San Francisco

The scene was rather startling, an elderly woman holding a cross in her hand peacefully demonstrating for Proposition 8 in Palm Springs, California and some miscreant viciously slaps it out of her hand.

At another venue in the Castro district of San Francisco a group of evangelicals were peacefully gathered on the street praying and making themselves available to anyone who wanted speak to him.  One young lady’s bible was stolen and when she asked that it be returned, her request was met with kicking and punching. Nice. So much for the city of tolerance.

So what we are hearing now, which is a formula we have seen before, is if you lose at the ballot box pick up your marbles and head off to find a activist judge who will discover within an evolved Constitution, the fundamental right that everyone missed for the last two hundred plus years and declare the will of the people null and void.

What’s This Really All About?

Here is the actual text of Proposition 8 (leaving out the legalese regarding where it fits in the California Constitution to just get to the meat of it):

SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

That’s it.  If you landed here from another planet you would probably wonder what’s going on?  If you are a foreign visitor and see this on the news you would probably think we had lost our minds.  Who would propose a constitutional amendment to define what any idiot knows to be true?  What should we look for next?  A constitutional amendment that defines the world as round?  The sky blue?  The grass green?

But this is not about rights. It is not about tolerance. It is not about fairness.  It is about mainstreaming.  It is about a definition. It starts by tearing down a definition that has existed for several millennia, the definition of marriage.

Once that definition is altered, then terms like husband and wife lose their meaning.  After all, if you are talking about the marriage of Jim and Joe, who is the wife?  If you are talking about the marriage of Jane and Mary, who is the husband?  If husband and wife lose their meaning, then what will soon follow is that it will become politically incorrect to use those terms at all.  Any instance of husband and wife will have to be stricken first from any public documents then eventually from all documents.  In the end we will all just be spouses or significant others or some other bland descriptor.

The reason, in my humble opinion, why the battle lines have been so starkly drawn and the fighting is getting so fierce and will continue to do so, is because this is not about adding to the rights of gays.  It is about taking away how the majority of Americans define themselves.  They just don’t see it as an equivalency.

If you took three islands and put all the heterosexuals on one island, all the gay men on another and all the gay women on the third and came back in 100 years, only one of those three islands would be populated.  So how does A=B=C?

What Was the Point of Marriage in the First Place?

Marriage and the laws that eventually gave it protection and encouraged it were for the purpose of bringing children into the world.  A man and a woman would come together, make a commitment to be bound to each other, to be responsible for each other and in that family unit bring children into the world and provide for their protection, care, and upbringing.  It was survival, not only for that family, but for the community as a whole.

Are there exceptions to the rule?  Yes.  There are couples who for biological or other reasons cannot have children and there are couples who do not want children.  For the former group adoption has been an alternative.  In the case of homosexuals, the rule is the exception.  They cannot have children without adoption or by involving a third party.  So again, how is that the equivalent of marriage?

It’s Not About Rights

Prior to 1920, women were not allowed to vote.  But with courageous leaders like Susan B. Anthony they fought for those rights and won them through the legislative process and by amendment to the Constitution.  They didn’t seek out an activist judge to redefine the term “male” to mean both men and women.

In the 1947 movie, “Gentleman’s Agreement,” the character portrayed by Gregory Peck poses as a Jew to write about the discrimination against Jews in America.  What was the solution?  Did Jews find an activist judge who would redefine them as Episcopalians?  Can you imagine them making that case?

“So, Mr. Levine,” the judge asked, “you want to become an Episcopalian?  Then why don’t you just become one?  Why are you here?”

“No, your honor, I’m perfectly happy being a Jew. I don’t want to become an Episcopalian; I just want to be called an Episcopalian.”

“Let me get this straight.  You want to continue to be a Jew, worship like a Jew and live the life of a Jew, you just want to be called an Episcopalian?”

“Right.”

” Why?”

“Life would be so much easier.”

The battle surrounding Proposition 8 is a similar one, gays don’t want to marry someone of the opposite sex in the traditional definition marriage, they just want to be defined the same way.

What Does Sex Have To Do With It?

I think that most Americans are open to the idea that the rights that gays are seeking, such as the right to share and inherit property, the right to visit a sick partner in the hospital, the right to make decisions on the part of a partner that currently go to the next of kin, should be allowed.  But taking it a step further, why should it be limited to those who have sexual relations?

Let’s take a hypothetical case of Felix and Oscar.  Felix and Oscar are heterosexual men.  They are getting on in years, both in their early eighties.  They fought together in WWII.  Their wives are both deceased.  They are not physically attracted to each other.  However, they both feel that at this stage in their lives they would like to look out for each other like they did on the beaches of Normandy and the Ardennes forest.  They want to buy and share a house together, pooling their resources, and look after each others health, and leave whatever financial assets they have to the surviving partner.  Their families, though distant, have no problem with this arrangement.  Why couldn’t these two gentlemen have the same rights that gays are seeking?  Do gays seek a special class that only includes those who are sexually intimate?  Why shouldn’t Felix and Oscar have the same rights?

Stick to the Rights Issue

If gay advocates stick to the rights issue and be inclusive such that any two people, who want to be legally bound and committed, can have the right to share, look after, and care for each other, these rights that gays are seeking would probably be granted quickly.  But if the objective is to tear down something that has existed for several thousand years in order to forcefully mainstream a way of life, then they had better be ready for a battle.  Time and again gays are asking straights to be understanding, to be fair and to be compassionate.  Perhaps it’s time to turn the tables where gays should be understanding, fair and considerate and leave marriage well enough alone.

Most fair minded Americans will support individual rights and oppose discrimination.  But if their way of life, which is not discriminatory, comes under attack you can expect them to battle back.  Marriage is not discriminatory.  It is a loving bound between a husband and a wife.