'Cause The Bible Tells Me So

Coming soon in my state, a ballot measure to repeal the recently-granted right of same-sex couples to marry. A vote to remove rights from a class of people. Yellow armbands, anyone?

Letters-to-the-editor pages are filled with non-ironic demands that we keep the biblical definition of marriage. So, at the risk of being repetitive (me?), the above video is a helpful reminder of what that really means.

Kisses On The Bottom

Legislation allowing same-sex marriage has passed in my state, and will soon be signed into law. Already, initiatives are being filed to overturn, and letters of outrage decrying legislators' circumventing the will of the people are filling column after column of newsprint. Locally, some are about a nearby state senator, a Democrat, who voted "no." A disgrace, some are saying. An admirable act of conscience, say others. Pretty strange definition of conscience I'd call it, voting to deny a class of people rights granted to everyone else. Whatever it might be, a brave act of principle it ain't.

So I wrote a letter of my own. Since the last one I sent in on the subject was never printed, I'll print it myself, here, so if it too fails to get ink I can still admire it whenever I want:

To the editor:

Other letter writers are raising a really good question: is voting against same-sex marriage an act of conscience or something else? When a person votes to deny a minority of people a right granted to the majority, what should it be called? If the motivation comes from one's religious beliefs, does that make it okay, is it rising above, or sinking below?

I realize there's nothing I or anyone else can say to change minds about this. But since it's likely we'll eventually be voting on whether to institutionalize prejudice or not, it needs saying anyway: if your religious beliefs are telling you to discriminate against people simply because of who they are, then what's an act of conscience is being able to recognize their humanity and, placing it above those beliefs, voting for justice anyway. Especially when, as in the case of same-sex marriage, allowing those human rights will have absolutely no impact on your ability to continue to live by your personal beliefs. My forty-year marriage will be fine, thanks.

For a society to deny millions of people a right afforded to the rest, there must be a very compelling governing principle. When the only reasons are based on your religion (and when many others of that same religion disagree with you!) clearly that's not good enough. Conscience is stepping up for the rights of others, even when it makes you uncomfortable. Not doing so, and calling it conscience, is no more than rationalization of prejudice.

Freedom Is Tyranny; War Is Peace

Predictably, RWS™ are aghast. It's tyranny. TYRANNY!!

It's a perfect lens through which to view the current state of conservatism, as manifested in teabaggRs: when anything happens with which they disagree, for whatever reason, no matter what it is or how it happened, it's tyranny. It's evil. So it has been since the election of that black guy. Not to get their way, in a democracy, is the same as living in North Korea. Seriously. That's how they see it. (I do recognize the relatively lonely voice of reason among today's conservatives. It's just that they have virtually no influence over what constitutes the Republican party any more.)

Okay, let's think for a minute. If straight people were forced to marry someone of the same sex, that would be tyranny. If only gay marriage were allowed, if churches were forced to allow gay marriages, that would be tyranny. And, by golly, by the same reasoning, when gay couples are prevented by the state from marrying, that's tyranny, too.

But when duly elected representatives, after years of public debate, pass a law which broadens freedom and which has no effect whatsoever on anyone not previously prevented from enjoying that freedom, takes nothing away from the majority while allowing a minority to share in a freedom previously denied -- what ever the hell that is, it sure as hell is NOT tyranny.

That anyone who lives in our democracy and claims to be a patriot could see it as such says everything you need to know about person and the movement of which he or she is a part. In short, it tells you that person, that movement, absolutely does not believe in American democracy. Or minority rights. Or compromise. Period. No counter argument to be made. This isn't even hard: allowing same-sex marriage has a positive effect on many, and a negative effect on none. No one. My son still plans on marrying his girlfriend. I do not plan on getting divorced. Churches are free to open their doors to gay marriages, or keep them closed. Followers of Jesus and his message of love can still hate to their hearts' content.

Nothing bad happened to anyone, no one's will got imposed on the unwilling, no person became forced to do something they don't want to do. Nothing was taken away from anyone, by anyone.

Tyranny, they call it. With such people, there's no reasoning; and they're the ones in charge of our House of Representatives and state houses across the land, stamping their feet and saying no to anything at all which is not 100% to their liking. They insist on imposing their entire agenda on every person, unchanged, unyielding, unconcerned about anyone who objects or is adversely affected, for any reason at all.

Some would call that tyranny.

Right and Wrong

Who could have predicted this? Iowa Republican legislators are moving to amend their state constitution to outlaw same sex marriage. That's them, above. Loving-looking group of people. Rights-rescinding sort of folks: eaters of corn, family protectors destroyers. God bless 'em.

