If we want to honor the founders of our nation we need to address this issue. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” We have failed. What of the promise to allow people “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This is what Chief Justic Warren had to say on the matter of marriage, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

As to your claim “that a man and woman entering into marriage reinforces society by perpetuating the institution of marriage (whether they reproduce or not) and alternative unions defined arbitrarily as marriage do not.” I do not see how denying someone the right to marry benefits society. I do see that denying anyone rights based on their sexual preference is clearly discrimination. It is time for the definition of marriage to adapt. I’ve been married for 8 years, and I am not going to have to turn in my marriage license if the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered community are allowed to marry. Instead I see anyone getting married as a boost to society. By allowing members of the gay community to marry, they will see they are not being treated as second class citizens. You may not like (and you don’t have to), but they are queer, they’re here, and it’s time we treated them as any other American.

I never claimed that something being socially acceptable for a long time meant that it was right or that it is or should be socially acceptable now. I said that when considering “a long standing (eons) species wide (present in some for in most every society) tradition it is not the burden of those who wish this demonstrably successful institution (at least in a legal and governmental sense) to remain as it is to “prove” that it should”. You’re just oversimplifying what I said.

Furthermore, you claim that the *exact* same argument can be made but: 1. You didn’t make the argument you just claimed that you could. 2. I don’t think you can make the *exact* same argument because beyond the passing resemblance of tradition and notions of equality the issues don’t have much in common. 3. I think what you’re going for is argument ad absurdum, and if it is you didn’t make it.

If I had claimed that:
All tradition is good and shouldn’t change;
Marriage as presently defined is a tradition;
Therefore marriage as presently defined should never change;

Then yes, you could say that lack of suffrage is a tradition that isn’t good (along with a litany of other examples) and probably make a compelling case that the above argument doesn’t hold water. However, that’s not at all what I said. It’s just what you reduced my argument to.

Though it’s off the subject I can’t help but comment on the somewhat feminist view of history you espoused. I’m not going to try to make a long winded argument against it just offer up a few observations. Take them as you will:

1. From an evolutionary standpoint men, as a class, have consistently gotten the raw end of the deal. Recent genetic studies (I’ll try to find the link) show that 80% of women throughout our species history have successfully mated whereas only 40% of men have. Meaning women have, throughout history, been twice as likely to ‘succeed’ from an evolutionary standpoint and pass on their genes.

2. While it’s true that men are typically far more prevalent in positions of power than women they’re also far more prevalent among the ranks of criminals, junkies and the homeless.

3. When the Titanic sank a higher percentage of female 3rd class passengers survived than did their 1st class male counterparts. In other words, in a life or death emergency, the lives of women of the lowest social order were still valued more than the lives of the men at the top of the heap.

Unsurprisingly you ignored the crux of what I was expressing and resorted to the tired smears of “narrow minded” and “bigoted”, couched it in a paternal tone and delivered it with a practiced air of smug moral superiority. True, it’s more diplomatic than appeals to defunct religious principles and nonsensical chants of “god hates fags” but it’s judgmental, condescending and spurious all the same.

The force of tradition and historical precedent is not dismissed by petulantly tossing out a few shopworn clichés about how bad things (by modern ethical standards) happened in the past and therefore historical precedent is invalid. Race has nothing to do with this. Women’s suffrage has nothing to do with this. Broadening the scope of the argument is a form of evasion. Nowhere did you counter that marriage has been a central institution in virtually every society, and you offered only a weak argument about knowing some gay couple who adopted a kid and pretended that that somehow invalidated my point about the importance of children being raised by their own parents and the importance of the societal structures that compel them to do so. Until recently adoption has carried a heavy stigma and it has always been considered a path of very last resort. It’s not an ingrained cultural institution where abandoned children are doled out indiscriminately on a first come first serve basis. It is a regrettable exception, not a given. The reason your “my gay friend” argument doesn’t hold water is that you seem to have mutated what I said (“Parents raising their own children is important”) into something absurd that you would have a canned response for (“Every single gay is utterly incapable of acting in some capacity as a parent”) and then spit out a pathetic dismissal (“I know a gay couple who adopted a kid, therefore that argument is ‘out’”). Typical straw man tactics and compelling only to the already indoctrinated. Same goes for the “Mass. Legalized gay ‘marriage’ and their society didn’t immediately collapse” nonsense. No reasonable person claimed that it would create instant anarchy and decay, yet you seem to think that because some people did actually claim that and that those people also happened to oppose gay “marriage” that it must follow that anyone who opposed gay marriage believes that. This isn’t abstract set theory. Invalidating the predictions of a small group within a larger group doesn’t invalidate the group as a whole. Try harder. You’re better than that.

