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THE DOUBLE X

Same-sex unions will break the mold for the better

The senators have a point.

Sex/gender difference is intrinsic to "traditional marriages," and same-sex marriage lacks sex/gender difference between its members. Sex/gender difference -- by which I mean any and all social and biological differences between females and males -- accounts for many types of differences between men and women, but one of the most important of these differences is that men are more powerful than women.

Same-sex marriages can involve power difference, but without sex/gender difference, there is no outward sign of power difference. This absence symbolizes the possibility of marriage made on equal terms.

Equal terms are not in the tradition. But the only way to save the institution of marriage from obsoleteness is to revise its traditions.

Fortunately, marriage has been able to change to some extent already. If it hadn't, it would have been destroyed. Not so long ago, husbands owned wives. Women could not own property by themselves. They had no legal identity apart from their husbands and could not sign contracts.

Changes have been made, but more are needed. To varying degrees in different states, husbands still own their wives' sexuality. Marital rape is explicitly harder to prosecute under the law than any other kind.

The power difference in the traditional marriage leads to unhappiness. Dominant husbands take on the responsibility for making decisions -- such as career decisions -- that wives must make for themselves. Children raised in homes where men dominate women find these patterns hard to break in maturity. Whether male dominance puts women on a pedestal or calls us sinners, it demeans us. It diminishes our claim to humanity.

What is less than human can be treated with unspeakable inhumanity. Male dominance can be fatal. The FBI reports that more than one-third of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands or boyfriends. The American Medical Association estimates that nearly one-quarter of American women will be abused in their lives by a current or former partner.

Domestic violence is too prevalent to be considered aberrant. It expresses the logical outcome of the traditional power balance. Those marriages and other kinds of romantic partnerships in which abuse occurs -- whether straight or gay -- are traditional in the sense that one partner dominates the other. The right to abuse a partner comes from the ownership of wives that "traditional marriage" confers on husbands. The "traditional marriage" must be stopped before it kills one more person.

The conservative claim that "traditional marriage" must be preserved in order to create a stable environment for the upbringing of children is a farce. Domestic violence poses the largest threat possible to children's stability. Beginning in the fetal stage, which conservatives hold so sacred, battery poses a grave risk; battery of pregnant women raises the likelihood of miscarriage, low birth weight in infants and high infant mortality.

The Domestic Violence Project, which runs the battered women's shelter in Ann Arbor, estimates that 60 percent of battered women are beaten while pregnant. The same organization found that more than 70 percent of men who batter their wives also abuse their children. These men are empowered by the "traditional marriage" the state Senate wishes to protect.

The worst we can do for our children is to allow them to grow up in the horror of domestic violence. The worst we can do for the institution of marriage is to allow it to perpetuate domestic violence.Recognizing same-sex domestic partnerships as marriages will not directly reduce the incidence of domestic violence. The state must recognize same-sex partners' right to marry because refusing to do so is discriminatory and wrong.

But the Republican state Senators' idea that same-sex marriage could alter traditional marriage makes its legal recognition seem like a measure infused with hope: hope for a better and safer world for people of every sexual orientation.

-- Kate Epstein can be reached over e-mail at katebeth@umich.edu.