What's the word I'm looking for....? Oh yeah: evil. If what they're trying to do isn't evil, what is? They want to strip fellow human beings, loving people, of rights enjoyed by everyone else. Attack them, punish them, deprive them. People who are law-abiding citizens of their country, teachers, students, doctors, lawyers, insurance agents, clerks, harming no one, whose only offense is having been born with a sexual preference different from theirs (although if you put a handful of gay-bashing Republicans in a room, chances are there's some whose preferences aren't as white-bread as they profess. Could it be the one on the right?) People who want only to live in a loving home like heterosexual families, and to be left alone.

I simply can't fathom it: devoting all that effort to punishing people who've committed no crime, pose no danger, ask for nothing more than what everyone else has. What does it take to rationalize such a thing? Religion, of course. But to support that kind of discrimination, designed specifically to exclude a group of people from human rights, based on a false concept: it's so foreign to me that I can't imagine it. I can't put myself in their shoes any more than I can breathe under water. These people are hate-filled, frightened, self-important, indifferent, vengeful, uncharitable, sociopathic, ill-informed, oppressive, sanctimonious, tyrannical, malicious, smug, fact-denying, intolerant, thoughtless, hurtful, petty, parochial, narrow-minded, mendacious, vindictive, brainwashed bullies. More simply: evil.

At best it's but another example of how differently people think; how facts are processed or rejected in differing brains. There's nothing -- NOTHING -- about same-sex marriage to which that group of self-satisfied legislators can point that threatens them. Yet there they are, plotting, planning, and, likely, thinking they're doing God's work. In some things there is more than one respectable point of view, legitimate bones of contention. Opposing arguments can be rationally made when the facts are not clear, or conflicting. Billroth I vs Billroth II after antrectomy, for example; pancreatectomy vs Peustow for chronic obstructive pancreatitis. But sometimes, there is no argument. Sometimes people on one side are simply wrong, period.

Those guys at the top of this post? Wrong. They have no argument, no facts. They're just wrong. It's the kindest thing I can say about them, and they don't deserve it.
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I &hearts The Heartland

Iowa, home of tall corn and sturdy Americans, no-nonsense kind of place, where I once drove a tractor as a kid, stopping at the family farm of my dad's law partner, trailering our way across the country in the summer of '56. Sensible place, not taken much to crazy ideas. Not much in the way of elitists there. Patriots, all of them; churches with white wooden steeples hold down the edges of fields. Iowans are solid and steady; it's a place for combines, not conflagrations.

Their Supreme Court ruled, unanimously, that outlawing same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Along with them, and those celebrating it, I raise my voice in a throaty and happy cry to say the obvious: DUH.

If we are a country of laws -- and we are; if we hold as ideal belief in equal justice under the law -- and we do; if we believe in separation of church and state... well, there was a time, anyway... then there's simply no other conclusion to draw. Depriving certain law-abiding citizens of a right given to everyone else, based only on a religious belief that they are evil, or on wholly unsupportable and unproven claims that giving them that same right threatens that of others, is by my reckoning immoral. And, most certainly, illegal under our laws.

I understand homosexuality makes some people uncomfortable (the more uncomfortable, the more likely -- so it seems -- to join a church and practice it under the cloth, one might conclude); I accept that to some the Bible calls it a sin (even though there's much else in the Bible that those people conveniently ignore). To the extent that they choose to live their lives with those prejudices, I say, go for it. It's when they take it outside their homes or churches and into the public square that I -- and those judges, and everyone with a couple of honest brain cells to rub together -- must draw the line. If you don't believe in gay marriage, don't do it.

Well, people say, this isn't for the courts to decide. It's judicial activism (my favorite legal term, which means "judges ruling against you.") No. It's not. We have appeals courts because our founders knew people can be mean, nasty, and ruled by mobs. The ability of judges to rule unconstitutional laws which are UNCONSTITUTIONAL has been a basic principle of our legal system since Marbury v. Madison.

To people able to see facts -- a universe less densely populated in the US than in most other Western countries -- it's pretty clear that homosexuality is not a choice. They're as intelligently designed as the rest of us, one might say. And from that it follows that you can't catch it, or get recruited into it. It just is. And when you take stock of the openly gay among us, we're a much better society for the gifts they give.

As much as we hear, over and over, like tax cuts increasing revenue and other modern-day right-wing shibboleths, that same-sex marriage is a threat to the institution of marriage, I've yet to hear any actual argument that shows why that is so. Nor any evidence from places where it's allowed, that "traditional" marriage has been diminished. I rejoice in the idea of it, and so does my wife of thirty-eight years.

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