The controversy over the legalization of gay marriage is not new in this country, but has been receiving a lot of press lately because of California’s Proposition 8, which will ban gay marriage in the state if passed on November 4th. Gay marriage is currently legal based on a California Supreme Court ruling earlier this year. The religious right and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority have been fighting against gay marriage for decades and primarily use the Bible to support their campaign. Some Christians view homosexuality and homosexual relationships as sins, and these people believe that if gay marriage is legalized, this country will fall into a state of moral decline. The desire to maintain the sanctity of marriage and promote “family values” also motivates the fight against gay marriage. These ideas cropped up in the 1970s and continue to influence the culture today. While these views can be extreme, many Americans hold beliefs similar to these, which is why gay marriage is currently legal in only a few states.
Rick Jacobs highlights a couple of very important but often-neglected areas of the debate in his article “Do Mormons deserve equal protection under the law?” He describes his lifelong struggles with his sexual orientation in the context of the Jewish religion and the final acceptance that “some people’s religions tell me I am not welcome. It’s okay. That’s their choice.”
Jacobs desire to keep gay marriage legal in California comes not from a religious standpoint, but a legal one. He explicitly states, “If I do (get married), it’ll be for business reasons.” He does not want to get married in any of the churches that oppose gay marriage; he just wants his partnership to have the same protection under the law as a heterosexual couple. Because of complications like property ownership and health care, marriage is not simply a religious institution; the state has to get involved as well. I doubt this debate would exist if marriage was contained to just one entity – church or state. Unfortunately, that is not currently an option.
This leaves us with huge unresolved questions. What happens when religious rights also have legal implications? How can we more fully separate church and state, specifically in terms of gay marriage, while keeping all parties involved relatively satisfied? Jacobs is arguing that his rights be protected under the law just like the rights of religious groups are protected under the first amendment. Throughout history, the government has tended to side with the most vocal majority. November 4th will be an important day to let Californians decide and to see where a least a section of America stands on this issue.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
10 comments:
Certainly, civil unions are one way that you can further separate church and state on this issue, but it is not clear whether they do the job they are supposed to. For example, New Jersey has civil unions that are supposed to provide the same benefits as marriage. However, since some people work out of state or for companies that are based out of state they are having trouble getting their employers to honor this idea. Insurance is a big issue, because sometimes employers refuse to consider a gay person's partner family, and therefore cover them. They are only required to cover married couples, and as far they are concerned a civil union is not a marriage.
It seems to me that we should be calling all unions marriages. No law should ever force a church to perform gay marriages, but churches that wish to do so and the government should conduct real marriages for people that desire them. What is this so called sanctity of marriage anyway? As Tina Fey points out, while portraying Sarah Palin, is forcing two teenagers to get married against their will because the girl got pregnant really a display of the sanctity of marriage?
I have never been convinced by the "sanctity of marriage" argument. I never hear anyone defend the anti-gay-marriage position from a legal stand-point, it always boils down to religious opposition. Perhaps the issue boils down to semantics regarding the use of the word "marriage" but if we are going to allow legal unions between gay couples, the terminology should be the same. We don't refer to atheists who get married as couples under a "civil union," we say they are married, and yet I hear no one complaining about atheists being "married." To me, the whole issue boils down to predjudice and bigotry. Of course the government cannot and should not force churches to marry gay couples, but that's not the point. The idea of marriage as a legal union should be geared toward providing the same rights for gay couples as heterosexual couples, to me, it has nothing to do with religion.
Kaitlyn correctly asserts that Jacobs’ argument is that his civil rights should be protected just like the rights of religious groups. Jacobs effectively uses the idea that Mormons, some of who currently protest against gay marriage laws, have been discriminated against because of their religion. I think it is more ironic that polygamy, another controversial form of marriage, is against the law, despite the view of some sects of Mormonism that polygamy is an exercise of religion. The issue at stake, however, is how much religious beliefs should factor into one’s political choices. The fact that people are allowed to vote on Proposition 8 demonstrates that people are given the choice to allow their religious beliefs to influence their vote. As Jacobs says, people have the right to disagree with him. Democracy is inherently about disagreements. While I do understand marriage as having a religious meaning, which I conclude from verses from the Bible, I do not agree with the examples of prejudice that exist in the issue of gay rights. But are they voting for the definition of marriage or about people’s civil rights? Different groups see the question from different perspectives, and inevitably, disagreements will occur.
I agree with the previous commenters. The "sanctity of marriage" argument never really worked with me either. Marriage is a legal term, an institution of the American legal system. It also happens to be a bond defined by religion, but that is not what the courts should be legislating. The government should be seeing marriage as a legal union of two people and should be making laws based on that. It should not make laws regarding marriage as a religious union of two people. When couples are denied real legal rights and privileges based on a religious ideal, that to me seems like a violation of the separation of church and state.
