Group A uses many slogans in their ads—mostly paid for by the Catholic Church and Mormon Church—to try to give legitimacy to their support for Proposition 8.

 

“Protect Marriage”. This slogan is patently absurd since marriage is no way under attack when members of Group B merely want to embrace marriage in the same way as Group A embraces it, as a matter of love.

 

“Protect the Children”. This slogan, too, is absurd since a certain unknown percentage of the children will grow up to discover that they are gay, and no doubt will be craving same-gender marriage for themselves. How about protection for them? Few parents want to believe that their child might grow up gay, but it appears that parents have little choice in the matter of their child’s eventual sexual orientation. This slogan also overlooks the 58,000 or so children who are estimated to be in same-gender families in California today. What about protecting those children?

 

“Gay Marriage Will Be Taught in the Schools”. This warning begs me to ask the question, how exactly is marriage “taught”? I believe what they really mean by this warning is that young people in schools will find out that there are such people as gays and that gay people would now have a certain legitimacy in our society if they could be married. But young people are going to find out that there are gay people in any case. And can it really be true that majority males and females would prefer that discrimination against gays be taught in the schools? This irony is actually what inspired me to write Civics 1A.

 

“Gays Want to Redefine Marriage”. First of all, marriage has been in a state of redefinition since it was originally conceived. For one most dramatic example, interracial marriage was finally permitted nationwide with the Loving v. Virginia federal case in 1967, which gave legitimacy to the interracial marriage of President Barack Obama’s biracial parents. But there have been many other such redefinitions. During slavery, African American men and women could not be married even to each other. Divorce is another redefinition of slavery.

 

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

 

The question of divorce as a redefinition of marriage brings us to another truly immense question arising out of Proposition 8. I have heard members of my own family—my cousin Sheila as only one example—say, “But Bob, it’s against my religion”. If so, so what? Why should their religion affect me?

 

Divorce is against the doctrine of the Catholic Church, but the Catholic Church has not tried to pass a law banning divorce. The same is true with contraception. Why should the Catholic Church attempt to pass a law against same-gender marriage? I think it is not necessarily because same-gender sex is against Catholic doctrine but because the Catholic Church strongly suspected it could get away with such a ban against a minority that is generally despised. It would not be nearly so successful in passing a ban against divorce or contraception.

 

But perhaps more to the point is the question whether being gay really is against anyone’s religion? Certainly in parts of the Old Testament there are certain passages which prohibit same-gender sex, but if you look at many of the other surrounding verses you find countless examples of prohibitions that we no longer take seriously. And the punishment is stoning to death? I’ll just add a few more ????? along with a couple of !!!! to that question.

 

Somehow I had the presence of mind to reply to Sheila, “No, it’s not against your religion, Sheila. It may be against the teachings of your preacher, but you are a Christian. You are a follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Do you think for one second that Jesus would want me to marry someone I don’t love, someone I could never love? Wouldn’t Jesus want me to marry a person that I do love?”

 

I asked Sheila to think about that, and she answered that she would do better than that: she would pray about it. Well…

 

Another slogan related to religion is, “God Created Marriage Between One Man and One Woman”. I think we should always look carefully at what is being said when a person starts talking about what God said or what God did or what God meant. This person knows God personally? In fact, people often do believe fervently that they do know God personally because they might be very devout. Just because they have that fervent belief, however, does not make it so. In this case, in the Bible itself there are plenty of cases in which men had many more than one wife, but this is another contradiction which is often overlooked by the righteous.

 

In the protests since the passage of Proposition 8, I have seen small groups of people standing across the street from the protestors holding signs with some of the slogans above, as well as one which has me completely baffled. On one sign I saw this wording taken from the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

 

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

 

How does this apply to Proposition 8? I guess that if the Court were to repeal Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, then this fellow holding this sign believes that this would be government interfering with religion. That is such a stretch of truth, however, that it is very difficult to give it any credulity at all. After all, in the case of Prop 8, it was two churches—the Catholic Church and Mormon Church—who put up most of the money to support passage of the law. It is the Church, therefore, that interfered with the government, not the government interfering with the Church.

 

If members of a church want to keep their church to themselves, that’s their choice, I guess. I know plenty of gay Catholics, even gay priests, who go quietly to church, accepting the dogma they enjoy and keeping mum about the dogma they do not like. There is an organization called Dignity, which is made up of gay Catholics. I am sure that some of them are not so quiet but try to change the Church from within. That’s all up to them, it seems to me, and government has never tried to interfere, so far as I know.

 

But for any church to come outside of the church and actually try to make laws or influence the passage of laws seems to me to go against the First Amendment. That will be up to the Court to decide ultimately.

 

I have heard the argument that if a priest or minister were to decline to perform a same-gender marriage, the priest or minister would somehow suffer under the law. I think that is a complete scare tactic and not based upon any truth. In any case, the priest or minister could take the case to court and no doubt win the case. I doubt very much, however, that any gay couple would ever ask someone to marry them who was not willing. There are many churches that are open to gay people.