Marriage at the legal/governmental level is an agreement between a man and woman (the only pairing capable of producing offspring) and society. The man and woman agree to establish a family unit beneficial to themselves, their children and to society as whole as it ensures that it will continue on for another generation. True, not all men and women who enter into marriage care to or are capable of reproducing, but the key difference is that a man and woman entering into marriage reinforces society by perpetuating the institution of marriage (whether they reproduce or not) and alternative unions defined arbitrarily as marriage do not. In fact, they do the opposite. They reinforce the notion that marriage and family is simply some abstract construct formulated for egoistic gratification and a false sense of equality and not a crucial part of societal edification and perpetuation.

On another note, the duty of law and government in our society is (ideally) to enforce equality under the law for a restricted set of circumstances. Equality under the law means equality of opportunity for the restricted set of functions that the government oversees. It is not the government’s job to enforce equality of outcome. Legally sanctifying something as equal when it clearly isn’t doesn’t solve any problems it just creates more. Passing a law declaring that you must have a BMI of 35 instead of 30 before you’re considered obese doesn’t change physical reality on iota. It may provide some psychological comfort to someone with a BMI of 30 who is tired of being “obese” but reality is unaltered and the comfort derived is completely false. Same goes for legally declaring gay couples as “married’. Barring the use of some ghastly reproductive science a human female and another human female cannot create a child. The same obviously goes for human males. Like with the obesity example all that occurs is a deprecation of the definition of the term.

The more I consider it the clearer it becomes that what you’re aiming for is Orwellian both in scope and intent. Driven by facile intellectualism and an obtuse sense of equality you push forth with a myopic and doctrinaire confidence; Manipulating legal institutions against their express intent in order to impose a belief on a society that has rejected it repeatedly (en masse and through the democratic process) in order to arrogate and redistribute status to those who you think deserve it. Rock on comrade.

“Does any reasonable person not believe that gays and lesbians deserve respect and equality? Not today’s Republican Party. Expert translators from Arabic have been dismissed for being gay. And applicants for the post of certified public accountants in the Iraq Green Zone have been asked about their view of Roe v. Wade.”http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-06/the-republicans-are-now-the-stupid-party/

Really? Are we allowing our government to discriminate against people based on religious moral opinions?

Thank you for your perfectly on-target post on both issues. I think it’s sad that some people who didn’t vote for Obama are trying to downplay the significance of it. They are missing out on history because of their bitterness and in some cases prejudice.

On the Prop 8 issue:
Brandon already articulately gave a compelling argument for altering the legal definition of marriage. In essence, it is that two people who love each other and want to commit to each other should be able to marry. Gay couples can do everything that you suggest marriage gives society: commitment to each other, parenting, forming a well-balance unit, and sometimes even propagation of the species, if not by traditional means. I sometimes here the whole “the species will die out if we let gay people marry.” That’s a bunch of bull. There have always been gay people, there will always be gay people. They just are gay, it’s not a choice, and it’s not caused by some ‘mistake’ their parents made in raising them or by the degradation of society. People should not have to hide who they are, and should not have to be denied love and the marriage that straight people enjoy just because of who they are. I think it would actually help stabilize our society more, if gay people are allowed to commit to these social contracts, which can take a higher level of commitment than simply living together.

