It generated some opposing comments (and what blogger does not LOVE COMMENTS) so I thought in the fairness of the views expressed there I should try to answer them.
Warning sort of a long post here!! Perhaps TOO long but it is what it is.
To recap I think it is very silly to call the National Organization For Marriage a hate organization. I also think beyond the gay marriage debate this is very bad basic civics on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center for many reasons.
The reason N.O.M is being targeted is they have had some electoral success so it appears that must be stopped. Out comes the "hate implication".
I am not that old but I am not that much of a babe either. As a young man, I was often against unjust discrimination against people that had varying degrees of same sex attraction.
The people that argued that there should be no gay American public school teachers or were against repeal of certain repressive criminal sanctions for sodomy said before you know it we shall have gay marriage. Back them a lot of gay rights advocates said that was SILLY PARANOIA . Well it appears not!!
Now I am still for not laws that put people in jail for sodomy in American society or for the firing of gay public school teachers. However; because I refuse to now to endorse gay marriage I have gone from enlightened tolerate Catholic dude to hater all in the space of just two decades.
Before I get to the comments, let me talk about a new charge of so called paranoia that being talked about.
Among the many charges I am seeing leveled against N.O.M and others is they are being misleading and spreading falsehoods. One instance of this I saw was regarding N.O.M and others saying that gay marriage as a right could lead to a legal right of polygamy.
HOW SILLY THE GAY MARRIAGE ADVOCATES SAY. Typical paranoia coming from the hate groups like N.O.M. and the sort sent by assorted email each day.
My question is why is it silly? In fact it is quite logical. First , unlike gay marriage, we actually see legal sanctioned polygamy in the history of the world. So in a sense polygamy has a leg up on the idea of gay marriage right off the bat.
Further it appears the "Right" to gay marriage seems in essence based in the obligation of society to recognized , sanction, and give public endorsement to the sexual actions of persons of the same sex. That is that sexual act is an expression of a "LOVE" that society must be acknowledge.
On the flip side those that do not agree with this endorsement will receive the usual formal government , and informal sanction in many ways. I will show what I mean by this later in this post.
So why not polygamy? Most gay right groups that support gay marriage say they represent the interest of Gay, Lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered individuals.
As I have not a hundred times on this blog that "bisexual" goes out the window in many of their press releases and other matters. Look at that GAY preacher in the hotel rule with a male escort. Look at the GAY Senator in that airport restroom. Uh what happened to bi?
Part of this is known to us that have friends of deep seated same sex attraction. That is many gays often view "bi" people with distrust. Fakers who are really gay in their words.
I personally am I am not a great fan of the term"bi" myself for reasons of my own. However many people have varying degree of same sex attraction in their life. For some it is a fleeting for others well it might be more lifelong.
The question is this. If society has an obligation to recognize gay marriage which also means recognizing various related Fundamental and Liberty interests why not polygamy. Why should there be discrimination against people that find love in Unions of THREE. If one is bisexual it applies that ones "loves" need to be found in a union of three.
The various arguments for gay marriage in the civil context I have heard is family stability and to perhaps play a role in making especially gay men more monogamous. It would appear that would be needed if not more in the union of three (whether bi or heterosexual based) even more!
In other words would the LOVES of a Union of two given more weight than a union of three in the legal world. Gay right advocates say that prohibitions of gay marriage are based on nothing more than bigotry and religious viewpoint. We are learning more and more any religious taint on the law as to this subject is viewed as almost fruit of the poisonous tree and this invalid. Well if that is true then how after we get gay marriage how do we keep polygamy out?
Now I did not mean to berate this one point but it is something that curiously a lot of gay rights organizations wish to declare paranoia while having one would think a substantial number of bi members.
At the very least it should be discussed. My argument here is not to discuss the merits or non merits of polygamy. However when we are discussing marriage as a "RIGHT" it is a useful avenue to go down to help clarify if or if not gay marriage is a right at all. Regardless I do not see it as unthinkable that the Court could grant polygamy rights in the future if gay marriage is allowed. Again the reasoning of how we get to the RIGHT of gay marriage is well important.
Now on to the comments in my previous post.
First lets get out of the way the charge that people that oppose gay marriage are no different than people tha topposed interracial marriage and other laws against people of other races.
From Mr Spears that comments twice and in which I respond to in some detail as to to the racial analogy:
....For Catholics to claim that it would destroy their own rights to allow non-Catholics to marry the person of his or her own choice is the same as my grandparents claiming that it destroyed their rights to enjoy a meal in a restaurant when people of color were eventually given the right to enjoy a similar dining experience.....
and
..But it is remarkable how much you remind me of my grandparents. I can vividly remember them saying that most niggers do not want to do any race mixing any more than whites do. They asserted they did not hate and often said, "We love the niggers, but the niggers need to stay in a nigger's place, and the white's need to stay in a white's place."
