Proposition 8 has passed, denying to some the right enjoyed by other citizens in California, the right to marry. Now, the central question for the courts to decide is: Are gays in California equal, or can members of certain churches declare them constitutionally inferior?
The approval of a constitutional ban on gay marriage raises troubling but age-old issues concerning the lines between religion and government. Before the founders of our country separated church and state, there were hundreds of years of turmoil caused by one religion dominating the government and using it against nonbelievers.
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s vote, do gays and lesbians in California have a reason to believe that they have been abused, discriminated against and relegated to a separate-but-equal status?
Yes, and that’s why this fight is far from over.
The first question is: Should the courts be permitted to overturn the expressed, documented, will of the people?
The second question is: Does the author really believe that the majority are all members of churches that oppose same sex marriage?
If you can’t win the vote cry “Bigotry!”
Where did the notion come from that marriage is a right? Civl partnerships are can be called a right if they are sanctioned by the constitution, precisely because they are civil. But how can marriage be a right? The writer himself has given the reason it would appear, that the state cannot interfere with religion and marriage is a sacrament. If his argument is that one cannot amend the constitution in this matter, he is surely correct on his estblished grounds. And yet, he persists in treating marriage as an issue of equal rights, a constitutional ground and he thinks that an appeal to the courts will settle this issue? His argument is perfectly confused, and unsound in every respect.
He is actually saying, “I am extremely distressed, and therefore someone somewhere has to make things right for me so I do not feel distressed any more.” And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what narcissism looks like. Larry
When I see the column decrying the participation of Marc Andrus and John Bruno in the Prop 8 campaign, I’ll have some respect for the author’s jeremiad. Until then, what he seems to be saying is the anyone with religious belief must be debarred from participating in the public square.
Rich irony here:
“Proposition 8 has passed, denying to some the right enjoyed by other citizens in California, the right to marry. Now, the central question for the courts to decide is: Are gays in California equal, or can members of certain churches declare them constitutionally inferior?”
[blockquote]”Proposition 8 has passed, denying to some [of those with an orientation towards mutual, affirming, loving adult sibling love] the right enjoyed by other citizens in California, the right to marry. Now, the central question for the courts to decide is: Are [those with an orientation towards mutual, affirming, loving adult sibling love] in California equal, or can members of certain churches declare them constitutionally inferior?”[/blockquote]
Sarah, surely the clearest analysis goes like this:
…denying to some (of those who affirm that those with urges to have sex with those of their own ‘gender’, regardless of plumbing) the right…
That’s what it REALLY comes down to. Natural law (without religion) shows that it’s just plain WRONG.
They do not want the right to marry. They want the right to change what marriage is. Marriage has always been about the union of male and female; it has taken a number of expressions across cultures and over the ages – but marriage is about the union of male and female – including especially any children resulting from the union and the rights and responsibilities involved in raising children.
Make it a same-sex union and it is no longer marriage, no matter what label is put on it.
I agree with Little Cabbage! Hallelujah! Expanding that comment, I deny that traditional [opposite-sex] marriage is primarily a religious construct. It is an institution founded in biology whose origins are lost in the mists of pre-history. Various religions and cultures have differed on the issue of how many women and men can combine in marriage, and how enduring the institution should be, but the idea that it should include people who are not naturally equipped to marry is revolutionary. Religious people are fighting this battle, but it is not foundationally a religious issue.
I believe the same is true of the abortion battle. Do we defend the right of all humans not to be deprived of life without due process, or do we not? Religious people are fighting this battle, but at its base it is about basic human rights.
The little spoken truth of the matter is that the leaders of the sexual liberation movement have absolutely no interest in marriage except to destroy it. This argument about civil rights is a complete canard. The intellectuals of the sexual liberation movement know that it’s self-evident that marriage is the union of man and woman. They also know that the civil rights meme plays well with the populace and, so, is rhetorically useful in their effort to destroy marriage.
What poppycock! No one has been denied the right to marry. Gays and lesbians are perfectly entitled to get married – to persons of the opposite sex, as has been the nature of marriage throughout all of human history. Saying they have been denied the right to marry is like saying I’ve been denied the right to marry my cat.
I submit Katharine that you are both correct and incorrect. Evolution does not speak to the issue of unions of any sort. It only speaks to the issue of the survival of offspring in the long run and in large proportions. Deer and chimpanzees do not need marriage to fulfill the evolutionary imperative. What is required is a male for the sperm and a female to carry the offspring and nurture it to maturity. We altered that simple arrangement when evolution made it necessary for the human child to be nurtured and sheltered cooperativelyfor years for its survival. You may argue that marriage is an evolutionary adaptation so that these conditions can be met for humans, that is, a social adaptation to meet a evolutionary demand. Because it is a social adaptation, its existence is virtual, that is, it exists primarily in the head as a concept.
The difficulty is that the hunger for religious experience is and has been inherent in us for countless millennia. It is clearly genetic. Is this an evolutionary adaptation? Or a social construct, however ancient and imperative? Larry
[blockquote] The first question is: Should the courts be permitted to overturn the expressed, documented, will of the people? [/blockquote]
Had school integration or interracial marriage or, indeed, extension of voting rights to freed slaves been put to popular vote, it’s a pretty safe bet that the “expressed, documented, will of the people” would have been to deny racial equality. The genius of our constitutional system is that it *balances* the will of the majority with judicial mechanisms countering the occasional *tyranny* of the majority. The Founders knew that majorities sometimes thwart equality for minorities, and brilliantly built into the system a countervailing mechanism — not flawless, but none of the checks and balances is. Regardless of whether one agrees substantively or not with specific judicial decisions, it dishonors our American system to malign the courts for exercising their function of sometimes overturning the will of a majority for more basic principles. Essentially, to malign courts in this fashion is to argue that mob rule would be better, just so long as the mob is the majority.
In any event, please understand that some polls have even suggested that if freedom of the press were to be put to a vote, a majority of Americans would vote against it. But basic rights stand on their own and should never be subject to or conditioned upon majority assent — a principle I suggest our Christian sisters and brothers in countries where they are persecuted understand full well, and better than many American Christians do — and that’s what the courts were empowered to serve as a check against.
[blockquote] The second question is: Does the author really believe that the majority are all members of churches that oppose same sex marriage? [/blockquote]
No idea; I’ll leave that one to the author to answer.
[blockquote] Where did the notion come from that marriage is a right? [/blockquote]
From the U.S, Supreme Court, which explicitly ruled so in Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 decision that overturned the nation’s remaining state bans on interracial marriage. In that decision, the Court held that:
“Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”
One can debate whether this principle extends to same-sex marriage, but not “the notion . . . that marriage is a right,” which has in fact been settled U.S. constitutional law now for over four decades.