Common sense on Prop. 8
In all the brouhaha over the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which enshrines discrimination in the state’s Constitution by denying gay people the ability to marry, it’s easy to forget that the liberal hero Barack Obama has been able to quietly assert that he’s against gay marriage because of his Christian faith.
Hmmm. As the Church Lady would say, “conveeeeenient.” And ironic to boot.
But the fact remains that even liberal stalwarts can’t seem to find the words to defend something that for their “base” seems so easy to defend. So I’m going to repeat something I wrote for Hillary Clinton in 2003, when she was having some problems explaining exactly why she didn’t support gay people getting married. If anything it’s more relevant today, now that Californians haven’t let the futures of thousands of happily-married gay people stop them from voting discrimination into their state’s founding document.
Why can’t Democratic politicians just say:
I think what’s important here is to understand the difference between civil and religious marriage. Religious marriage is a sacrament, and I don’t believe the government has any business telling any religion who they can and cannot marry. If the government ever made any kind of move to force any church to marry anyone they did not want to, I would be on the front lines protesting that.
But civil marriage is not a sacrament. It is simply a legal contract that’s enforced by the state that confers rights on the citizens who enter into that contract. I believe Americans are a fundamentally fair people. And this is about fairness – allowing people who want to enter into committed relationships, relationships that strengthen the society, to get the rights conferred by civil marriage.
There’s a lot of talk about civil unions these days – trying to create a system alongside civil marriage that would involve the same rights. But why create a new system, a new bureaucracy, to try to simulate something already in place? Is that fair? I don’t think it is. “Separate but equal” didn’t work in the civil rights era, and it doesn’t work here. I know there are a lot of Americans who are uncomfortable with homosexuality. But that unease shouldn’t be enough reason to deny basic rights to citizens of the United States of America.
See? That wasn’t so hard.
You know, in many European countries, when you get married in a church, you have to have a separate civil ceremony. The government does not recognize the religious sacrament as a valid legal mariage. Perhaps it is time for us to go that here. If we get the churches out of the secular benefits of marriage, people will pull their heads out of their asses and start some common sense thinking.
But then again, as Dan Savage said, “Old people are the real villains, and they’re dying, which is some comfort.” So after all the old people are dead and not voting, we will win. Unless their is some sort of machine that just keeps making old people. Kind of like that machine that puts stars on Sneetches’ bellies.