|
Edited on Fri Aug-06-10 10:31 AM by Deep13
A man called in who identified himself as a Mormon and lamented to Federal court's decision to overturn proposition 8. He gave all the usual talking points, so I thought I would address them.
1. This is only a moral issue from the pro-gay marriage point of view. There is a moral imperative to let people live the way they want without groundless restrictions. Gay marriage hurts no one so it cannot be immoral. What he really meant to say is that homosexuality is a sin. He did not put it that way, of course, because he knew that is not a legitimate basis for public policy in this country.
2. Hetero-only marriage laws are discriminatory in practical effect and cruelly so. The idea that a gay man has the same right to marry a woman as a hetero man is a twisted and dishonest view of the matter that only dodges the issue. He has no desire to do so. Obviously, the basic rights we are talking about are the rights to marry the willing adult partner of ones choice. Similar restrictions regarding race have been invalidated based on the 14th Amendment before. In Loving v. Virginia, a Black man had the same right to marry a woman of his own race as a white man. That wasn't good enough.
3. Questions of law are matters for the judiciary under our Constitution. The Founders realized very early on that law is not really law if it is subject to a heckler's veto or if individual rights could be overruled by the will of the majority. Not everything is appropriate for a majority vote. This is an especially disengenuous argument coming from a self-described Morman (as if that were relevant to this discussion). The Mormon church raised and spent millions to misrepresent the truth and to scare Californians into voting for discrimination. The judiciary is a check on that kind of abuse of the democratic process.
4. The fact that his opposition to gay marriage is grounded on wrong religious ideas rather than some other kind of idea does not shield him or the Mormon church from being described as bigots. They are trying to impose their religious standeards on the rest of us. I'm not a member of that religion and should not have to live by their religious rules. Suppose I were a Catholic and felt that a person was a moral menace unless he received the host at a proper Catholic mass every week. Can I impose that requirement on everyone else on "moral" grounds? No, that is religious bigotry and is properly called that. There is no public policy reason to oppose gay marriage. The only issue is that religious conservatives don't like the fact that many of us do not live the way they want us too. It has apparently never occurred to these folks that they as Mormons or Catholics or Baptists or whatever have the right not to recognize gay marriage in their churches etc. while leaving the rest of us to live as we like. I should point out that religious dogma also has been used to justify slavery, segregation, domestic violence, war, anti-union policies, misogyny, child marriage, fuedalism and the suppression of scientific and medical advances.
ON EDIT:
5. I am also in favor of preserving what many call traditional marriage. I have no desire to disturb married hetero couples with children. The caller implied that allowing gay marriage would somehow change that. Obviously, the only thing it would change is that the law would no longer recorgnize their claimed divine superiority of such a family to every other kind of family. Religious conservatives have failed to explain and cannot explain just how gay marriage is any kind of a threat to child-bearing hetero marriage.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
