Redefining rights—prop 8 passed?

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the computer lab where I am employed trying to focus on statistics when I was suddenly jarred away from a hopeless attempt to make sense of mathematics by a loud shriek from across the hall. Shrieking is not a frequent occurrence on our campus, so I stood up from my chair and made my way cautiously towards the door.

“What’s going on?” I asked a sleepy looking student entering the lab.

“Oh,” he said, “Prop 8 passed.”

“ugh,” I thought.

I stumbled back behind the front desk and flopped in my chair—deflated.

I had been feeling pretty good that morning. The night before America had finally elected a progressive leader (well, sort of progressive, but I’ll get to Obama’s cabinet in another post)—and much to my pleasant surprise they did it despite his having a goofy name and being non-white. This proposition 8 news, which reported that the right of thousands of Californians to marry one another had been revoked, however, was like a kick to the sternum—enough to knock all the liberal glee out of me.

California?

‘Really?’ I thought to myself.

Aren’t the Castro and Haight Ashberry in California?

Ok, so maybe that’s just San Francisco, but still, what ever happened to the laid back, live and let live, warm weather surfer attitude?

I don’t know why I was so surprised, California doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record for good political decision making. We’re talking about the same state that elected the Terminator as governor. I wonder if the people of California were just unconsciously hoping that he would terminate California’s economy with the same destructive vigor which led to the demise of the T1000. Asta la vista baby!

My mind shifted from the state of California’s economic crisis to the phenomenon that had just taken place down the hall from me.

The noisy expelling of air that I had heard from the other room was not a shriek of terror—mirroring my own emotion—but a yelp of joy.

Thousands of people just lost a human right—and this person has the gal to shout with delight?

I became slightly nauseated as I realized where I was—BYU.

Brigham Young University, the university owned an operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS church)—you know the mormons.

The church whose members were responsible for 4 out of every 5 dollars which funded the advertising campaign in support of proposition 8.

The church that told its California members to get out and knock doors in support of prop 8.

It’s also the church that I happen to belong to.

And from the flavor of this post so far, I’m sure you’ve probably gotten the feeling that I’m not coming down on the same side of this issue as most of the rest of the church membership.

Call me a heretic or a heathen if you want, but I just can’t seem to get my head around the idea that gay marriage actually hurts anyone. Gay people already live together, adopt children, and raise families. What exactly is it that you are trying to prevent here, the ability for gay people to visit their partners in the hospital, or denying one partner custody rights if a couple separates?

I have spoken with many of my peers who feel that restricting gay marriage is not enough. They would like to restrict the LGBT community even further so that they are not allowed to adopt children or raise families. This is unfortunate considering that children raised by same-sex couples do not differ significantly from children raised by heterosexual couples in terms of psychological dysfunction, victimization, likelihood of gay or lesbian sexual orientation (that’s right, children raised by gay and lesbian couples are no more likely to be gay or lesbian than children raised by heterosexual couples), or peer relationships (Golombok & Tasker, 1996; Rivers, Poteat, & Noret, 2008; Wainright & Patterson, 2008). In short, gay and lesbian couples have been consistently found to make just as good of parents as heterosexual couples (Herek, 2006).

The majority of the people that I come into contact with either at BYU or in the LDS church seem to endorse a more moderate position—civil unions are ok, just not marriage. Endorsement of this position is usually an attempt to demonstrate the absence of prejudice, but in reality it is just a more subversive form of it.

Why are civil unions a matter of prejudice, even if we are bestowing the same rights to same sex couples as heterosexual couples?

It goes beyond problems that arise when gay or lesbian couples move between states which often have inconsistent policies regarding civil unions—it is a matter of segregation, not just semantics. Labeling gay marriages as civil unions is the same as forcing black people to drink from a different water fountain. It is saying simply, that gays and lesbians can have the same rights so long as they are kept separate from the rest of us—separate but equal.

