Chanting Points Memo: Two Rights Make A Wrong
By Mitch Berg
If you’ve read this blog for any time at all – and curbed your stereotypes while doing it, naturally – you’ll know two things about me:
- I barely support the idea of traditional marriage.
- I have supported for years now (as in, like, ten years) some sort of contractual status for gay couples. I think marriage is a religious thing, and if I ever get married again I’ll be putting my legal status where my mouth is and eschewing the state license – but there’s no ethical reason gay couples shouldn’t be able to enter into some sort of contractual arrangement.
I’ve had two problems with Gay Marriage as it’s currently put forth in the Legislature.
Gender Counts: the current gay marriage bill is part of a society-wide effort, via media pressure and junk science, to undercut the notion that children need male and female role models as they grow up.
We’ll come back to that one later. Today’s subject is…
It Will Violate The Civil Rights Of Dissidents: This is the subject of Walter Hudson’s piece over at Fightin’ Words (which is, when Walter updates it, one of the best liberty-oriented blogs. Anywhere. Period) entitled “Final Plea to the Senate: Please Show Restraint on Marriage“, a call to the Minnesota Senate to take a break from the Rush to Fabulous and think things over a bit.
Here’s the money quote (with emphasis added):
I do not advocate for the status quo. Homosexuals share the same moral right to free association that all of us have. They ought to be able to enter into contracts which create domestic partnerships and convey a mutually agreed upon legal relationship. The religious conviction of neighbors should not prevent that.
However, the bill you will vote upon Monday does not fulfill that vision of actual equality under the law. Instead, in combination with existing anti-discrimination statutes, it creates a legal mechanism for encroaching upon the rights of others. University of St. Thomas constitutional law professor Teresa Collett concisely sums up the problem in her Pioneer Press op-ed:
“Redefining marriage creates new liability under the anti-discrimination laws for “marital discrimination” where none exists now, and will expand claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. The exemption for religious organizations is so narrow that most charitable activities engaged in by people of faith will not be covered.”
The bill’s proponents chant “there’s a religious exemption!”, ignoring what Walter points out in his piece, and what I’ve pointed out in the past; the “exemption” would cover, essentially, things that happen physically inside a church building. Sort of.
Charities? Private businesses? Free association? Not so much.
And in a society that is chock full of unemployed lawyers and advocacy groups looking for the next big grant-attracting splash to make?
Chanting “The First Amendment protects religious expression!” is about like saying “the Second Amendment protects your right to keep and bear arms!” or “the Fourth Amendment protects you from unreasonable searches and seizures!” or “The Tenth Amendment reserves unenumerated rights to the States and People!”. All are true – provided you take them seriously enough to beat back ill-advised legal attacks on them.
Hudson:
Indeed, this is the explicit goal of the political movement advancing the bill. In a video from 2012 which only recently went viral, gay activist Masha Gessen proudly declared to raucous applause that the long-term goal of the gay marriage movement is the elimination of marriage as such and a redefinition of the family.
Here’s the video Walter mentioned:
If this were about civil rights, gay marriage advocates would have been fine with civil unions.
But it’s not, and never was, and ten years from now certainly won’t be – assuming you’re not an enthusiastic-enough supporter.
May 13th, 2013 at 8:37 am
Minn. Stat. 517.04 gives power to issue Certificates of Marriage to select government officials: judge, court administrator, School Administrator of the Minnesota School for the Blind. But Minn. Stat. 517.18 also empowers ordained ministers and their analogues in other faiths.
If marriage is a strictly civil contract unrelated to religious traditions so it’s necessary to include gays, why are traditional religious officials empowered to hand out documents that entitle couples to government benefits? Shouldn’t those provisions be revoked to reflect the New Fabulous?
May 13th, 2013 at 9:04 am
Hmmm. Somebody else had the same thought:
http://www.looktruenorth.com/culture/21501-outlaw-marriage.html
May 13th, 2013 at 9:13 am
Joe’s right, if we are to maintain the pure separation of church and state that the left sincerely desires we must strip “religious” non-government employees of the ability to dispense government benefits.
May 13th, 2013 at 9:21 am
My daughter and son-in-law eschewed the state license when they were married. It required jumping through a couple of extra hoops, but they had help from other who have done the same, and they have since helped others with the same process.
May 13th, 2013 at 9:23 am
Roll the video, “Chinatown”:
“She’s my daughter….she’s my sister…she’s my daughter and my sister.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
May 13th, 2013 at 9:59 am
I doubt that family and kids really enter into any of this. We have pretty much devolved “family” into any grouping of living beings that include at least one human being. We have new normals, blended families, “bonus” parents (I love that rationalization), etc.
In Dakota County, Senator Greg Clausen, former high school principal, supported by labor, happily supported all-day kindergarten. Now the educational system down there is complaining about the counties’ need for additional ECFE and pre-schooling funds. How about just grabbing the kid from the birthing suite?
Family means nothing now and kids are truly the property of the villiage.
Homosexual marriage, not unlike traditional marriage, is becomming a fashion event – an occasion for a dress-up party. Plus, for homosexuals it’s a party with daring political overtones.
How long will it stay popular once it loses it’s shock value and fun factor, and people are no longer considered to be cool when they say “I went to a gay wedding last week”? How long did it take for people to stop telling callers that they were answering on their “cellular phone”? About that long …
I wish the homosexuals luck. Heterosexuals have pretty much abandoned marriage after first trashing it. I just fear that it will need more than political committment to be of true value.
May 13th, 2013 at 10:36 am
Evidently leftists have decided not only did we evolve from apes, we should devolve back.
Of course, some will take a deture on that road, vis. Mongrel Cur, who decided dingo society is the life.
May 13th, 2013 at 1:50 pm
Much of the push for genderless marriage is just to give a big F.U. to traditional Christians.
Modern liberal Uptown/Highland Park hetrosexual hipsters aren’t really into marriage. Talk to someone from Hamline Law or Macalester and you’ll notice they use the word “partner”, not spouse or boy/girlfriend.
Why would leftwing gays in the same neighborhoods with the same ultra-liberal values care about marriage?
May 13th, 2013 at 5:28 pm
Good news/ Bad news
Good news: Governor Dayton approved the homosexual marriage bill.
Bad news: He forgot to approve homosexual divorce.
May 14th, 2013 at 7:46 am
Now that you have teh gay marriage, how long before the first civil rights suit is filed by a “husband” that fails to get pregnant?
May 14th, 2013 at 2:17 pm
Turning his back on his spouse will no longer be grounds for divorce.