If only one person of color wanted to eat at the lunch counter, he should have been allowed to do so, and if only one same sex couple want to record their marriage at the courthouse, they should be allowed to do so...
Well what to say to all that. It is indeed common charge. I guess because I have actually studied the legal background to such laws I found this folly the first time I heard it.
I allude to this in the comments but it was not uncommon at all for interracial unions to be found in the early parts of American's colonial history. In fact if you ancestors got here early enough and migrated through what is now called North Carolina it was not uncommon for the people in charge to much more concerned about class issues than racial issues.
Dr Francis Beckwith I think does a very good job of showing how this analogy is false. See Interracial Marriage and Same-Sex Marriage. The whole thing is worth a read about how those laws came into existence. However let me quote these parts:
I learned that “at common law there was no ban on interracial marriage.”1 What does that mean? It means that anti-miscegenation laws were not part of the jurisprudence that American law inherited from the English courts. Anti-miscegenation laws were statutory in America (though never in England2), first appearing in Maryland in 1661 after the institution of the enslavement of Africans on American soil. This means that interracial marriage was a common-law liberty that can only be overturned by legislation.
Dr Beckwith then goes into a brief and interesting history on why laws were used to override this common-law liberty.
He later says:
Anti-miscegenation laws, therefore, were attempts to eradicate the legal status of real marriages by injecting a condition—sameness of race—that had no precedent in common law. For in the common law, a necessary condition for a legitimate marriage was male-female complementarity, a condition on which race has no bearing........
In other words, the fact that a man and a woman from different races were biologically and metaphysically capable of marrying each other, building families, and living among the general population is precisely why the race purists wanted to forbid such unions by the force of law. And because this view of marriage and its gender-complementary nature was firmly in place and the only understanding found in common law, the Supreme Court in Loving knew that racial identity was not relevant to what marriage requires of its two opposite-gender members. By injecting race into the equation, anti-miscegenation supporters were very much like contemporary same-sex marriage proponents, for in both cases they introduced a criterion other than male-female complementarity in order to promote the goals of a utopian social movement: race purity or sexual egalitarianism...................
Ok, before same sex marriage advocates get upset he is not saying you are bad ole racist of course.
This is why, in both cases, the advocates require state coercion to enforce their goals. Without the state’s cooperation and enforcement, there would have been no anti-miscegenation laws and there would be no same-sex marriage. The reason for this, writes libertarian economist Jennifer Roback Morse, is that “marriage between men and women is a pre-political, naturally emerging social institution. Men and women come together to create children, independently of any government.” Hence, this explains its standing as an uncontroversial common law liberty. “By contrast,” Morse goes on to write, “same-sex ‘marriage’ is completely a creation of the state. Same-sex couples cannot have children. Someone must give them a child or at least half the genetic material to create a child. The state must detach the parental rights of the opposite-sex parent and then attach those rights to the second parent of the same-sex couple............
Now there is a argument here that I can here coming. Well what about old people and married people that cannot have children!! I am not going to address that here because this post is going to be long enough already. However if there is interest I can address that argument in another post. However the point of that last paragraph is huge. This is a pre-political naturally emerging social institution.
As I mentioned in the comments even in areas where some some same sex activity was condoned and perhaps even celebrated you never or rarely saw gay "marriage".
On the other hand we have seen races intermarry and form unions since the beginning of time. It is in essence the ultimate apples and oranges.
So while being against gay marriage is the same as being against interracial marriage makes a effective 30 second talking point on CNN it does not hold up.
Now lets get to the other matter.
Mr Clancy said:
.....If NOM and their ilk do not believe in same-sex CIVIL marriage, then they should avoid marrying someone of the same sex. Nobody is going to interfere with church rituals or force churches to perform marriages they don't want to. (And of course, Catholic priests refuse opposite-sex marriages at their discretion as well.)
You leave us alone, and you won't be labelled a hate group, people. Keep trying to legislate a group of your fellow Americans as second-class citizens, and reap what you sow.
Mr Spears said:
Nobody is trying to stop anyone from engaging in a "traditional" marriage or a Catholic marriage. It is the bigots of the National Organization of Marriage who are thus far succeeding in stopping other Americans from the free practice of their own religion, and the fulfillment of their own desires to live with dignity and freedom.........
and later
..........I have no idea who this Andrew Sullivan is, perhaps he is a red herring that you are trying to introduce into the controversy, but nobody is trying to interfer with the marriages of the Catholics or the marriages of members of National Organization of Marriage. It is these hateful bigots who are denying rights, privileges, and freedoms to other Americans because of a personality trait that they did not choose, and cannot change.
