We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
- The Declaration of Independence
With the hotly debated passage of Proposition 8 in California, which amends the state constitution to prohibit marriage between members of the same gender, as well as the passage of similar propositions in Arizona and Florida, a lot of people are asking the question: what is marriage?
We each have our own personal definition of marriage, which may cause us to embrace or reject it in our own lives, but how we define it legally and as a state-issued license is really what lies at the heart of the issue. In a country founded on equal rights, how does sexual preference give the state authority to grant or deny its citizens their rights? What interest does the state have in limiting the definition of marriage to only apply to heterosexual couples? The answer is: none. The interest lies elsewhere. These state bans on homosexuals’ access to the same legal and social status as their heterosexual compatriots are simply unconstitutional.
As we analyze what marriage means in our society, perhaps the marriage that most pressingly needs to be examined is the messy one that has plagued our nation from its inception: that between church and state. One of those murky issues that spans the two, how we define marriage is a good representation of where our society stands today on the relationship of religion and government, which, although clearly spelled out as separated in the Constitution, continue to drag out their centuries-long divorce, battling and baffling the sober, secular members of the population. For secularists, the definition of marriage is simple: a governmental institution requiring a legal contract between two people, and affording them privileges and protections under the law regarding areas of property rights, healthcare, childcare, citizenship, etc. However, as with most aspects of human life, the definition of marriage becomes much more complex when regarded through the prism of religion.
An oft-repeated phrase of those who oppose gay marriage is that it is a sacred institution “between one man and one woman.” This personal belief, however, is not explicitly supported by scripture, as many would claim. Numerous quotes are tossed about from the Bible attesting to this supposedly divine institution, but the institution of marriage was created by man, just as the Bible was written by men. And that Bible does not state that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, but rather makes many references to polygamy (or, more specifically, polygyny) in the Old Testament (Exodus 21:10, Deuteronomy 21:15, Solomon with his famous 700 wives and 300 concubines in 1 Kings 11:3, among numerous others), and the New Testament does not explicitly refute it. The “one man one woman” belief is an adjustment to the institution, polygamy only becoming illegal in the United States in 1862, with the passage of the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act.
If the definition of marriage can be altered from “one man, many women,” to “one man, one woman,” why can’t it be altered to “one human, one human?” From the state’s point of view there should be no difference in a marriage contract between two people of the opposite or the same sex, just as there can be no difference in a business contract. Hence, a ban on same-sex marriage is outright religiously-informed state-sanctioned homophobia, masqueraded as acceptable because the majority of voters bought into the propaganda. In California, the religious right spent millions to mobilize volunteers and get out the message across the ethnic spectrum to pass the ban, with a campaign that “had begun with white evangelical churches but had spread to more than 1,130 Hispanic churches whose pastors convinced their members that same-sex marriage threatened the traditional family.” (NYTimes)
Moreover, members of the Mormon Church, the very religious sect that practiced polygamy in the United States until the late 19th century, were huge contributors to the cause, donating roughly half of the $40 million raised by the Yes to 8 campaign, “including a $1 million donation from Alan C. Ashton, the grandson of a former president of the Mormon Church. The money allowed the drive to intensify a sharp-elbowed advertising campaign, and support for the measure was catapulted ahead; it ultimately won with 52 percent of the vote.” (NYTimes) Interesting, given that the Mormons’ defiance of the outlawing of polygamy led to the 1878 unanimous Supreme Court Reynolds v. United States decision which declared that “laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices.” (findlaw.com) In other words, you can believe what you want to believe, and you can practice your religion, so long as you do not engage in any activity contrary to the law of the land. Denied what they felt was their right to practice their religion as prescribed by their doctrine they now want to expand that law of the land to prohibit others from practicing their beliefs, specifically because it is contrary to their religious doctrine.
With laws banning same-sex marriage now on the books in 30 states, it is time to take a truly sober look at what is happening to our government, and to our society at large. The Religious Right rants against so-called “secular fascism” destroying the moral fabric of our society, but it is the Religious Right that want to defy the founding principles of the nation, and pick and choose what rights and privileges are granted under the law, according to their own “moral” values. The Declaration of Independence stated that to secure the rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Granted, these state laws or amendments to state constitutions have been passed through the democratic process, with the majority consent of the governed (after the most expensive campaigns for their passage (as well as their defeat) have been waged). But are these laws even legal? Can the majority vote to deny legal rights to a minority? These questions will undoubtedly be raised and tested in the courts, the hopeful result of which will be the barring of any religiously motivated laws from becoming destructive to the safety and happiness of any portion of the population.