 

I was given an article from the Boston Globe about an organization in Boston called Catholic Charities in who abandoned their 100-year-old practice of adoption because of fear that they would be taken to court if they did not make adoption accessible to same-gender couples. This was after the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized same-gender marriage in that state. First of all, no lawsuit had been filed against Catholic Charities; they ceased adoption simply based on fears of what MIGHT happen. Second of all, there are many adoption agencies that have, for many years, adopted children out to same-gender couples, and even to gay individuals. So there is little reason to believe that a same-gender couple would ever bring such a suit against Catholic Charities. This, too, was merely a scare tactic by the Catholic Church in its attempt to pass Proposition 8.

 

ACTIVIST JUDGES

 

One of the slogans of Group A (and indeed most rightwing people and organizations) concerns “activist” judges. This is because in addition to Legislative Law and Constitutional Law, there is also Case Law. Case Law becomes fixed when Courts make decisions on cases: hence the importance of Loving v. Virginia and Lawrence v. Texas.

 

Of course, what the rightwing really wants is not to get rid of “activist” judges but to load the Courts with judges who will be “activist” in THEIR behalf instead of activist in behalf of the leftwing. This, actually, is what often happens. For example, in Bush v. Gore in a 5-4 decision—5 appointed by rightwing presidents and 4 appointed by leftwing presidents—the U.S. Supreme Court disallowed the recounting of the votes in Florida, thereby handing the presidency to George W. Bush instead of Al Gore (who, it was found subsequently in a recount undertaken by a consortium of newspapers, did receive a slim majority of votes where actual voter intent was determined statewide).

 

CIVIL RIGHTS

 

Since the passage of Prop 8 on Nov. 4, 2008, there have been many interviews with African-American citizens on both sides of the same-gender marriage issue. Because an African-American, Barack Obama, was on the presidential ticket, African-Americans flocked to the polls in unprecedented numbers. 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama, and 70% of African-American voters in California voted to pass Prop 8.

 

This was surprising for many people because the same-gender marriage issue is tied to Equal Rights which is a Civil Rights issue. The irony is that African-Americans, also Latinos who also voted overwhelmingly for Prop 8, have been in the vanguard of the Civil Rights movement since it began.

 

One comment I have heard from African-Americans with which I have deep disagreement is that the same-gender issue has nothing to do with Civil Rights. Whereas most certainly African-Americans have suffered more than probably any other people in this country, first from slavery, then after Emancipation from the Jim Crow laws which deprived them of many rights, including the right to interracial marriage not corrected nationally until 1967, and from segregation in the schools, and from loss of Equal Opportunity in employment all due to racism, and whereas the struggle for Civil Rights for African-Americans and other minorities will continue for years or decades to come, for African-Americans now to turn against same-gender marriage smacks of the same prejudice from which they have suffered through these centuries.

 

A lesson to be learned here is that just because a people have suffered does not mean that they are not perfectly willing to inflict the same kind of suffering on another people. We learned that lesson from the Puritans who escaped Europe because of religious intolerance only to turn around and commit the same religious intolerance here in the United States. We learned that again from the African-American slaves who went back to settle Liberia, in West Africa, only to enslave the tribal peoples there. This is a disturbing facet of human behavior. I believe that African-Americans and Latinos voting in such great numbers against same-gender marriage reflects that same kind of bigotry. Though they might have acted because of their religious teachings, these suffering people of all people should have known better.

 

I heard an African-American woman on NPR in high dudgeon over the same-gender marriage issue say—I paraphrase—“Gay people didn’t have the right to marriage before the California Supreme Court gave them that right, and so we didn’t take anything away from them when we passed Prop 8.”

 

This seems to me exactly equivalent in narrow-mindedness to saying, “Slaves never had freedom, so we white slave owners are not taking anything away from them by keeping them slaves.”

 

DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS AND CIVIL UNIONS

 

One argument of Group A does seem to have some validity, but it too is narrow in its perspective. This argument is that in many states members of Group B are allowed “Domestic Partnerships” or “Civil Unions” which give the same civil rights as marriage. If this were true, it might be a justifiable argument, but it is not true.

 

One very important benefit of marriage that does not apply to either domestic partnerships or civil unions is federal protection. For example, a civil union recognized in one state may not be recognized in another, preventing the pursuit of happiness of moving from one state to another.

 

Furthermore, the benefits of spousal immigration, green cards, etc., are federal and not awarded to civil unions or domestic partnerships from state to state. As a young man I was in love with an African man and brought him to the United States from Liberia after I was in the Peace Corps there. If we could have been married, we might still be together. As it turned out, he married a woman in order to achieve his citizenship.

 

“Oh, but think of the poor woman!” my Aunt Bert exclaimed when I told her this. Yet my Aunt Bert blindly continues to vote to deprive gays of the right to marriage. Go figure.

 

And this debate will go on and on and on.

Arguments against Proposition 8.

Contact: Clayton Bess

Copyright © 2009 Robert Locke
All Rights Reserved