I mention Andrew Sullivan in the comments because of this work in the gay community in promoting the concept of gay marriage. One does not have to have a Queer studies degree from one of our leading Universities to know there was much opposition to that concept in the gay community. So it was not attempt at a red herring. It was an attempt to show how even in the gay, bi, transgendered community itself that many people did not seem to think of this as a RIGHT. In fact many opposed it as trying to put a heterosexual box on gay men and lesbians.
Now these people no doubt wanted the right to live with and do whatever they pleased with members of the same sex. But marriage itself?
Now getting back to the comments. This is what I call the Libertarian fantasy world that people regardless of often political party or sexual attraction advocate. Heck I suppose there might be a very few gay rights Libertarians that actually believe it and would live it if possible.
That is seen in the talk "we shall not force Churches to marry gay people" and the like. How does this affect you and such
Except this is all based on such a naive attitude. For the most parts gay rights groups do not want to in the end have "live and let live"
Now the serious gay marriage advocates know that the opposition is not truly worried about a Priest having to marry to people of the same sex. Again it is often a good blurb to throw out in our 24 hours news cycles but that is not the issue.
As I have said before this is where I really respect the goals of the gay marriage advocates and their real reasoning.. THEY GET IT!!
What is it they get ?
They get the logic of law and morals. They truly get the logic of Lincoln's famous Coopers Union address. By the way I did not make the connection between this debate on gay marriage and the great Cooper Union speech on my own. That was from benefit of listening to the great Hadley Arkes.
It is so important I am going to excerpt a large part of it:
The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone - have never disturbed them - so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.
I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free-State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis, than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing.
Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality - its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension - its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?
Whoa I am about to get myself in trouble again. First it appears I saying that gay marriage advocates and segregationist share a common legal basis. Now I am talking about SLAVE OWNERS. No I am not comparing people that support same sex marriage to slave owners. The key to that passage is one line "If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away.."
Lincoln got it and same sex marriage advocates get the basic logic. That is if "same sex marriage or same sex acts are a right then all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it , are themselves wrong and should be silenced and swept away."
That is why some form of Civil Unions will not do as we saw in California. That was not enough. It must be based in the specific moral anchor of marriage.
That is why after the famous Loving case dealing with interracial marriage the gig was up. The fundamental right of marriage between two races (recovered as we see above) meant all sort of other fundamental laws and liberties came into play. There were a whole new regime of laws to show the new ways of doing things. Or to more apt to recover the true common law liberty right of doing things.
We have seen this attitude twice recently as to the Catholic Church in the USA. In the City of San Francisco we saw the quite radical step of the Board of Supervisors of getting involved with the internal affairs of the Catholic Church.
Again if "same sex marriage or same sex acts are a right then all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it , are themselves wrong and should be silenced and swept away."
Already at this early stage of development of the same sex marriage laws we saw huge implication in the District of Columbia as to the Catholic Church and her mission.
Again if "same sex marriage or same sex acts are a right then all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it , are themselves wrong and should be silenced and swept away."
This will occur more and more. The tension of the right to associate and the right not to associate come in of course. There will be sanctions for not going along with this new fundamental liberty interest. One could even see this in child custody cases where ones views of the same sex acts come in under best interest of the child cases. Looking at the comments people like me are the KLAN. I suspect in a custody case the judge is going to put the child in the custody of the less friendly Klan parent. Are people that have rather Christian Orthodox views the new Klan?
I suspect in some legal jurisdictions that might already be happening.
So in other words I am not buying "this does affect you" argument. Already in the UK (the canary in the coalmine) we have this case. Religion: UK Christian couple with anti-gay beliefs denied foster children, sue .
I was following this debate on twitter and many gay marriage folks had about the same opinion as the American guy that wrote the above article:
The fact is such religious beliefs are morally problematic. Discrimination against gays and lesbians is immoral. Simply hiding behind religious superstition does not make that immorality go away.
For too long Christians have tried to justify their ugly homophobia, and their attending discrimination and ostracization of members of the GLBT community, with religious superstition. It is time to call a bigot, a bigot, regardless of religious affiliation. And bigots have no business delivering foster care to anyone.
Again I respect that reasoning . It is honest! It is not trying to hide behind 30 second sound blurbs. In other words as to the words of Lincoln:
If "same sex marriage or same sex acts are a right then all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it , are themselves wrong and should be silenced and swept away."
I think that view above is more of concrete political reality of the effects of this debate than the Libertarian one we see bantered about. I also think that is what most believe.
Regardless it appears the issues are great here. N.O.M has a needed place at the table to explain their position and to show what they think the consequences would be. They and indeed I are not haters.
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