Guest columnist Gary Peck: Looking beyond Question 2’s passage

Friday, Nov. 15, 2002 | 5:45 a.m.

Gary Peck is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.

For more than two years, Nevadans have endured the divisive Question 2 campaign. The measure's leading proponents insisted it was meant just to protect the institution of marriage from those who might somehow undermine its sanctity by broadening its definition to include same-sex couples. They acknowledged Nevada law already defined marriage as being only between a man and a woman, but claimed we needed a state constitutional amendment to ensure that didn't change.

Question 2 was not, its foremost advocates said, about the panoply of rights attached to marriage -- hospital visitation, shared retirement benefits, health insurance, survivorship, and the like -- but just about the core institution itself. It was, they noted, about making certain that clergy weren't forced to perform gay marriages that violate fundamental faith-based beliefs. It was about ensuring that "outsiders" from places like Vermont, where same-sex civil unions are legal, couldn't force us to recognize such couplings as a form of marriage here in Nevada.

We at the American Civil Liberties Union kept a low profile during the final phases of this campaign, because we concluded that speaking out would encourage our well-financed foes to work that much harder to mobilize their supporters. But we suspected all along that those leading the Question 2 charge were being disingenuous. We guessed their aims were broader than those they presented publicly, that they had as much to do with imposing their morality on the rest of us as with marriage per se.

We believed Nevadans were being dragged into a factious fight without getting the whole story. People weren't told that the U.S. Constitution prohibits government from forcing churches to perform any sort of matrimonial service. They weren't informed that gay marriage isn't legal anywhere in the country, including Vermont, and that Nevada's bitter campaign was thus beside any meaningful point. Nor was there mention of the way Colorado's economy suffered from a boycott after passage of a Question 2-type law. There was no warning that Nevada, whose economic welfare also depends heavily on tourism, might pay a similar price if we created a false impression of intolerance and hostility toward gays or anyone else who might be considered different.

We felt the public was being misled when we read the pledge that Question 2's leading advocates urged all candidates to sign, a covenant opposing various gay-friendly policies that too few had the courage to reject for fear of hurting their election chances. We were concerned because we heard these same advocates talk about all sorts of things besides marriage, including the purported "homosexual agenda" they said would infiltrate our schools and foist the "gay lifestyle" on "normal" students. We were dubious because they refused to answer directly when asked whether they'd support efforts to extend legal protections routinely given to heterosexual couples to homosexuals as well.

Now that Question 2 has passed, the ACLU calls upon all Nevadans to stand up for what is right for our economy and our people by backing hospital visitation, survivorship, reciprocal benefits, and other laws that will better enable gays, lesbians, and others in committed non-marital relationships to build the kinds of loving families we claim to value -- families that will not threaten anyone's marriage, but will instead strengthen our entire community and show prospective visitors and the world that Nevada is an open and accepting place.

We believe most people who voted for Question 2 did not do so because they are bigots who want gays forced back into the closet and to society's margins. We believe a majority of Nevadans, who have long embraced a "live and let live" philosophy and are deeply committed to principles of fairness, don't want people relegated to second-class status or thinking they are unwelcome here merely because of their sexual orientation.

The initiative's leading proponents maintained they weren't motivated by prejudice and hate. They and their supporters proclaimed they were fighting only to safeguard marriage and guarantee that clergy wouldn't have to sanction unions they deemed unholy. Having won the protection they supposedly needed, they should be true to their word. They, and the politicians who signed their pledge, should join the ACLU and others in a campaign that will likely begin in the 2003 legislative session that begins Feb. 3 in Carson City -- a campaign to secure equality and justice for every Nevadan. Each deserves the basic legal protections we often take for granted but are the bedrock of any free, forward-looking society.