Perhaps things would be simpler, with less potential to conflate the religious and legal aspects, if marriage and civil union were separate and complementary. If people got "married" at the church, but were legally separate until they filed for a "civil union" with the government, then maybe there wouldn't be such a racket about gays polluting the institution of "marriage."
I agree with what has been said before me, but I think that James said it best. No church should be forced to conduct a gay marriage, but I would add that it is just as big an imposition on religious freedom if the government prevents a church from conducting a marriage. The sanctity of marriage issue has bothered me for a long time and I thing it is the most blatant example of where politics and religion become too intertwined, to the detriment of both
This is definitely a hot topic, and one that is more nuanced than most people make it out to be. To complicate matters more, many people oppose gay marriage for reasons they find hard to articulate.
As someone mentioned before me, one of the issues at stake is "a semantic one." Marriage has historically been defined as the union between a man and a woman. Many Christians will point to Genesis 2:24, which describes a man leaving his father and mother to be united with his wife. In the first creation story, God creates man and woman and instructs them to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28). Many people will link these ideas to formulate the common statement that one of the main purposes of marriage is procreation. If this is true, which I believe it is, proposing the notion of a "homosexual marriage" is quite problematic, as homosexuals can obviously not fulfill this cornerstone responsibility.
So you can see that from a religious perspective it is not "simply a semantic issue." If we allow homosexual unions to be deemed marriage, then we risk losing the entire doctrine of marriage itself. This issue is especially more pressing for Catholics, but many Protestants, like myself, identify with it as well.
Enough with the religious baggage on the subject of marriage. The religious right is able to maintain a stronghold on the sanctity of marriage argument because the way to Heaven for these crusaders is to ensure marriage remains between a man and a woman. So, toss the government's involvement in marriage off the church steeple. If we used the equal protection clause to clarify that everyone has equal protection of the laws, the solution would be civil-unions from the government. Why should the government, who I would not trust with a dollar, be involved in such a religious experience such as marriage? They shouldn't. Let the religious crusaders who call for marriage to remain between a man and a woman go to their church and pray for the sins of same-sex couples engaged in civil-unions. While they are doing that, the same-sex couples will more than likely be enjoying their lives without the impositions of the crusaders.
This is a very interesting post that brings up many facets of the gay marriage controversy. Separation of church and state aside, the reality is that a significant number of Americans are religious and continue to cite religion as the basis of opposition to homosexual marriage. The debate about whether or not sanctity of marriage is a legitimate argument continues to rage with no clear end in sight. However, one noticeably absent issue that I would like to raise is, “Do the courts have too much power?” The courts were created to interpret and uphold the Constitution, not legislate. Yet recently there has been a lot of legislating from the bench. For example, the California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, which had massive implications for the entire country, as well as the state of California. How much of this decision was truly constitutionally based, and how much of it was really an effort to legislate? What are the dangers of allowing one branch of government to gain a disproportionate amount of power, and how does this affect the other two branches? The constant rise in power of the judiciary branch is troubling indeed.
Kaitlyn does a nice job here of breaking down a compelling argument from someone who feels he has been unfairly left out of the system. Some great points have been raised to add a bit of nuance to the issue, so I’ll just suggest a couple more to consider.
Despite some of the commentary revealing a desire to rid the institution of marriage – or, at least the institution by which couples are legally bound to one another – of its religious connotations, this seems somewhat historically backwards. It can be argued that marriage in this country has, over the last three and a quarter centuries, taken on a distinctly American form. I feel it is much harder to maintain that marriage is, as David states, “a legal term, an institution of the American legal system… [that] happens to be a bond defined by religion.” The institution of marriage that we now observe has a clear historical precedent, taken from Europe and established in the colonies long before our unique legal framework was codified.
What hasn’t been raised in comments that claim to be unconvinced by the “sanctity of marriage argument” is the large number of people who, unlike Rick Jacobs, truly long to have a nontraditional marriage simultaneously sanctioned by the church and state. Even if Proposition 8 does not pass, no individual churches are required to perform homosexual marriages. Instead, churches which have deemed same-sex unions doctrinally viable will be able to bless couples with the practical assistance of government under the equal protection clause. The issue is certainly far from resolved but, in my opinion, supports yet another form of what is essentially religious expression in a healthy manner.
The use of religion as the sole basis of one’s argument against gay marriage just won’t do. If there was a major concern in regards to the common good—which research has shown there would be no downsides for children or society—then that would pose a legitimate case against gay marriage. But this religious right rhetoric on how being gay, or being gay and allowed to marry, is a sin, that’s simply ignorant and goes against one’s individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
Post a Comment