Tricycle Editor/Publisher James Shaheen’s Essay "Gay Marriage: What Would Buddha Do?" at The Huffington Post

by Danny Fisher

Our friend James Shaheen, editor and publisher of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, writes for The Huffington Post on the subject “Gay Marriage: What Would Buddha Do?” Give it a read.

James talks a bit about some of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s comments about homosexuality in the piece. I wrote a lengthy post on this subject in response to a reader question some time ago.

I’ve also posted on my feelings about gay marriage. I am an enthusiastic supporter of same-sex marriage for a number of reasons. For one thing, the constitutionality of a ban on same-sex marriage is questionable at best: although I am not a lawyer, it seems obvious to me that legislation such as the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act violates the Full Faith and Credit Clause and probably other crucial parts of the Constitution.

It is also certainly an extraordinarily uncompassionate thing to dehumanize others and deny them their civil rights. I would certainly not like it if I were denied equal protection under the law. How about you? To clarify: Civil unions offer many of the same rights and privileges of marriage, but exclusively at the state-level–they are not recognized by the United States Federal Government the way that marriages are. Furthermore, under the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 (DOMA), other U.S. states are not obliged to recognize these unions (nor are they required to recognize legal gay marriages in other states). The General Accounting Office lists over 1,100 benefits and protections for married couples–which relate to things like Social Security and VA benefits, health insurance and visitation rights, family leave, immigration law, taxes, and more–and civil unions protect only some of these rights. Because civil unions are not recognized by the federal government, this means, among many other things:

  • gay couples cannot file joint-tax returns and enjoy some of the same tax protections as married couples;
  • a United States citizen cannot sponsor a non-American for immigration through a civil union the way he or she could through marriage;
  • if someone in a civil union receives benefits through their employer for their partner and/or children from that union, they must report the entire premium–including the share he or she paid and the share the employer paid–as income on his or her federal tax return.If you want to be an ally to the LGBTQI community and support rights for all, then support for civil unions simply doesn’t cut it. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I support same-sex marriage as a Buddhist, a chaplain, and a citizen of the world. To show your support for the legalization of same-sex marriage, follow this link.

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