The campaign to legalize same-sex marriage overemphasizes the word "marriage" and fails to address the need for more comprehensive legal equality and family law reform, American University Washington College of Law professor Nancy Polikoff said in a lecture in Rockefeller Center on Tuesday. Polikoff's lecture, which marked the beginning of the College's program for national Law Week, follows the Vermont legislature's April 7 decision to legalize same-sex marriage, overriding Republican Gov. Jim Douglas' veto of the bill. The New Hampshire state Senate plans to vote on a bill proposing the legalization of same-sex marriage today.
Polikoff proposed using a word other than marriage to apply to both same-sex and heterosexual partnerships in order to eliminate discrimination against all relationships that do not fit the traditional definition of marriage.
"If the state abolished civil marriage for everyone or replaced the word marriage with a new term for intimate partnerships, that would also be equality," she said.
This kind of substitution is not new to the legal system, Polikoff said, citing the decisions by some states to refer to divorce as "dissolution" and alimony as "support."
"There is precedent in family law for replacing words laden with baggage from a problematic past," she said.
Instead of advocating solely for the right to marry, Polikoff stressed that gay marriage activists should push for laws to be tailored more specifically to the relationships they concern.
"That's the way we can best value all of the families and relationships formed by gay and straight people alike in a modern and pluralistic society," she said.
The "overvaluing" of marriage contributes to inequality with respect to family leave, death benefits and medical decisions, Polikoff said.
Polikoff told the story of a woman who was not given leave from work to bring her female partner of more than 20 years to medical appointments. If the couple had been married and heterosexual, she said, the woman's employer would have granted her leave.
Placing value on marriage over direct biological relationships is sometimes damaging to heterosexual couples as well, Polikoff said, citing the example of Hannah, a married U.S. soldier who left her son from a previous relationship in the care of her parents. When Hannah died, her death benefits went to her husband instead of to her parents, who are now raising her son.
While Hannah's husband could support himself, her young son could not -- which Polikoff said was an example of the current legal system's failure to award benefits to the dependents who need them most.
"Never has there been so poor a fit between problem and solution," she said.
Polikoff said in an interview with The Dartmouth that discussions with her law students have sparked many of her ideas about family law reform.
"My students showed up in law school and had never heard a feminine critique of marriage or a history of the gay rights movement," she said. "I wanted to reclaim that history to give young adults a different vision of what marriage is and why we have it."
A stronger voice for broadening the legal definition of family would alert the public to the need for more widespread legal reform, Polikoff said in the interview.
"I wish there was more leadership and public articulation of a vision of family that goes beyond marriage," she said.
Native American studies professor Bruce Duthu, who also organizes the Legal Studies Program, said in an interview that Polikoff's work provides multiple viewpoints on contemporary social issues.
"I think she offers us an opportunity to engage in the historical level and [the] policy level," he said.
Law Week events will be held through Thursday. Panel discussions on same-sex marriage will be held on Wednesday and Thursday. A third panel discussion, geared toward College undergraduates interested in professions within the legal field, will also be held on Thursday.
Law Week is sponsored by the Rockefeller Center and the Legal Studies Program, among other organizations.
Staff writer Katie Gonzalez contributed to the reporting of this article.
The original headline of this article incorrectly stated that American University Washington College of Law professor Nancy Polikoff discussed sex-same marriage, rather than same-sex marriage, in her Rockefeller Center lecture.