Some of my friends will no doubt argue that the circumstances of segregation differ because they believe that sexual orientation is a choice. Without getting into all of the evidence for or against a biological basis for sexual orientation, the fact is that in this country it shouldn’t matter. When mobs chased mormons out of Missouri and Illinois because of polygamy was that not discrimination based on belief or a choice? Discrimination because of belief or choice is still discrimination. Just because you believe someone wasn’t born that way doesn’t make it ok.

In this country such forms of discrimination are not ok.

Many of my peers are bent out of shape by the notion that allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry will somehow “redefine” marriage. I’m not exactly sure what they mean. We live in a country of definitional relativism. I don’t see people trying to legislate a definition for God or Jesus Christ. Does the fact that Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and Muslims all define diety differently really effect your own personal definitions?

Not allowing gay and lesbian couples to call their unions marriage would be sort of like revoking the Lutheran’s tax exempt status because they do not define God the same way as the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Another fear which I have heard expressed by many of my peers is that government endorsement of a marriage between two people of the same sex will somehow obstruct the rights of religious institutions to practice their beliefs. This is of particular concern to LDS individuals who are worried that the government will force the LDS church to perform temple marriages between individuals who do not meet the church’s self proclaimed standards of temple worthiness (it is probably important to point out that the US government does not currently force the LDS church to perform marriages for heterosexual couples that do not meet the church’s standards). This is a reasonable concern, however, it is a concern which is already protected by the 1st amendment of the United States Constitution which reads:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

This constitutional protection, however, does not seem to be enough to assuage many of these fears. Perhaps the way to pass gay marriage then, would be to provide a bill provision which allows churches and religious institutions to restrict which marriages they perform as protected by the first amendment. Such a provision would allow churches to retain their first amendment rights without infringing upon the rights of gay and lesbian couples to enter into civilly protected marriages. Churches have the right to believe that drinking, smoking, or gay or lesbian lifestyles are wrong, they just don’t have the right to force people of other faiths or beliefs to live by their standards.

To be fair, many from my side of the discussion have argued that the issue of gay marriage is a moral argument, and that morality does not belong in politics. Unfortunately this argument lacks an understanding of the word morality. To be moral is to be concerned with right and wrong.

We legislate morality all the time. For example, we consider killing another human being in cold blood to be wrong, so therefore we have a legal punishment set up for such an offense. To be legislated is to be moral. The fundamental question of whether to permit or outlaw same sex unions is indeed a value question. It is a question of the fundamental moral values of our country. Either our country is built on the philosophical assumptions that everyone has the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so long as our pursuits of happiness do not conflict with the same rights of others; or we are a “Christian nation” so far as Christianity is defined by the majority of people. Either we value the freedom which brought the pilgrims across the ocean in the first place—the freedom of belief—or we value forcing everyone to believe according to the dictates of our own individual faiths.

As for me, I value freedom. I don’t want to force anyone to live by my beliefs any more than I would want to be forced to live by theirs. We have laws to protect the rights of people, not to force them to live according to our own individual world-views. The whims of the majority should not be permitted to restrict the constitutional rights of minorities, so I support the right of same sex couples to marry.

Hey, look on the bright side, maybe letting people get married that have never had the ability to will actually decrease the divorce rate.

Related Posts:

Protecting god from government
This is bound to illicit some angry responses


References

Golombok, S., & Tasker, F. (1996). Do parents influence the sexual orientation of their children? Findings from a longitudinal study of lesbian families. Developmental Psychology, 32(1), 3-11.

Herek, G. M. (2006). Legal recognition of same-sex relationships in the United States: A social science perspective. American Psychologist, 61(6), 607-621.

Rivers, I., Poteat, V. P., & Noret, N. (2008). Victimization, social support, and psychosocial functioning among children of same-sex and opposite-sex couples in the United Kingdom. Developmental Psychology, 44(1), 127-134.

Wainright, J. L., & Patterson, C. J. (2008). Peer relations among adolescents with female same-sex parents. Developmental Psychology, 44(1), 117-126.