Normalizing Gay Marriage

With rights come responsibilities, so it is to be expected that in Massachusetts we'd see this new personnel policy:

“An employee who currently covers a same-sex domestic partner as a dependent will have to marry his or her partner by Jan. 1 for the employee benefits coverage to continue at the employee rates.”

It's a new enacted policy at the Boston Globe, leaked to the Boston Herald. At one level, it brings a smile because it takes gay marriage out of the political arena and introduces it to the realities of life in a way that says there will be no special rights for gays, or any other segment of society.

But it's more troubling than amusing. The Globe's new policy shows how quickly a wrong decision is becoming normalized and accepted in the one state where gay marriage is legal.

It's not legal because the people of Massachusetts like it that way, but because a few judges thought it right. And now their wrong decision is being incorporated into policies, provisions and codicils, giving gay marriage a greater cloak of normalcy.

One might welcome this change, saying that if people are to be gay, they should be encouraged by the law of the land to be gay within a healthier, safer, more stable structure. But that is not society's role. Society must zealously support structures that reinforce and build it by creating children and giving them healthy places to grow.

The Globe's new policy can't do that.

hat-tip: memeorandum
Related Tags: Gay marriage, Boston Globe