Gay Marriage Not A Basic  Right
                    by BOB WARD
             Editor of the Texas Journal

   Whatever Congress or the states do about same-
sex marriage, the issue  will inevitably reach 
the Supreme Court, and that's not reassuring.  
The Court's ruling against Colorado's amendment 
barring preferential treat-ment for homosexuals 
suggests they consider gays eligible for 
protected status as a "suspect class." According-
ly, denying their relationships equal status with 
heterosexual unions may be called discrimination.  
   But this view only considers the desires of 
individuals.  It is not the duty of government to 
endorse, solemnize and institutionalize every 
impulse or desire people feel.  Heterosexual, 
monogamous, permanent unions enjoy special status 
because they benefit the community
   One of the most pernicious notions to emerge 
in recent years is that no one should impose 
values on somebody else. But in fact that is 
exactly what civilization is, the imposition of 
values.  The government must sup-port the 
cultural values to which society has historically 
subscribed and which are the moral bases of its 
laws. That's why we may not steal, kill, or 
defraud each other, or refuse to defend the 
country.  And that's why there are rules about 
marriage.     When the Supreme Court in 1965 
struck down a Connecticut law for-bidding the use 
of contraceptives by married people, (Griswold v. 
Conn.)  Justice William O. Douglas called 
marriage "an association that promotes a way of 
life, not causes, a harmony in living, not 
political faiths, a bilateral loyalty, not 
commercial or social projects."
  To suggest this rules out all government action 
regarding  marriage is to mistake the individual 
marriage for the institution.  While the state 
may not, as in Griswold, regulate sexual 
relations between man and wife, it may define and 
regulate the institution of marriage.  It may, 
for example, prohibit marriage between close 
relatives,  or by children. It may bar multi-
party marriages, or (who knows where it will end) 
union between a person and an animal. 
   If the state may not define and elevate the 
kind of relationships in which the community has 
a stake, if all relationships, however bizarre, 
ephemeral and frivolous, enjoy equal status, if 
everything is marriage, the term means nothing 
and we have effectively abolished marriage.  
   It is, of course, possible to go too far.  We 
don't have to revive laws against interracial 
marriage in order to defend a one man-one woman 
definition. A useful test is found in Justice 
Arthur Goldberg's concurring opinion in Griswold.  
"In  determining which rights are fundamental, 
judges . . . must look to the 'tradition and 
(collective) conscience of our people' to 
determine whether a principle is 'so rooted 
(there) . . . as to be ranked as fundamental."  
(Snyder v. Mass).  A study of our history and 
traditions reveals no acceptance of same-sex 
marriages.