First off, let's be clear on one thing: The vote on North Carolina's Amendment One, just like their earlier one, was nothing more than an exercise in hatred. Nobody has ever shown how allowing gays to marry would diminish the rights of straight people to marry. No, this is a matter of a bunch of old, bigoted (mostly white) folk using the cudgel of government to pass judgment on the private lives of other people.
But that's not the topic for today. The topic is why it doesn't matter.
Over the last sixty years or so, it has not been up to the voters of any individual state to decide who gets full rights and who does not. That battle has been fought at the Federal level and, ultimately, in the Federal courts. It was the case for the anti-miscegenation state statutes and constitutional amendments, some of which survived into the 21st Century.[1] Those laws that were in existence in 1967 were struck down by the Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia.
The matter of gay marriage will go, ultimately, to the Supreme Court, which will have to decide if equal rights and equal protection under the law means what it says when applied to gay people. I imagine that one of the topics of discussion will be the lack of proof that allowing gay people to marry harms, in any way, straight people.
Of course, the self-styled originalists will proclaim that the views on rights that existed when the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment were adopted must control the debate. That is bullshit, of course, for if that were true, then the states would be free to ban any firearm that used cartridges or percussion caps, since those technologies were unknown in 1791.[2]
The efforts by the homophobes on the Right to push gays and lesbians back into the closet will fail, just as their earlier pushes to marginalize women and people of color have failed.[3] They will lose in the courts and, ultimately, they will lose in society at large.
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[1] Alabama repealed theirs in 2001.
[2] I'm rather surprised that none of the hoplophobic jurisdictions have tried to do this.
[3] Doesn't stop them from continuing to try.
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Thursday, May 10, 2012
6 comments:
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It's not about gay marriage hurting married opp-sex couples (i.e. people), it's about hurting
ReplyDelete" ' * + MARRIAGE + * ' "
Marriage has somehow become this sacred thing that will somehow suffer harm, whither, become meaningless, and die if same-sex couples can 'marry'.
In the end, who marries who, is a government intrusion in what was
ReplyDeleteonce a personal and private matter between people and their doG or whatever. If we kicked government out of the business completely
then it would be a non issue.
With that said, it's all about privilege and insuring some have them
and some don't. To those people that support that such legalistic privilege maintenance there are two vices you are signing up for greed, and pride. You only need wrath, envy, lust, sloth and gluttony to have the full seven deadly sins racked up.
Eck!
I'll not live that long (and likely you won't either), but the day will come when the focused hatred of any group of people just because they are different will be so unfashionable as to become impossible to sustain. The pendulum swings, and we're seeing an uprising today against previous gains... but these will be short lived. Hatred will eventually lose.
ReplyDeleteTheir loss will be everyone else's gain. Bring it on!
ReplyDeleteMy wise and kind Father told me many a time: "You cannot legislate Morality", it's just Not going to work. He was a Humanist first and primarily. He believed in Mankind.
ReplyDeleteIf only our Country was only as wise.
w3ski
Actually, 70% of the black vote was for the amendment, so it's not a white-specific thing.
ReplyDelete