Public Shows Ambivalence About Same-Sex Marriages

Manny Pinsky, a retired meat cutter, has been married 50 years. He met his wife at the Rose Bowl on a blind date. Ask him about wedlock and he will become an eloquent man:

“My marriage has probably fulfilled everything a person would want in his life,” says Pinsky, 73, with a smile. “I can walk into a room with 500 people in it, and in 10 seconds I can spot Louise. I can tell you what perfume she wears--it’s Opium--and if I didn’t know she’d kill me. I could tell you her dress size, too.”

Ask him about same-sex marriage, however, and the Woodland Hills grandfather isn’t so sure.

“I think I know what the gays and lesbians want--what I have. A normal life,” he said haltingly. “I feel for them. But I just can’t reach the feeling that it [gay marriage] is normal. I’m just not ready for it, I guess.”

It’s a funny feeling, ambivalence, when you apply it to a concept as exalted and commonplace as the ol’ ball and chain. But the roiling debate over same-sex marriage--a subject that until recently seemed to interest only a few gay rights and family values advocates--has increasingly begun to test the values of Americans of all stripes as the issue wends its way in an election year toward law.

So far, no state has legalized same-sex matrimony, but opponents of such unions expect that the courts in Hawaii will do so. If that happens, other states may be constitutionally required to recognize the Hawaiian marriages.

That possibility, in turn, has set off a flurry of preemptive laws and a national debate. In California on Tuesday, it took the form of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on a bill prohibiting the state from recognizing gay and lesbian unions.

In and out of the statehouse, the cross-fire echoed the extremes of the national debate: This was either a cynical Republican political tactic or a desperate attempt to protect marriage as we know it.

But beyond the harsh words were the voices of the voters, people like Manny Pinsky, with mixed feelings and softer hearts.

Take, for instance, the moms arriving Tuesday morning to drop off their children at the Calvary Chapel complex in Costa Mesa.

Some shared the view of Deborah Conde, 35, of Huntington Beach, an evangelical Christian who called same-sex marriage “an abomination to the Lord.”

But then there was Paula Weiher, a Lutheran from Fountain Valley, who didn’t particularly approve of gay marriages, but saw no need for a ban.

“If I were real homophobic, maybe I would feel differently,” she shrugged as her 10-year-old daughter headed to the church’s basketball camp. “But I am not that way.”

In Century City--deep in the heart of Los Angeles’ liberal Westside--Lilli Friedland, a clinical psychologist, could muster no substantive argument against gay marriage, yet confessed a general uneasiness about the pace of social change.

Families are not what they once were, she mused, and neither are schools or religious organizations. Fewer and fewer of her patients are in close relationships, bound to others in loving and loyal ways.

Blended families, couples living together rather than marrying, inter-ethnic matches--all of these, she fears, have loosened the ties that bind. And now comes the question of same-sex marriage.

“What are the long-term consequences of all this?” she wondered. “Are the commitments just as real? What about the transmission of values? Will it be handled in the same way? Part of it is just not knowing what it will all mean to society. And the tumult seems to be accelerating. There is no time to pause and reflect and correct. It just seems overwhelming at times.”

Even where feelings on the issue have tended to be most homogenous, there was uncertainty.

At Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade--in the district of Democratic Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl, who has equated bans on same-sex marriage to past discrimination against slaves--a 66-year-old grandmother from Pacific Palisades found herself more open to the notion of gay nuptials than did her 13-year-old granddaughter.

“If two people are in a permanent relationship, then certainly that should be recognized,” Joan Rudman said, steering her grandchild toward a matinee of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

But Rudman noted that her granddaughter had cringed when she saw two gay men together earlier in the day.

“I just think it’s really weird,” said Alex Lynch, 13. “I don’t know. That’s just what I think.”

Meanwhile, in the Antelope Valley--home of Assemblyman William J. “Pete” Knight, sponsor of California’s proposed gay-marriage ban--there are people like Jaime Silva, who takes heartfelt exception to his assemblyman’s views.

For two years, Silva says, he and his partner have lived discreetly, as “roommates to the world.” The inability to interact with the mainstream, as a typical couple, would be painful enough. But Silva also has AIDS.

He has no health insurance, and unlike a legal spouse cannot claim benefits as a dependent of his partner.

“You feel like an animal because you don’t enjoy the same rights as other human beings,” he said.

Silva said he does not foresee any immediate change in political will. “But this [issue] won’t go away until our love and our relationships are recognized,” he said.

Most people would be hard-pressed to come up with an issue that has been more thoroughly discussed than homosexual rights. But same-sex marriages are, for many, a new and unexpectedly loaded twist on the debate.

David Blankenhorn, author of “Fatherless America” and head of the Institute for American Values in New York, called the issue a no-win topic, one that thoughtful people are reluctant to discuss in the media or before congressional committees because “you get a choice in this debate between being for equal rights or being a bigot,” with little intelligent discourse in between.

Blankenhorn aligns himself, not without ambivalence, with the 70% of Americans who tell pollsters that they support most forms of gay rights but oppose same-sex marriage. (A June survey by the Field Poll found Californians leaning 57% to 35% against it.)

The position is not as paradoxical as it might appear, Blankenhorn said. Many Americans have moved in recent years from condemnation to toleration of homosexuality, and that live-and-let-live attitude is “a huge step forward.”

But toleration, he noted, is not the same thing as endorsement, and most Americans are not willing to put same-sex marriage in the category of endorsed behavior. Blankenhorn defined “endorsed” as “something that should be aspired to, something that’s more than OK, it’s inherently desirable--what philosophers call a social good.”

While Blankenhorn does not believe same-sex marriage should be granted “endorsed” status, he observed ruefully that the tried and true version has fallen on hard times.

“Heterosexuals have done so much damage to the institution of marriage in this generation that they’re hardly in a position to point to homosexuals and say you’re the problem,” he said.

Indeed, people such as Rabbi Harold Schulweis believe gay marriages would be “a boon for social stability,” particularly if one of the functions of marriage is “to celebrate stable relationships and to prohibit promiscuous sexual relations.” It is unclear how many of the rabbi’s congregation at Encino’s Valley Beth Shalom temple would agree with him.

After all, Manny Pinsky is a long-standing member of his flock.

Times staff writers Jane Gross, James Rainey, Tina Daunt, Peter Warren, Andrew Blankstein and David Colker also contributed to this story.

* LEGISLATION HELD UP: Bill opposing same-sex marriages stalls in Senate. A3