A Discussion of Gay Marriage
The marriage issue is exactly why church and state should remain separate. Unfortunately, marriage has transformed into a religious institution and has infected civil law. Churches have gotten involved and created a wedge issue that is allowed to discriminate where it otherwise could not.
The 14th amendment enforces equal protection. Your citizenship is a guarantee that your rights will be enforced equally regardless of who or what you are. Civil contracts fall under this federal protection, and marriage is a civil contract. The key is to peel away the word marriage entirely. The GLBT community and the religious community are drawing a line in the sand that should not exist.
All marriages should be considered civil unions under state and federal law. As long as the civil union does not violate state and/or federal law (polygamy, bigamy, incest, statutory rape, etc.), then that civil union is valid. Marriage is a religious institution, and if a couple decides that they want a marriage, then by all means they can do so provided the church is willing to preside over the wedding. If the Catholic church, LSD, or Saddleback do not want to sanctify gay marriage, then that is their religious right. If the Unitarians want to sanctify gay marriage, then that is their religious right. Neither of these religious rights IN ANY WAY infringe on the civil union. A priest, judge, or military officer retains the right by law to sign the civil contract and legalise the union. That same individual reserves the right to choose, based on religious practice, not to preside over a marriage/civil union.
This approach solves several problems. Marriage is taken off the wedge issue table. Civil contracts are returned to their consitutional roots. Separate but equal is eliminated so that the GLBT community does not have to settle for unconsitutional second class status. Religious freedom is maintained, but the same religious freedom does not violate civil liberties. Finally, the assertion that allowing gays to marry will authorize polygamy and other state/federal offenses can be rebutted. The federal snd state governments do make polygamy illegal, but they do not make being gay illegal (and thanks to recent SCOTUS decisions, they are not sexually illegal either).
There is adequate precedent in federal and state hate crime laws making GLBT covered under equal protection. Therefore, I think my idea is legally sound.
Now that marriage is off the legal table, let's discuss what this is really all about. Gay men and women have been subject to institutional cultural discrimination their entire lives. Marriage is the next step in an ongoing struggle to be treated as equals and not sinners. The GLBT community does not want to be beaten, insulted, scapegoated and otherwise mistreated for simply being who they are. The longterm civil rights struggle is far from over. But the foundation for successfully handing the wedge issue of marriage is right in front of us... I hope that I spelled it out clearly. Once these kinds of changes are instituted and enforced, then the tide begins to turn. Once Brown vs. Board of Education was delivered, the struggle for human rights was not over, but that decision allowed for Barack Obama to ultimately be elected our President.
I want a future where a teenage boy or girl does not commit suicide because their family will not accept their sexual identity. I want a future where a young man is not left for dead because some sexually insecure group of sadists think that by brutalizing this young man they have somehow exorcised their sexual demons. I want a Christmas to pass where all children are invited to their own parents' or grandparents' dinner table no matter who they choose to love. This future can happen, and it starts by formally and discretely defining the legal institutions using the constitution of this country. Then the Rick Warrens of the world will sell a lot less books and suck up a lot less hateful oxygen.
Kudos for cutting to the core of the gay marriage issue, i.e., the injection of religious views into civil law on marriage. The junction of the two has, I think, led to confusion and most of the controversy. Gay marriage advocates are not suggesting that the Catholic Church, Mormon Church or Southern Baptist Church (among others) should change their teaching on marriage. What gay marriage advocates are arguing is that religious groups have no right to insert their own definitions of marraige, based on the religious dogma of their respective churches, into how marriage is defined in civil law, which is what they are doing. In effect, the organized religions that are opposed to same-sex marriage are trying to force the theological/moral teaching of their churches onto everyone in society. Religious groups will argue that "no society has sanctioned same-sex marraige" or that "society has traditionally defined marriage as between one man and one woman." However, these statements are more a reflection of their own narrow religious viewpoint than factually based. For example, a vibrant tradition of same-sex marriage, complete with social customs and religious rites, existed for centuries in Fujian province in southern China according to the Ming dynasty writers, Shen Defu and Li Yu. The Greek historians Herodotus and Lucian, writing five centuries apart, described a long-standing tradition of same-sex unions among Scythian warriors, called blood-brothers, which involved formal rituals and vows. Lucian's account of a description of such unions by a Scythian warrior leaves no doubt about the sexual nature of the relationships. The sagas of the ancient Norse speak of a similar blood-brothers tradition among those fierce warriors, which also included vows and a specified ritual to formalize the unions. There is even a saga, “The Blood-Brothers’ Saga” which tells the story of one such union. The Roman writers Martial and Juvenal both mention formal same-sex marriages in their works. Anthoplogists have documented traditions of formalized same-sex unions among tribal peoples in South America (the Nabirwara of Brazil) and the Southwest Pacific (New Guinea Asmat, to cite just one example). Rather than being a universally held view of human societies, the hostility to same-sex love and same-sex unions is a phenomenon peculiar to the Judeo-Christian tradition.
The degree to which religion is woven into the arguments of opponents of same-sex marraige is revealed in the argument of a dissenter in the recent Connecticut Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision, Justice Peter T. Zarella. Justice Zarella argued that his opposition is not rooted in religious doctrine, and that "the ancient definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman has its basis in biology, not bigotry.” However, his argument on biology is contradicted by both widespread same-sex pair bonding reported by researchers in the animal world (among such disparate species as Bottlenose dolphins, baboons, and gorillas), and the traditions, mentioned above, among human societies that have recognized formalized same-sex unions in the past. Justice Zarella insists that his dissent is not based on religion, yet he argues “that one man should be joined to one woman . . . is necessary for the propagation of the species,” and that society has bestowed the “privileged status” of marriage solely on heterosexual couples “in order to advance society’s interest in the survival of the human race.” His reasoning, linking the "privileged status" of marraige with procreation bears an uncanny resemblance to the Vatican’s 1975 declaration, in “Persona Humana,” that sexual activity “has its true meaning and moral rectitude only in true marriage,” and that “the moral goodness” of sexual acts must be measured by the objective standard of mutual self-giving "and human procreation.”
December 23, 2008 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Zipperuppus, delete this blog, after transferring the comment above to the remaining blog.
If you don't know how to delete a blog - go to "blog now" then "manage" then "entries." Click on the top blog and you'll find you can delete it.
But save the comment above and post it to the blog where we're all commenting.
December 23, 2008 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink