Posted by
Playful Walrus on Sunday, June 08, 2008 12:33:21 AM
Keep in mind that this is going to impact the whole country.
I’ve been working on analysis the California marriage situation, and will subsequently enter many blog entries (just as I already have) about this, looking at various articles and opinions pieces. But here, I wanted to pass along three general notes that have occurred to me while going through everything.
1. To get a state-issued license, you ask the state (which represents the people) to grant you a license because you want it. The people (through the state) voluntarily issue licenses because it is in their interest to do so. They issue licenses for a specific purpose to a person who meets specific criteria. Never before has the purpose of a license been to boost someone’s feelings or make them feel equal to someone else. In the case of marriage licensing in California, four judges overrode the vote of the public, even though it is the public who issues licenses. We were not asked for our approval, though we should have been. Now, with an amendment on the November ballot that reasserts our position, some same-sex couples are asking “How can you do that to us?” The answer is – we issue marriage licenses, and to get one you are supposed to ask us. When you ask something from someone else, their answer can either be “yes” or “no”. You asked the judges, and it isn’t their place to say yes or no. The judges did not defer to us as they should have. Anyone obtaining one the neutered marriage licenses will be doing so knowing that we did not consent, and that we will be voting on this in November. Forced consent is not consent, and certainly not approval, affirmation, or recognition.
2. One of the appeals to emotion made by same-sex couples who are pushing for the neutered marriage licensing is “How can you do that to our kids – invalidate our marriage?” Which makes me ask, “What exactly will the harm to ‘your’ kids be? These are already children who, by your design, have been deprived of a mother or a father. You, as a couple, did not wind up with these kids by mere chance or accident, a byproduct of passion for each other. You either made them with prior partners of the opposite sex, or you used third-party reproduction. Either way, you made a conscious decision to deprive them of a mother or father in the home you have now. I find that much more damaging than “taking away” a marriage license that we did not consent to give in the first place. You can still keep a commitment to your partner, have your ceremonies, make contracts, and have a registered domestic partnership, etc. Yes, marriage does benefit children. But most, if not all, of the benefit comes from having both a mother and father in the home in the marital covenant. It is not the piece of paper that benefits the kids. Finally, how many times have the activists on your side told me to “Focus on your own family!” (like when we advocate that they have a mother and father who are married and faithful to each other)? Now you want us to be concerned about your kids. Make up your minds. Oh – and when we maintain that state marriage licenses should not be neutered, we ARE focusing in our own kids and the world in which they will grow.
3. We are officially losing our hetero-normative, marriage-based culture and ideals. This may make you feel good if you are gay, but it isn't a good thing for society, which, for the most part, is not gay. It is one thing to say that homosexual behavior should be permitted under the law. It is another thing for a culture to accept it as positive, and still another to deem it as mainstream and equivalent to heterosexual behavior. We are losing our right to object to public homosexual behavior and esteeming of that behavior in public institutions, and at the same time, losing the freedom to esteem marriage. We ought not tolerate violence against or harassment of someone simply because of their homosexuality. But neither should we reorder all of society, drop references to “bride and groom”, “husband and wife” and “mother and father” to portray homosexual behavior as mainstream and equivalent to heterosexuality. We should not reorder all of society, downplay the differences in the sexes, and allow members of one sex into the communal restrooms of the opposite sex for the sake of affirming the ego and feelings of people claiming to be transgendered. While people who have engaged in homosexuality have done many great things for society, homosexual behavior does nothing positive for society. It does communicate disease and cause injury. Meanwhile, heterosexual behavior is how we all got here, and how we produce the next generation of citizens. Marriage is how we raise that next generation in the best social environment. Of course there should be a cultural and legal bias towards the mainstream and productive behavior of heterosexuality, while not depriving a homosexual person of their rights to life, liberty, and property.
There is a fundamental difference in philosophy going on between the side that see marriage as something that forms a microcosm of society so as to be the best way to perpetuate society, and the side that sees marriage licenses as a means to a personal end, whether that is public affirmation of their relationship or making it easier to visit each other in the hospital. One side feels like they are being told to sit in the back of the bus, and the other side feels like someone has just obtained a bus ticket, and demanded the bus be turned into a lounge, because busses aren’t their thing.