I’ve written about this before; I think the bill requiring a referendum on a Marriage Amendment is…:<\/p>\n
That last is an important one; the gay marriage activists I’ve been talking to are really, really bad at it.<\/p>\n
Indeed – <\/em>without exception, the best,most intelligent, most articulate cases I’ve heard for defeating the amendment have come not from liberals and gay marriage proponents, but from libertarian conservatives like Rep. John Kriesel and GOP Comms guy, Craig “Captain Fishsticks” Westover. \u00a0Without exception<\/em>.<\/p>\n As to the libs? These are the arguments I’m hearing:<\/p>\n “Proponents Are Nothing But Bigots!”<\/strong>: Well, some no doubt are. \u00a0For the vast majority, myself included, it’s more a matter of \u00a0“you want us to fundamentally change an institution that, for all of humanity’s infinite variations, and all of the institution’s zillion permutations, has one consistent feature throughout every society on earth going back to when time was recorded verbally; they all feature a guy and a gal, sometimes at least one of each”. \u00a0There may be a reason to change our minds on that; being called a “bigot”, or any names, really, \u00a0isn’t one of of them.<\/p>\n “You advocate a Jim Crow , “separate but equal” law!”<\/strong>: We who advocate civil unions, but leaving the state out of “marriage” as a religious institution, have been getting this one lately.<\/p>\n It’s nonsense, of course; “Jim Crow” was about taking peoples’ rights away; civil unions do no such thing. \u00a0“Separate but equal” was about keeping populations from \u00a0intermingling; it’d be absurd to claim that civil unions do any such thing, unless they’re performed at a “Gays Only” courthouse and could be adjudicated and dissolved only by gay judges.<\/p>\n This one leads us to the closely-related…<\/p>\n “You’re all hung up on a word<\/strong>“: There’s a smidgen of merit,here – and at least it veers away from browbeating. \u00a0But it peters out just past “smidgen”.<\/p>\n Most of us who oppose, on some level or another<\/em>, Single Sex Marriage do so on religious grounds – but not everyone cares about religion.<\/p>\n Atheists can marry in our society, and most don’t bother with churches or their traditions. \u00a0They get married by justices of the peace, or by “Elvis” in Vegas, or ship captains or bus drivers or whatever authority signs civil contracts. \u00a0It’s “separate but equal”; it’s indistinguishable in every way from a civil union. \u00a0It confers no different rights than a church marriage – or a civil union.<\/p>\n There is no difference.<\/p>\n So I’m going to suggest that both sides are “hung up on the word” pretty equally.<\/p>\n “We do not vote on civil liberties!”<\/strong>: \u00a0Now, we’re getting somewhere. \u00a0It’s a good principle, in principle. \u00a0It’s also rubbish; we vote on civil liberties all the time. \u00a0It took activists eight years <\/em>of nonstop smashmouth organizing to get the human and civil right to keep and bear <\/em>arms put into Minnesota law in a meaningful way – and that’s a right that’s in the Constitution. \u00a0The real one, I mean.<\/p>\n No, the big question is, is there a “civil right” \u00a0to marry at all, \u00a0much less someone of the same gender? \u00a0 On the one hand, someone – the tribe, the church\/Islam\/your tribe’s witch doctor\/government\/whatever people believe in – \u00a0has always <\/em>said who could marry, and how; outside of whatever the institution was, people pretty much just shacked up otherwise. \u00a0Like they do now.<\/p>\n On the other hand, rights are not granted by the state; they are endowed to us by our creator, whatever you believe our Creator is. \u00a0And if you are a Tenther, you know that rights not specifically granted to the Federal government are supposed to be reserved to the states and The People. \u00a0Individual states have always taken on the whole notion of “who can marry whom”.<\/p>\n And so while in principle “we don’t vote on civil rights”, we do observe laws; we are a nation ruled by laws, not men (that’s another principle), even, hypothetically, if those men are judges. \u00a0And so whether you believe it’s right or nice to vote on civil liberties or not, them’s the facts. \u00a0Make your case.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n Anyway.<\/p>\n I’m ambivalent about the amendment,for reasons I’ve spelled out over and over on this blog. \u00a0I support civil unions. \u00a0And I doubt I’ll ever bother getting a state license to marry, even if I ever do <\/em>marry again. \u00a0I oppose real, actual hatred aimedat anyone, gays included – and I have put more on the line to back that up than most people, “progressive” or not.<\/p>\n And so when the DFL and the gay movement’s “best” line in support of SSM is “you’re a bigot”, “you support Jim Crow” and “you are a moron”…<\/p>\n …well, let’s just say they may need to work on their messaging before 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve written about this before; I think the bill requiring a referendum on a Marriage Amendment is…: …a bad idea because I don’t think it’s the sort of stuff that should be in the Constitution. …a great idea because it’ll undercut the DFL in the 2o12 elections. \u00a0“But you’re playing politics with civil rights, Berg!” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,29,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-family-law","category-favorites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20364"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24673,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20364\/revisions\/24673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}