California Proposition 8 Anniversary: Revisiting the (Bad) Arguments
The following is an editorial:
In the last year, we had some victories: marriage equality came to Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire, recognition came to Washington D.C., and Domestic Partnerships came to Nevada and were expanded in Washington. And then today, on the one year anniversary of California's Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment that took away same-sex marriage, gay and lesbian residents of Maine wake up with the news that Proposition 1 had passed and their marriage rights were revoked. The battle over Proposition 1 showed that opponents of marriage equality have not developed their arguments much since Proposition 8, but that, unfortunately, those arguments were still working. With that knowledge, I feel obligated to revisit some of the claims made in the debate surrounding same-sex marriage.
On November 18, two weeks after the passage of Proposition 8, The View featured a segment discussing the proposition and same-sex marriage generally. The show's two conservative members, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd, took the stance against same-sex marriage. The video is to the right. I have extracted some of the two ladies' arguments to address:
"...this is minimizing [the struggle for racial equality]. To equate what's going on—and now these protests—and those situations during the civil rights moviement; it just shouldn't even be happening. It minimizes all what occurred."
Civil equality is not a competition; the winners are not the ones that suffered the greatest. Discrimination and the denial of rights should be addressed and remedied whenever it occurs, not just when it is the greatest example of discrimination. To discredit the gay rights movement in this way is to discredit the American feminist movement because women in the Middle East have it worse.
Promoting same-sex marriage does nothing to minimize the black civil rights movement. Rather, it is a continuation and the next step in the fight to win social equality regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation.
"They should be fighting for the rights rather than the word 'marriage'. There are a lot of people who are arguing there were four judges who decided what was best for the country all of a sudden. This Prop 8 came as a result of that. These protesters, in essence, are protesting what the majority wants."
The rights of marriage and the word 'marriage' itself are entangled. It is impossible to impart all of the rights without also providing the word. This is because the concept of marriage is one that, for the purposes of law, is recognized uniformly through each of the states in the country. Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships do not enjoy such ubiquity; a couple could not travel from Oregon to Nevada and have their relationship recognized even though both states have Domestic Partnerships. Even in states that provide comprehensive Domestic Partnerships, some benefits, like pension agreements, insurance policies, and other private offerings are available only to couples who are 'married'. So it is impossible to to fight for the rights without also fighting for the word.
Further, I believe it is a miscategorization to say that four judges decided what was best. The California Supreme Court did not make any value judgement on same-sex marriage; it simply held that the Equal Protections Clause of the California Constitution made the denial of marriage rights—a "basic civil right"—to a protected class unlawful. The ruling followed 4 years of procedural history and argumentation. To make it sound as if the judges woke up one morning and decided to judicially mandate marriage equality is misleading and dishonest.
The protestors were not protesting what the majority wanted; they were protesting the fact that a slim majority (52% of voters) could strip fundamental rights from a class of people in defiance of the state's three elected branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial. They were protesting that the will of only 7 million voters in a state of 37 million could decide whether or not they were permitted to marry the person they love. They were protesting the frightening precedent that voters could decide civil rights. To characterize the protesters "in essence" as anti-democratic sore losers is an demeans their message.
"There are some people who go 'because I can, I want to have my dream wedding in a Church and you're saying 'no', so I might sue you because you're discriminating against me' And so you're impeding on their rights and their beliefs."
Gay and lesbian rights are no threat to religious freedom.
"If you're voting yes on Prop 8, then all of a sudden, you're a bigot."
Bigot is not a nice word, and it does not feel good to be called one. But if you did vote yes on Proposition 8, you chose to jealously keep a right that you enjoy from a group of people. It does not matter what your reasons are, because the outcome is the same. People who once could marry their partners are once again legally prohibited from doing so. Your marriage was not affected for better or worse as a result of your vote. The only thing that changed is that we could no longer have ours. You may claim no animus, but you can not strip away a right from a group of people while gaining nothing for yourself and call the action anything but malicious. You may not feel like a bigot, but your vote was one a bigot would cast. Love is not a limited commodity to be hoarded.