The ninth amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which, under our federalist system of government, trumps the individual state constitutions, clearly states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In exercising our rights, including, most emphatically, our right to freedom of religion, we must not deny or disparage any of our other rights, such as our inalienable right to the pursuit of Happiness.
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Marriage laws were put in place many years ago in order to PROTECT individuals and their families; if they were not necessary THEY WOULD NOT EXIST (for the heterosexuals).
Americans want to deny us what they
DEEM ESSENTIAL.
I personally have a HUGE problem with that, thus our united response:
The NATIONAL EQUALITY TAX PROTEST will be on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009.
Individuals are FINALLY gathering to TAKE A STAND against persecution from the Mormons & the Christian “Right”. No vote will be needed on this one, folks.
It is interesting how religion still seems to find its way into government and specifically into the laws of the land. Not that religious groups don’t have a right to voice their opinion on social matters, but they obviously had in a huge influence on this proposition’s outcome. The whole question of what marriage means is not adequately answered by the religious opponents of gay marriage. As you pointed out, marriage used to be more a polygymous thing. Now that a man wants a “husband” or a woman wants a “wife,” it is somehow not “marriage” according to those who supported Proposition 8. It’s fair to ask them how they decided the bible insists marriage is only between a man and a woman. I’m sure with a few easy questions put to them, you would find them unable to answer with any information that could support their argument on constitutional or biblical grounds. I suspect that their definition of marriage is a smoke screen for their bias against gays in general. It used to be a crime to be gay and carry out gay acts in the bedroom. Now the religious want gay marriage to be illegal. In my view it’s simply a continuation of that bias and fear for anything that is different from what they find familiar and comfortable.
It is strange to me that Obama is against same-sex marriage based on his Christian view that marriage is a “blessing from God intended exclusively for a man and a woman.” While I don’t believe Obama is against gays in general, I don’t think he has deeply thought through his own position. He has said he won’t support laws that outlaw same-sex marriage and he opposed Proposition 8, but he won’t support the other side either. In one of his books he did admit that his unwillingness to support gay marriage is possibly misguided. My own opinion on that is he chose this side strategically so that he would get elected as president by Christians and other conservatives who also oppose gay marriage. It’s my hope that he will change his mind once he becomes president.
But as for that unanswered question about what marriage really means in today’s society, I do wonder. I asked a gay man I know what he thought of gay marriage and he was actually against it. He said that marriage as it is defined by most people is not fair to begin with, as it assumes a connection with religion (which isn’t really true if you get married in a town hall, not a church). He thought civil unions were much more true to the definition of what the gay couples really want, and that is just to be legally recognized that they are a union. Our society puts more importance on marriage than for instance Europe, hence the fact that the number of children born out of wedlock now surpasses the number born in wedlock in several western European countries. People who are getting married in Europe do it out of personal preference or because of specific legal or financial reasons, not necessarily to secure their civil rights as united couples or because of religion. I think for practical reasons, many don’t get married because there’s a 50-50 chance of divorce, so why bother go through the often damaging legal and financial hassle of dissolving a marriage?
In my opinion the problem in this country is not necessarily that religion is shaping government, but that there are so many people, intellectual ones included, whose ideas are still so misguided and out-of-date when it comes to gay rights.
Two large and severely different systems draw their rules from ethics: law and religion. And neither manages to stay true to the origin for more than a second! Whenever either argues about its ethical motivations, that should be taken with a huge reserve. And whenever someone manages to confuse one with the other just because they share the same, but rejected origin, then it is obvious that the path of his imagination exceeds his capacity for… reason.
I wonder what the man and the woman clasping hands with two children at a German gravesite called their union 4,600 years ago. DNA testing on their recently unearthed remains proved the adults were the parents of the two boys in what has to be called a classic nuclear family in a pre-history context. Did that man and woman have a ceremony 4,600 years ago which made them married under God , state or country? No such evidence has been discovered in human development in the Neolithic period yet the evidence is clear and undeniable that this 4,600-year-old family loved and cared for one another. One can assume a sense of happiness expressed by these ancient bones holding on to one another.
No religion or government can deny what our 4,600-year-old family is with no evidence of ceremony. They are what they are. There is a sense of monogamy and stability expressed by the skeletal remains. Family without marriage is still family.
