Column:

DOMA mentality hurts everyone

Policymakers should take a cue from 'Away We Go.'

By Lindsay Eanet

Published July 7, 2009

As a pop culture junkie, I tend to over-analyze movies. Especially when it comes to looking for some larger social context. I could go on for a while about the role of pack mentality in "The Hangover" or jingoism in the "Transformers" sequel, but that's all for another day.

Today's lesson comes from "Away We Go," the twee road trip flick starring Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski. The duo travels across the country searching for a new home among friends where they can settle down.

What's interesting about the way families are portrayed in "Away We Go" is the families comprised of the "traditional" structure (straight, Anglo-Saxon married couple with two kids who share their DNA) are also the least functional. It's the family with a passel of adopted kids and the single dad who the audience is compelled to care about. And protagonists Bert and Verona choose not to get married, but their commitment is painted as far more profound than any of the other married couples.

Granted, most of the portrayals are meant to be parodies, but maybe the film is onto something. We need, urgently, to re-examine our national ideals of what makes a marriage, a family. The emphasis on "traditional marriage" in American policymaking is not just harmful to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, but to all non-traditional family structures: heterosexual non-married couples, single parents, etc. This attitude and the discriminatory policies it creates -- barring many families from receiving any number of benefits and rights, depending on location -- are exactly why the efforts to urge the Obama administration to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act are so necessary.

There are the obvious damaging after-effects of DOMA -- its potential denial of a number of rights like domestic partner benefits or hospital visits or, in the case of California in the wake of Proposition 8, a dramatic separation of couples into three classes, factoring in the added strata of same-sex couples whose marriages stand.

But the damage of "one man, one woman" as a cornerstone of policymaking extends much further. In her book "Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage," Nancy D. Polikoff provides an arsenal of instances of rights denied to families and couples outside the traditional marriage category. Polikoff cites a 2006 case in Black Jack, Mo., just outside St. Louis, where Fondray Loving and Olivia Shelltrack, a non-married straight couple, were barred from living in their house with their two children and a third from Shelltrack's previous relationship. The reason? It was illegal under city zoning laws for more than three people to live together who were not related by blood, marriage, or adoption (i.e., the cohabitating couple and Shelltrack's child). The Black Jack City Council has since voted to overturn this law, but that doesn't mean others like it don't exist in other parts of the country.

Granted, the things we should emphasize in our perception of good parenting -- merely the ability to provide love and support, to be decent role models, the ability of a family to bring out the best in one another, or even more basically, the ability to function as a unit -- can't exactly be analyzed or concretely collected, but aren't automatically achieved upon receiving a marriage license.

Much of the editorial writing on the subject of DOMA has appealed to Obama directly. But the cooperation of Congress is necessary and more pressure needs to be put on the legislature to repeal DOMA and cooperate with executives. But most importantly, it's up to us to steer the conversation and ensure all couples and all families are treated equally, no matter whether or not a marriage contract is involved. To echo Sean Penn as Harvey Milk (once again, life imitates film and vice versa): "If we're gonna beat this thing, we need everyone."