Have a question, comment, or response? Share your thoughts.Catholic Charities’ Religious Freedom and its Conflicts with Gay Marriage - A Rebuttal
Cornerstone Policy Research, the same organization that published fraudulent poll statistics about New Hampshire residents' views on same-sex marriage, recently posted a link to a Boston Globe article entitled Kids Take Back Seat to Gay Agenda by Jeff Jacoby. The article surrounds the decision Boston Catholic Charities made earlier this month to stop providing adoption services rather than comply with state law requiring the placement of children with same-sex families. Because Mr. Jacoby's version of the events omits several key facts, allow me to share the tale.
Boston Catholic Charities is an organization that provides, among many other services, adoption of children in need of a permanent home. Despite a unanimous vote by the charity's board to continue providing adoption services to same-sex couples, and the charity's role in placing 13 children in gay households, four Roman Catholic bishops sought to bar the practice and obtain an exemption from the state's nondiscrimination laws. Eight board members resigned in frustration over the Vatican's position. Boston Catholic Charities also feared the loss of its largest private donor, The United Way of Massachusetts Bay, if it were forced to adopt the Vatican's discriminatory position.
Jacoby wrongly frames the conflict as follows:
Caught between the rock of Catholic teaching, which regards such adoptions as "gravely immoral," and Massachusetts regulations, which bar adoption agencies from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, the Boston Archdiocese [. . .] was left with no option but to end a ministry it had been performing for a century.
But that is not the case. The conflict was between Boston Catholic Charities and the Vatican, not between the charity and state law. Had "religious freedom" not intervened, Boston Catholic Charities could have happily continued providing adoptions to gay and lesbian parents. Instead, the specter of religion stepped in and created a conflict where previously none had existed. Jacoby continues:
So important is that agenda [to normalize homosexual adoption] that they will allow nothing to stand in its way — not even the well-being of children in dire need of safe and loving families [. . . . ] The Human Rights Campaign and its friends would rather see this invaluable work come to an end than allow Catholic Charities to decline gay adoptions.
The church's request for a [religious exemption] should have been unobjectionable, at least to anyone whose priority is rescuing kids from foster care
However, requests for religious exemptions are not 'unobjectionable', Mr. Jacoby. For the same reason that Protestants cannot seek a religious exemption to exclude Catholics from employment, adoption providers may not evoke religion to discriminate against a protected class. This is not the case of a church simply asking to be left alone in its policies, but rather an agent of the state seeking to break the law. Because, according to tax reports, Catholic Charities received $1 million of state funds to provide adoption services, its actions are subject to state scrutiny in ways that churches' typically are not. The state is not paying the charity to espouse its religious beliefs, but to offer adoption services consistent with its laws. Any organization accepting taxpayer money with the mistaken assumption that it can later deny services to those same taxpayers is immediately suspect.
Naturally, Mr. Jacoby must end his article with familiar fear-mongering, the-sky-is-falling tactics to fulfill his agenda against marriage equality. To do so, he quotes a 2004 article that made predictions following Massachusetts's ruling to legalize same-sex marriage:
[T]he experience in other countries reveals that once these arrangements become law, there will be no live-and-let-live policy for those who differ. Gay-marriage proponents use the language of openness, tolerance, and diversity, yet one foreseeable effect of their success will be to usher in an era of intolerance and discrimination . . . Every person and every religion that disagrees will be labeled as bigoted and openly discriminated against. The ax will fall most heavily on religious persons and groups that don't go along. Religious institutions will be hit with lawsuits if they refuse to compromise their principles.
But, Mr. Jacoby, the irony of citing such an article is that it emphasizes that those 2004 doomsday predictions never panned out, just as these rehashed 2009 predictions will not either. The only "ax that fell" was that organizations continued to be required to comply with the laws of the states that fund them. This has nothing to do with gay marriage, but rather the dreadfully — according to Mr. Jacoby — proliferating belief that gay and lesbian citizens are equal and deserving of a life free from discrimination and intolerance.
Thirty years ago today, the White Night rioters fought to oppose a justice system and a police department that woefully failed them. It condoned the arresting, beating, and murdering of individuals for nothing more than their sexuality or their acceptance of gays and lesbians. The world we live in is a different one now, and it is no longer acceptable to use your personal beliefs as an excuse for looking down on your fellow man and for breaking the law.
