There has been a huge amount of rhetoric and hatred expended over the concept of same sex marriage. The religious right screams that it destroys the family, is against God’s law, and anyone who participates will go to hell. They quote scripture right and left claiming that it condemns homosexuality. In my opinion, not much of it is relevant to the subject (of course the scripture quoters do not share my opinion.)
The Constitution upholds our rights to freedom of religion and I have to admit that any religion has the right to deny marriage in their church to anyone, for any reason. that reason can include homosexuality, being of mixed races or the wrong race, not being a member of that church, being too young, being divorced, or any other thing that they can think of that offends them.
This all is beyond government control, and is completely outside of the scope of the government. The problem is that the government decided to use the same word “Marriage” to define the legal contract that a couple enters in to when they take out a marriage license. This includes joint property, the right to make medical decisions, receive certain benefits from one spouses work, such as medical insurance, and the right to inherit property.
This confusion between two distinct “marriages” is what fuels the debate. The religious right assumes that if a same sex marriage law is passed it interferes with their right to define what marriage means in their church. The Gay community simply wants the same legal rights granted to hetro-sexual couples. I seriously doubt that any of them want to be married in a church run by bigots.
It seems to me that the solution is to make the distinction absolutely clear between religious “marriage” and legal “marriage” by either changing the name of the legal contract to something else, for both hetro-sexual and homosexual couples, or otherwise make the distinction absolutely clear. What is absolutely not acceptable is for the government to refuse to grant those legal rights to a segment of our population simply because of who they choose to love. We wouldn’t deny it because of race, religion, country of origin, or almost anything else, because it’s unconstitutional. It shouldn’t be legal to deny any segment of our population those rights either. If the basis of that denial is religious then it’s unconstitutional as well.
I like reading what you write. I sometimes forget what the letter of the law is and get caught up in the emotion of the issues. While I don't always agree with the law, I do acknowledge that it is in place. It's good to look at things through a different set of eyes. What's next?
ReplyDelete"Marriage", is a CHURCH and RELIGIOUS term. It is an arrangement that resides at the state level and NOT at the federal level of our government. Pushing for "Marriage Equality" to the federal government not only will gain NO traction but is a means of trying to force our government to regulate church matters.
ReplyDeleteDo we really want to push the government into controlling matters of Religion? With it written into the Constitution that there is a seperation of church and state (the purpose of which is to prevent exactly this type of matter), it is useless to try and petition for marriage equality at a federal level without sever damage to constitutional rule.
So, what is the solution? How can we of the GLBT community effectively fight for our rights and the rights of our partners?
CIVIL UNIONS
A civil union is a federally regulated matter. Since it is not the property of the church, the government has complete decision on granting and regulating what a civil union offers for rights to ANY two people who are a couple in the eyes of the law.
The governemnt, if they make civil unions a matter of law will not have to take into account the argument of religious entities that it opposes their beliefs since it will not be an intrusion on them.
Fight for Civil Unions, not to redefine the church's definition of marriage. It will get us a lot further a lot faster.
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ReplyDeleteIt seems to me the tar baby associated with the "Just Call them Civil Unions' strategy is that the only ones who win in that deal are the civil litigation attorneys. They'll literally rake in millions on all the lawsuits involved as they fight for the legal rights of their "poor (and getting poorer) Civil Union Clients".
ReplyDeleteI agree this battle doesn't belong at the federal level. The states are America's real laboratories of democracy. I say fight it in the states. Work out a decent compromise in some stat that doesn't promise to produce years and years of litigation. Then use your financial and political power and muscle to convice other states to adopt the same statutes(s) with the same wording.
Once we make the decision to mince words in an effort to avoid the issue, by calling a red rose a different thing than a white rose, we're stuck with the fact there are thousands (and maybe millions) of places in laws, insurance policies, contracts, rules, regulations and statues where the word used is *marriage*, NOT "Domestic Partnership", "Civil Unions" or “Same Gender Marriage”. It will take decades (or centuries) to litigate all the cases that will arise in order to force all those legal documents to be changed on a case-by-case basis.
Yep, civil litigation attorneys will definitely celebrate that approach. It'll keep them driving BMW’s and eating in high-clover for decades.
My advice is be very careful what you wish for. That's especially true when you're expressing your wishes to an attorney.
Haven't we learned yet based on the way Congress behaves that trusting a bunch of attorneys to do what's right is a sure-fire way to get royally screwed in the end? They've already given themselves lifetime pensions for as little as 1 year of service, exempted themselves from all sexual harassment laws, exempted their children from the obligation to repay student loans, created the world's most generous health care system and put themselves in it, exempted themselves from universal health care, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
I'd say an strategy that starves churches financially (Don’t just walk out quietly. Make it clear you left because of their position on same-gender marriage and are taking your money elsewhere.), attacks their assets and eviscerates their enormous wealth will work better and faster than any other strategy to change church attitudes. Goodness knows the Catholic Church isn't the only one whose finances are severely stressed these days. The truth is America's churches are struggling to stay alive in their most desperate financial crises in decades. Look how fast the Catholic Church abandoned a "Hush, hush, keep it secret” strategy they'd perpetuated for ages and cast their protection of pedophile priests to the wind after a few dozen multi-million dollar lawsuits were filed.
Then look at Jimmy Swaggart and a few other prominent clerical types and tell me there isn't a gay male or lesbian female adult in America who was ever molested or sexually abused by a Baptist, Pentecostal, Evangelical, or other denominational (gay-marriage opposing) cleric, youth camp counselor or church leader. I'll bet it wouldn't take more than a few lawsuits to convince the Baptists they'd better shut their traps about "Same Gender Marriage" than to fight dozens of expensive suits by former gay parishioners.
Guerilla warfare and terrorism come in many forms but in times where money is tight, financial terrorism gets attention fast and is effective in the shortest time. We don’t have to burn churches. Just take enough money from them to force them to close a few and I promise they’ll quickly see the light. Rome had protected sexually abusive priests for centuries. It abandoned that program in less than 20 years. It didn't feed thousands of attorneys for decades.
My two cents worth.