may 7.2004
15
n T îïïT 7 TÏÏ 7 n 3 1 n e u ; s
K C : If [Multnomah County Attorney]
Agnes Sowle had called me and said we want
you to come in as outside council.. .1 would have
said by all means share your hand, publicly,
soon, openly, honestly.... You want to take the
high road on this thing because you want the
editorial board, you want the chattering classes,
you want everybody on your side so you don’t
give the other side anything to shoot a t.... Most
likely, the strategy was let’s get 1,000 or 2,000
folks married out there so that the public sees
that the sky isn’t going to fall in, the world’s not
going to come to an end and if we have to
weather the political fallout, we’ll weather the
political fallout.... [But| it’s not intellectually
honest to say there’s a constitutional problem,
we have to act right now or we’ll get sued. The
Tanner decision came down in 1998; it’s 5 1/2
years and nobody has been in a hurry since then.
particular should he talking about more. The
greatest enemy of traditional marriage may not be
same-sex couples but the way heterosexual cou
ples have treated marriage. I’m in a particularly
vulnerable place on that point because I blew my
first marriage. There’s no excuse, I just blew it.
F S: Why is my relationship of 17 years less
valid to the state than any other relationship?
K C : That may be your conclusion and your
emotional feeling, but what if we...create a civil
unions mechanism that grants you the same
benefits and privileges and immunities under
the Oregon Constitution? What we’re doing
here by recognizing same-sex couples is a new
thing. Why not call it a new thing?
FS: But what about all the contracts, both
private and public, that refer to marriage? How
are we going to ensure that every single one of
them applies to me?
FS: I have.
KC: I mean nobody in government has been i
K C : You create a gcxxJ civil unions law.
in a hurry.
FS: What would happen if marriage was
legal for same-sex couples?
FS: What are your feelings about gay
K C : I don’t know what would happen, and
marriage?
KC: I am one of those folks who is not able to
therefore that tells me we haven’t spent enough
say that the traditional definition of marriage being
time...society is manifestly unprepared for gay
between a man and a woman should he changed.
marriage, not yet ready for it. And part of the
understandable impatience of the gay communi-
1 recognize the inequities...but 1 think there are
ty is working against it because change takes
some valid reasons why the concept of marriage
has been what it’s been and should stay that way
time. If I honestly tried to put myself in your
shoes, I wouldn’t have much patience either.
even as we try to address the tangible benefits.
FS: Such as?
KC: The best reason I can give, as a matter
of social policy, if you will, is that 1 am still con
vinced that in a perfect world, kids are better off
with two opposite-sex parents.
FS: Will we ever have a perfect world?
K C : No, but our society is entitled to codify
that which we want to encourage and we want
to recognize. We’ve known...ever since Daniel
Patrick Moynihan started writing about this in
the 1960s, that fathers matter, that kids who
grow up in fatherless homes don’t do as well as
kids who grow up in homes with fathers....
I think we also know that kids do better in a
home where there are two opposite-sex parents,
all other things being equal.
FS: Where are you getting that research?
K C: There’s not necessarily research. This is
what I consider to he my gut instinct, the in
herited wisdom of the ages.
F S: How do you wrap your head around
the changes that have occurred in marriage
over the centuries anyway?
K C: This is something that conservatives in
FS: Are you saying that marriage hasn’t
changed in 4,000 years?
K C: It has changed. Primarily the legal
changes that have been made have been made
through a process of changing the charter,
changing the constitution.... What the plain
tiffs are asking for is something that cannot he
given by a judge even if the judge says you here
by have the right to marry. What you want is the
piece of paper from the government; what you
want is the social acceptance that you can only
get from changing hearts and minds.
FS: So eventually, can it be called marriage?
K C : If you’re creating a new phenomenon
by recognizing same-sex couples, whether it’s
called civil unions or marriage, that has never
been done before, why would you want to have
the old label? ...Ia m assuming in this conversa
tion that a civil union statute is the functional
equivalent of the marriage statute.
F S : Would you favor something like that?
K C : I would have a lot of explaining to do if
I didn’t. J D
FLOYD SKLAVER is a Portland free-lance journalist.
sorry.
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