Gay rights advocates have no interest in eroding religious freedoms. It is only because organizations have attempted to use religious freedom as a shield for their discrimination that the issue has even come up. It is not we, Mr. Jacoby, who are "allowing nothing to stand in our way," but you, who would rather see adoption providers close than place children in gay and lesbian households, and would rather the children of millions of same-sex couples be raised by unmarried parents than let gays and lesbians wed.
Misleading anecdotes, invested statistics, and twisted facts are all that support the five-year-old silly and incorrect predictions of Massachusetts downfall. And five years from now, when even more states have enacted laws respecting the equality of marriage inclusion, today's predictions will be just as silly and incorrect. Gay marriage is no threat to religious freedom, and those who espouse this belief perpetuate a mistaken fallacy at best and malfeasant lie at worst.
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Other recent rebuttals from Brian Cavner include: Moral Absolutism and why Sexual Behavior is Irrelevant to Marriage and "With Gay Marriage Comes Gay Divorce".
Have a question, comment, or response? 4 people do.Moral Absolutism and why Sexual Behavior is Irrelevant to Marriage - A Rebuttal
I came across an editorial posted by a blogger at a site called Conservative Colloquialism entitled "Flawed Premises of the Homosexual Agenda" that I feel the need to respond to. The basis of his argument is that because gay and lesbian individuals choose their sexual behaviors, discrimination in marriage on the basis of sexual orientation is justifiable:
It is crucial to establish that people freely choose to engage in sexual relations, that human beings are not mere animals that cannot control themselves. In this way, one makes a fundamental distinction between a person’s freely chosen behavior and a person’s urges, feelings, desires, and attractions. Surely, a woman would not say that human beings are unable to control their sexual desires. To say such a thing is to give license to the rapist, the supreme violator of sexual morality. If the homosexual cannot control his or her own sexual urges, neither can the rapist or the pedophile. So if all sexual acts are freely chosen, then all homosexual behavior is freely chosen.
I guess the left would argue, more or less explicitly, that anal and oral sex with someone of the same sex are necessary for “individual self-fulfillment,” for reasons of “authenticity.” But this kind of talk merely turns the individual ego into the arbiter of morality, thus destroying any notion of morality. For what is morality if not independent of individual egos and wills?
This excerpt is edited. Full article here.
I believe that there is some confusion here about why marriage equality is important. It is not about equating “urges, feelings, desires, and attractions” with some universal tenant of morality, but recognizing the basic right of an individual to choose his or her own destiny. This is the fundamental basis of liberty, the ideal upon which our Constitution is founded.
Like Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that struck down prohibitions on interracial marriage, the struggle for marriage equality focuses less on individual same-sex relationships and more on a general provision of liberty: one's freedom to join in a loving union with the person of their choosing.
It is not about being “unable to control your sexual urges,” but rather the fact that there is no valid reason to expect that people should have to. Rapists, as this person cited, are not prosecuted for their sexual urges or 'immorality', but for their acts of violence. Pedophiles are shunned not for their desire, but for the tangible harm inflicted on children. Morality is simply not a relevant issue. Even more bizarre, neither rapists nor pedophiles are restricted from marriage on the basis of their 'urges', yet this person justifies denying the institution to same-sex couples for theirs.
Simply, marriage is not rooted merely in sexual acts, but in a loving partnership between two people. Sex is neither a prerequisite nor a disqualifier for marriage. Though an individual may temper his or her sexual desires, they cannot control feelings of love toward another human being. To expect that of a same-sex couple is as cruel as it was when it was expected of an interracial couple. That someone disagrees with their choice of partner is not a valid justification to deny them their right to choose.
The feud here is not in differing definitions of morality, but in the fallacious belief that a relationship must be 'moral' to earn state civil recognition. Such an argument is a distracting red herring. If this author wishes to deny the benefits of a civil, legal marriage to same-sex couples, there must be a civil, legal reason to do so. Arguments about sexual morality are irrelevant to the discussion.
