something you don’t need to do,” Rev. Cribbs said. “A numerical minority in this society has now been scapegoated to receive the brunt of society’s ills. To say that people of the same gender are responsible for the fall of marriage and family is simply a scapegoat that has not basis in fact. We forget about an unjust war, a President who was not elected; we forget about corporations that have stolen from the American people and a market that excludes most people from buying homes in their communities, but we energize over an emotional issue based on fear and ignorance. I think we need to keep our eye on the problems.”

“This is clearly a diversion, but it is not one we haven’t seen before,” Elise agreed, citing the fact that the U.S. Constitution still says African Americans are three-fifths of a person, though the Fourteenth Amendment overrides that.

Oden, responding to a question about the difference between the African-American civil rights movement and the gay civil rights movement, said that being black is a visible, unchangeable physical aspect of a person, and that sexual orientation cannot be equated to race in a direct comparison between the discrimination the two groups have faced.

“We have to remember that when the courts were arguing Plessy v. Ferguson [the1892 United States Supreme Court case that instated “separate but equal”], it didn’t matter that Plessy was not obviously black,” Elise said. “The courts said, ‘We know you are, whether you look it or not’. … ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’, ‘lesbian’ are words that have been constructed to describe a dynamic experience of being. I say this because even if the Constitution doesn’t say that [marriage] should be between a man and a woman, we are going to have to be like Olympic judges, trying to figure out if someone is fully a man, or are they slightly more feminine, and that woman has masculine qualities. … When do we get to the fact that the person is a person? We cannot pass a constitutional amendment that attempts to differentiate people for the purpose of different treatment.”