New York, New York.

NEW YORK, MAY 26

There's an interesting front-page situation in New York City. During the last election campaign, Mayor Rudy Giuliani promised the gay community that he would back city laws taking the full panoply of "rights" currently given to married couples and extending them to gays and lesbians living together, as also to unmarried heterosexual couples. City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor, introduced legisla- tion to that end, and Mayor Giuliani endorsed it. On Sunday, John Cardinal O'Connor opposed the prospective law. He made it a point to say that he hardly believes that any laws should be enacted merely to accommodate sectarian doc- trines, but -- he argued -- what he was speaking out in behalf of is not pecu- liarly Catholic. "It is imperative, in my judgment, that no law be passed con- trary to natural moral law and Western tradition by virtually legislating that marriage does not matter."

Messrs. Giuliani and Vallone are both Catholics, and no more deterred in this case by the preachments of Cardinal O'Connor than on the subject of abortion. Really, there are grounds for near-universal resentments on such matters. Many Catholics -- especially among politicians -- are manifestly undisturbed by endorsing measures contrary to Catholic teaching, distressing the faithful, though not so much as to cause them to vote against the delinquents. And Protestants are presumably distressed that many positions are thought to be matters of concern only to Catholics. If Christian teaching is the dominant consideration, why should Protestants be less disturbed than Catholics by the weakening of family ties?

Surely what needs to be sorted out, in the matter of the Vallone - Giuliani proposals, is the question of the legal standing of people who . . . live together.

We begin by acknowledging that unmarried people living together are by defini- tion not living as man and wife. Question: Should they be accorded identical standing to those who are married?

Well, what are the rights accorded to man-and-wife? Most conspicuous is the umbrella of the term "family." If John works for Chase Bank and Jill, his wife, falls ill, John's "family" health policy takes care of Jill's bills. But what if John/Jill are simply living together and Jill doesn't have health insurance of her own?

On the gay front, the same question arises. IBM stepped forward a year or so ago declaring that unmarried couples would be extended the same treatment as married couples. This would seem to mean that if John suddenly died, constant companion Jill would get his pension for the rest of her life. And if you are dealing with Andy who lives with Simon, the partner would receive the benefits of the principal, even though "marriage" has not been undertaken between them, for the most obvious reason that a marriage is by definition the union of a male and a female.

What Cardinal O'Connor is saying is that institutional arrangements should encourage the one relationship, not the other. What the modernists are saying is that what binds John and Jill, unmarried, is mutual affection, as also what binds Andy and Simon. Why should they not enjoy the same privileges as a married couple?

The answers to that question are moral and social. If society wishes to dis- tinguish between living arrangements deemed useful and others deemed less than that, it follows that different accommodations are made. If marriage is thought socially important, appropriate legal and corporate attitudes are adopted. Society has traditionally thought of married couples as critically important. For one thing, they perpetuate the race. For another, marriage is taken to be symbolic of certain attitudes judged beneficial to society. Mar- riage invokes such things as loyalty, shared sacrifices, enduring rela- tionships. That is one reason for the institution of divorce. Divorce is a legal and institutional act of dissociation. There is no complement to divorce when Jill simply decides to leave John, or Andy, to leave Simon.

The modernists are saying that nobody should be saying that A is preferred to B. Well, nobody -- including Cardinal O'Connor -- is saying that the law should forbid any two (or, for that matter, three) people from sharing quarters. What he is saying is that people who aren't married shouldn't expect to be treated identically with those who are. What's the matter with that? On the other hand, maybe we should simply eliminate marriage. Why not?