The debate today over who is family and who is not is not biologically debatable, only the issue of rights. When it comes to the issue of rights, then those who want to be family should not be denied. It helps the stability of society whether heterosexual or homosexual. Religion has no place in such matters. If 4,600 years from now, the skeletal remains of two men holding one another or two women holding one another are unearthed and their DNA did not match, all that excavators could visually deduce is that these people cared for one another.
What matters for a democratic society is that its citizens are committed to equality and justice for each individual, and one’s happiness is not obstructed by others arbitrarily.
Nice. Honestly though, I can’t believe that this is a debate we are having today in America – who is it still okay to deny human rights to? Interesting to note that 40 million dollars was spent on a campaign aimed at excluding people when American children are hungry and sleeping on the streets tonight.
My comment comes from the heart more than from the head, I guess. As a relatively new citizen of California, I spent November 4th feeling both proud to be an American for the first time in I don’t know how long, and ashamed of the state that I call my home, where I felt that this kind of thing couldn’t happen. I must say, I was caught off guard. How can anyone be so threatened that they will spend millions of their own dollars to PREVENT someone from doing something that doesn’t involve them in the least, when that money could (as the last comment stated) have fed many people or have been spent on any number of positive things.
Yes, it is truly sad that such an enormous amount of money is spent on trying to bar others from achieving a social status that they want in life, something that affects no-one but themselves. Obviously those who support these bans would say that it does affect everyone, as they see it as encouraging the proliferation of gay couples, which is contrary to their view of what is good and right and holy. But this is a ridiculous argument, because there are still going to be just as many gay couples, they just won’t be married. It is simply their fear trying to stem the tide of societal change. Societies have growing pains just as humans do, let’s hope that this is only a hiccup in our progress toward a more rational, reasoned society with laws based on reality, not religion.
The good news is that the California Supreme Court is already planning to hear arguments for the potential overturning of the amendment, based on grounds that it is unconstitutional. There was this article on it in the NY Times yesterday:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/us/21marriage.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
What I found particularly astounding is that the supporters of the ban are threatening to vote out the judges in 2010 if they do overturn it. It never ceases to amaze me how passionately some people will try to impose their idea of “morality” on others, and will stop at nothing until they have achieved their goal.
Yes, it is good news that the Supreme Court is willing to hear it. I just hope that this will be more like the case Brown v. Board of Education, not the Dred Scott case. If it’s like the latter we will sadly have a ways to go once again.
What we need with this issue, as with others like abortion or the use of recreational drugs, is an amendment that affirms the right to privacy. So far the only support for this and other privacy issues is the “pursuit of happiness” clause in the Declaration of Independence. The framers may have missed this, to us, essential right to privacy because it’s only recently that people have had privacy, or can expect to have it. Animals certainly had none. Primitive humans cover themselves with leaves and animal hides, more for warmth than for privacy. Some Native Americans lived and slept in communal huts where couples had sex in full view or hearing of others. During the 16th century people regularly accompanied each other into the privies, slept with strangers just to keep warm, etc. Early palaces in Europe have no halls; one room simply opens into another in a long chain, so that there was no way for anyone in the rooms along the chain to have any privacy until the last room, which of course was where the monarch slept.
This is the central issue in so many of our present conflicts, who somebody sleeps with, what a woman does about a pregnancy, even private ownership of guns. The issues all have to do with what rights society has over what an adult or adults do within their own private space. If a woman decides she can’t bring up a child, what affect does that have on society as a whole? On the other hand, if some dirtbag keeps a stack of firearms where a child can get at them or he can get at them when drunk or in a rage, that does affect society as a whole.
Society has rights, but the individual also has rights, and most of them boil down to the right to privacy. It wasn’t enough for women to be included as a form of man; in order to overcome centuries of misunderstanding, an amendment had to be added to the constitution to reinforce the concept of equality. The bits and pieces on privacy offered by the Constitution aren’t enough. A basic legal claim to it has got to be cast in stone, so that when such issues arise, judges have some basis on both sides when drawing a line between the rights of society and the rights of the individual.
If we had such an amendment in place, it would have been the law that would have stopped the right to lifers from persecuting abortion doctors. It took one getting murdered to bring that to a halt, but that such persecution continues I’m sure is the case, it’s just that the press is so tired of the issue that we don’t hear about it.
I suppose there’s been some talk somewhere about us needing such an amendment, but so far I’ve never seen it, and I’ve been looking for it for a long time. So it would be good to begin raising the issue.
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