As for religion, yes, the constitution absolutely states separation of church and state. This is a nation of many religions, not just one, and also of many people who feel complete without a belief in God. Christians (and I’m speaking as a formerly fairly fundamentalist one) often forget that people are JUST AS valued in God’s eyes whether they’re ’saved’ or not. A belief in God can be a great spiritual help to people, but let’s not forget that God speaks to people in many different ways, not just through the Christian faith. Christians believe that everyone should be saved, and as a way to help the unsaved (at best) or to prevent corruption of society (in their own view), try to prevent others from ’sinning’ by encoding into law their own morals. But this is where religion gets mixed up in politics. I value people of faith, who often come with a high sense of integrity and love. However, this isn’t always the case, since they are just people (’sinners’) like the rest of us. We should each allow our faith-based (or non-faith-based) morals to regulate our personal choices and behavior, but to force these religious morals onto others who have a different view of Life, the Universe, and Everything is crossing the constitutional line.

And actually, I don’t think God considers homosexuality to be a sin. If He makes people gay, then there’s no way he would consider it a sin. I think it’s just something people are often uncomfortable with, so they like to rationalize it as a ’sin’. Just like slavery used to be defended by the Christian church in our own nation. In the times of the Bible, slavery was more common. Genocide was even promoted in the Old Testament. But as a society, we have progressed beyond those things (at least in most parts of the world). I think most would agree that slavery and genocide are no longer considered okay by our society and the Christian church. It’s time for us to look at our prejudices and admit that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. It doesn’t harm anyone else, and why is someone else’s sexual life our business, anyway? I would be fairly offended if society decided it needed to regulate what my husband and I do in the bedroom. And, as girlysmack points out on Garcia’s page, men in the Bible have more than one wife, so why don’t we also legalize polygamy? Just like the slavery issue, we need to let our hearts lead us on this. Other people’s choices actually DON’T threaten your own choices. For a more complete Biblically-based discussion, I urge you to go to this link; it says it a lot better than I could.
http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-gay-christian

You could make the exact same argument *against* women’s suffrage. There has been eons of tradition supporting the idea that a wife is akin to property and ought to be subjugated to her husband’s will. Women have long been prevented leadership positions and been referred to as the weaker sex, with their only acceptable roles being housekeeper, nanny, and sexual object. That’s been a longstanding tradition in countless cultures, sure. Does that make it right? Of course not.

Claiming that something has been socially acceptable for a long time does not make it socially acceptable now.

-R.

You can quote historical precedent all you want, but, relatively speaking, the majority of societies past represented a lack of equal rights in general and slavery as a matter of course. We see it still in less-progressive societies who repress their people based on race, gender, and other factors. One of the nice things about being American is that I’d like to think we’re kind of above all of that kind of bigoted, limiting thinking. However, as we see in your response, it still exists and while it is intelligent and strong-willed, it’s still limited and bigoted.

And it’s the little pockets of “liberal elitists” that make the change happen. Were it not for those radical, uppity ladies at the turn of the century, women would still not be eligible to vote on the national level. But 144 years of American history happened before that moment as the nation dealt with an unhealthy, bent status quo. It took a redefinition of a woman’s place in society before it could happen and I’d like to think most people these days are fairly content with the outcome after 88 years. It’s been even less time since the strides of racial equality gave us the jumpstart to some kind of integrated society. When our parents were kids, black people sat at the backs of buses. That wasn’t too terribly long ago.

So it takes time. And it takes effort to shake off the small-minded who clamor for the status quo. I know gay parents who care for the children who are cast off by the straight ones that can’t provide for them, so that argument is out. And, according to most studies, the number of homosexuals in the world isn’t going to pose a threat to the species at large. In an overly-populated world, I can’t see in any way, shape or form how letting gay people marry will suddenly toss us on to an endangered species list.

I’ll agree that the average liberal does only cling tightly to the power of democracy when it swings in their favor. And I’m sure if Obama hadn’t won the election, there would be screams and shouts at the failures of the system. That’s not how I work. But when I see the system used to take from American society, I’m going to stand up against that. If America isn’t going to wake up on its own and change itself in the face of a changing world, I’m going to do my part to start setting alarms.

b