Have a question, comment, or response? Share your thoughts.“With Gay Marriage Comes Gay Divorce” - A Rebuttal
In what will hopefully be an ongoing segment, I would like to shine a spotlight on some of the arguments those against inclusive marriage are advancing. In the wake of the Vermont vote and Iowa ruling, the sky-is-falling fears of the marriage exclusionists have blossomed into full on doomsday predictions. To counter the rhetoric, I would like to select a sampling of the arguments and rebut them. The first I would like to address involves concerns that gay marriage would lead to legally confusing, socially upheavaling, and child destroying gay divorce.
This is an argument that is somewhat new to me, but that I have already encountered twice since Vermont's vote yesterday. It goes something like this:
I'll be for it when gays/lesbians, when entering the marriage[,] are obligated to choose which of them is viewed as the male and which is the female in the eyes of the law. In the real world[,] men and women are treated differently in the eyes of the law when it comes to divorce, dividing assets, alimony, child support, etc [. . . .] [T]he gay community wants all the benefits without having to risk the drawbacks. Agree to one choosing the male role and one the female role in the event of a divorce, and you have my FOR vote.
User 'zilla' on debate site ConvinceMe
It was probably not this individual's intent to reinforce the heterocentric point of view that in a relationship one has to be the "man" and the other the "woman". Many same-sex couples battle with the assumption that one must take on a traditionally masculine role while the other adopts the feminine role. No couple, gay or straight, should be forced to integrate these social mores into their relationship unless they mesh with their own individual choices. A couple is free to divide the jobs between the partners in any way they personally see fit. While this is somewhat tangental to the point this individual was attempting to make, I did want to address the damaging stereotype.
The crux of this person's argument rests in the concern that the legal system is ill-adapted to deal with the implications of a same-sex divorce. The position suggests that females (presumably) are favored at divorce, often gaining child custody and support, alimony, and favorable asset division. This view was reinforced by a second individual, who e-mailed me in response to my analysis of Iowa's ruling:
In this case, [I]'m just wondering about the social implications. Let's say since gay marriage is legal, that means gay married couples can adopt as a couple. Now what happens to custody when a gay couple decides to get divorce[d]. Who gets primary custody? In "traditional" marriage right now, the social precedent is that mothers are the better than fathers to raise kids, but how will the courts decide when there are two mothers involved?
Anonymous
To both individuals, I want to clarify an apparent misconception with how our courts deal with divorces both opposite-sex and same-sex. While it may be a social precedent that mothers receive custody of children born during a marriage, this is certainly not the current legal precedent. While there is no single determinative element as to who receives custody, the decision is always made based on what is in the child's best interest. A number of factors including the parents' financial positions, relationship with the child, proximity to the child's school, history of criminal or abusive conduct, time able to spend with the child, and stability of home, as well as, in some cases, the child's preferences are all taken into account. This would not change simply because a same-sex couple rather than an opposite-sex is seeking a divorce.
While it may seem that women are favored in custody hearings, it is not simply due to their female anatomy. Courts simply prefer the roles that woman, often due to pressure from social norms, tend to adopt. If the roles were reversed, as in an opposite-sex relationship where the mother works and the father stays at home with the children, the father would be the one to receive the supposed preferential treatment.
The same is true of asset division, child support, and alimony. A non-working, child rearing partner tends to receive a more preferential division of wealth. As a matter of public policy, we want to ensure that an individual who was completely financially dependent on his or her ex-spouse is still cared for following divorce. This is never simply based on the individual's sex, but on his or her role in the relationship.
When it comes to same-sex divorces, all of the same factors are still relevant. There would be no legal confusion when the court faces two mothers or two fathers because, again, the sex of the parent is not a considered factor. Rather, the partner who is better able to provide a home that would be in the best interest of the child would be granted custody whether that parent is gay, straight, male, or female.
It is an unfortunate truth that half of all married couples — same-sex or opposite-sex — will decide to divorce. Our society has grown and matured to the point that we understand the reasons behind such a decision, and have adapted our legal system in order to ease the transition for the individuals and for their children. Marriage inclusion will not cause upheaval in our courts like some seem to fear it will. And if we ever face a question for which we have no answer, we will figure it out when we get to it. That, simply, is how our system of laws works.
If you have your own response to this argument, whether you agree or disagree with me, be sure to share it in the comments section. Any debate should be cordial and well-reasoned, but all viewpoints are welcomed and uncensored.
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