Another Rant 02/23/2004

I took the CBEST this weekend, and if I pass that, yours truly will be able to substitute teach any school district in California. Lock up the little ones!

---

I wrote the following and sent it along to various and sundry persons, including the governor and my senators. It's not a bad rant, as far as rants go, but looking at it now, I realized I could have framed a few arguments better... but anyway... for your enjoyment: Here.

---

�Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides.� - Thomas Paine

�Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.� - Blaise Pascal

�I have watched carefully what�s happening in San Francisco� I have consistently stated that I�ll support law to protect marriage between a man and a woman. Obviously these events are influencing my decision.� - George W. Bush

Like George W. Bush, I too have been following the events in San Francisco and Massachusetts with interest. As well as with a growing sense of ironic frustration. It is my fear that ultimately, public opinion will end up holding sway over the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. What a shame that will be.

Every American has been given certain �unalienable Rights,� which means these rights cannot be taken away from an individual, even by democratic process. What this has done is allow everyone in America to have their own personal morality, free from pressure and suppression from others� personal moralities.
But there must be limits, of course. Someone who enjoys creating personal wealth by stealing from others is certainly pursuing his own happiness, but conflicts directly with the pursuit of happiness of those he stole from. Where do our unalienable rights end? Obviously where they conflict with the unalienable rights of someone else. To keep this conflict from happening, we have a governmental morality. A moral code that guarantees everyone both maximum freedom and maximum protection.
Unfortunately, we�ve begun to allow the personal morality of the majority dictate the personal morality of the minority. And something must be done to stop it.

�I�m not asking that any new system of government by adopted; I�m merely suggesting that we try the one we already have.� - Peter McWilliams

California�s Proposition 22, voted for by 66% of the population, defines marriage existing as solely between a man and a woman. Such a measure obviously discriminates against two men, or two women, who wish to get married. The personal morality of 66% of California says it�s wrong, passing a law that directly interferes with the unalienable rights of California�s homosexual citizens.

�The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.� - Thomas Jefferson

Nor does it injury to anyone when two men, or two women, who happen to love each other, want to get married.
Prop 22 should never have been allowed on the ballot. Homosexual marriage harms no one, interferes with no one�s way of life, much the same way heterosexual marriage works. Unless you consider the horror of arranged marriages, in which case heterosexual marriage is more at fault than the other.
And yet, when the mayor of San Francisco stands up and declares that a ban on same-sex marriages is unconstitutional, and then acts to rectify the problem, he is verbally condemned by many, especially by many of those who claim they follow the example of compassion and acceptance set forth by Christ.

�The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One�s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.� - Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson

Vicissitude: noun, a fluctuation of state or condition

I�m not so sure what the problem is, why so many people are struggling over this issue. I guess I never realized the extant to which moral indignation runs in people.
I�m not so sure how two people who love each other and want to get married violates the sanctity of marriage. Especially when shows like �The Bachelor� and �Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?� garner top ratings.
Where are the allegations that the sanctity of marriage is violated when Britney Spears dissolves her marriage after, what, 48 hours? Hell, the sanctity of marriage is threatened anytime anyone gets a divorce.
The ironic thing is that this isn�t the first time in America that the sanctity of marriage came under attack. It happened once after slavery was abolished, and blacks wanted to marry, and it happened again when interracial couples wanted to marry. What happened to those arguments? Why is same-sex marriage any different?

There are two main arguments conservatives use to demonstrate the problem with same-sex marriage: homosexuals can�t procreate, and their lifestyle is a sin against the laws of God and Nature. So of course we need to make it a sin against the laws of man as well.
Even though it�s almost childishly easy to poke holes in these arguments, to point out the fallacies and hypocrisies of maintaining this point of view, conservatives will cling to it as though their lives and salvation depended on it.
This strikes me less as moral indignation and more as hate and discrimination.

Even when people begin to realize the unfairness of the situation, they still cling to their belief in hetero-superiority. �Fine,� they say. �Give them civil-unions. It�s the same thing as marriage, without actually calling it marriage.�
Tell me something. How do you expect to love your neighbor as yourself when you believe you are allowed to marry and your neighbor is not?

Discriminate: verb, to distinguish by discerning or exposing differences; to make a difference in treatment or favor on a basis other than individual merit

Refusing to allow same-sex couples to marry is discriminatory, regardless of whether there are �separate but equal� alternatives. �Separate but equal� is a contradiction in terms.

Here�s another problem: States like California have passed laws which refuse to recognize marriage between same-sex couples. Okay, how do you enforce that law?
By ignoring it? Closing your eyes to the reality of the situation doesn�t make it any less real. There�s still a pink elephant in the living room, whether you choose to see it or not.
And if someone breaks the law, a same-sex couple gets married, how insignificant does it seem to have a law that admits no adverse consequences?
An unenforceable law that poses no adverse consequence to those who break seems to be a completely unnecessary law, as far as I�m concerned. An exercise in futility.

Besides, don�t you think our government, on a state and national level, have far more pressing problems than protecting the tradition of marriage, a tradition which ends in divorce half of the time anyway?

�Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.� - St. Thomas Aquinas

�May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.� - Thomas Jefferson, on the Declaration of Independence, written ten days before his death, July 4, 1826.