Spontaneous Musings

The government should respect the decisions that all individuals make about marriage, because the government is the servant of individuals, not of the majority; it is the protector of individual rights, not of popular opinion; and lastly, it is the great preventer of fraud and violence. In this capacity, a formal recognition of lasting intimate unions — a formal recognition of all marriages — will do much to add dignity and security to the lives of those concerned. How and How Not to Oppose the MPA by by Jason Kuznicki
http://positiveliberty.com/2006/06/how-and-how-not-to-oppose-the-mpa.html

Unfortunately the governments, not just of certain areas in the US but other places around the world, have a long history of abridging and infringing on individual rights. Human history is an ugly place filled with human rights infractions that we forget at our own folly. But memory is selective and people tend to remember those things that support what they wish to believe.

Today, the Supreme Court of the State of New York ruled that a marriage between two individuals of legal age and of the same gender or sex was illegal under the laws of the State of New York. This landmark ruling places New York in the history books alongside Nazi Germany.

In 1935 Nazi Germany ruled that marriages amongst certain individuals were illegal. Individuals who were not deemed proper or meeting the qualifications set by German society – were gathered up and placed in concentration camps, many were put to death. Amongst those individuals were Jews, Homosexuals, Transgendres, Gypsies, and Political Prisoners.

The Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 deprived German Jews of their rights of citizenship, giving them the status of "subjects" in Hitler's Reich. The laws also made it forbidden for Jews to marry or have sexual relations with Aryans or to employ young Aryan women as household help. (An Aryan being a person with blond hair and blue eyes of Germanic heritage.) http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-nurem-laws.htm

But what does a Nuremberg law prohibiting an interracial/interfaith marriage between someone of Jewish decent and a Gentile have to do with a law prohibiting same-sex marriage? And more to the point, did the Nazi’s really discriminate against homosexuals? Many people erroneously believe that the only victims of concentration camps were Jews; they weren’t, any more than they were just Gypsies or homosexuals. Straight people may not think that laws against homosexuals affect them. They may even be in support of them, not seeing how this could be detrimental. It reminds me a little of that old proverb that came out shortly after World War II quoted by Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran minister who opposed the Nazis:

“In Germany, they first came for the Communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.” http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/classmags/holocaust_toc.htm


Did you know:

After the war, homosexual concentration camp prisoners were not acknowledged as victims of Nazi persecution.[1] Reparations and state pensions available to other groups were refused to gay men, who were still classified as criminals — the Nazi anti-gay law was not repealed until 1969. They could be re-imprisoned for "repeat offences," and were kept on the modern lists of "sex offenders." Under the Allied Military Government of Germany, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment, regardless of the time spent in concentration camps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gays_during_the_Holocaust

Or:

Statistical information on hate crimes in the US during 2004 - the largest three are not suprisingly, crimes based on sexual orientation, religion, and race.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004885.html

How much do you want to bet that the majority of crimes committed against homosexuals are based on religious justifications? More evil in this world has been committed in the name of God than we would like to admit. The Spanish Inquisition. Queen Mary’s bloody reign against the Protestants. Her sister, Elizabeth’s, reign against the Catholics. The Crusades. The Concentration Camps. Slavery.

Dahlia Lithwick talks about “God’s preferences” argument and “how it harms children” in her article on Slate.com entitled “The Maddening Slippery Slope Argument”:

The real problem is that there are really only three arguments against gay marriage: One is rooted in entirely God's preferences—which have little bearing on Equal Protection or Due Process doctrine, as far as I can tell. The second cites inconclusive research on its negative effects on children. The backup is the slippery slope jeremiad, which seems to pass for a legal argument, at least on cable TV. But fear of the slippery slope alone is not a sufficient justification for doing the wrong thing in any individual case. In a superb dialogue on gay marriage in Slate, Andrew Sullivan, responding to David Frum, makes this point eloquently: "The precise challenge for morally serious people is to make rational distinctions between what is arbitrary and what is essential in important social institutions. ... If you want to argue that a lifetime of loving, faithful commitment between two women is equivalent to incest or child abuse, then please argue it. It would make for fascinating reading. But spare us this bizarre point that no new line can be drawn in access to marriage—or else everything is up for grabs and, before we know where we are, men will be marrying their dogs."
http://www.slate.com/id/2100824/

What she does not go into is why the “God’s preferences” argument has no bearing and should not have any bearing on the Equal Protection doctrine and why we don’t want it to. First of all what is the Equal Protection doctrine? And why should I care? Equal Protection doctrine is the doctrine that provides us with certain inalienable rights – such as marrying whom we see fit, practicing whatever religion we choose, and living where we wish. ie. Everyone is granted “equal protection” under the law.

If you are a member of a country’s majority religion than you probably won’t care, but what if you aren’t? What if you are living in Nazi Germany and are Jewish? Or in England during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign and are Catholic? What if the religion that the majority practices dictates that there shall not be any inter-faith marriages, as Nazi Germany dictated, or any inter-racial marriages as Virigina and other states dictated in the 1950s in their so-called miscengation laws? What if the religion the majority practices tells you it is against God’s plan to see a doctor, that God can heal you? (There quite a few religions that do believe this.) Or that it is against God’s wishes that you marry a Gentile? Or against God’s wishes that you marry someone who has not been confirmed a Catholic? It all goes back Martin Neiumeller’s argument, doesn’t it?

* In 1948, the Supreme Court of California took a giant step toward ending the regime of miscegenation law when it broke an sixty-five year string of post-Reconstruction judicial precedents and declared California's miscegenation law unconstitutional. Speaking for a deeply divided court, Justice Roger Traynor flatly rejected the shopworn claim that miscegenation laws applied "equally" to all races. "A member of any of these races," Traynor explained, "may find himself barred by law from marrying the person of his choice and that person to him may be irreplaceable." "Human beings," he continued, "are bereft of worth and dignity by a doctrine that would make them as interchangeable as trains." "The right to marry," Traynor insisted, "is the right of individuals, not of racial groups." Nineteen years later, in 1967, in the case of Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court agreed, this time in a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice Earl Warren. "There can be no doubt," Warren wrote, "that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause."

The Loving decision spelled the formal end of America's three-century-long history of miscegenation laws, though opponents of interracial marriage didn't give up overnight. Alabama, for example, waited until the year 2000 to remove the miscegenation provision from its state constitution. By and large, however, Americans adjusted remarkably quickly.Why the Ugly Rhetoric Against Gay Marriage Is Familiar to this Historian of Miscegenation by By Peggy Pascoe.
http://hnn.us/articles/4708.html

It took until 1962 with Loving vs. Virginia for the US Supreme Court to make miscegenation laws unconstitutional. It took until the year 2000 to remove them completely. To put this in context for you – these laws meant that you were not allowed to marry anyone outside your own race. You were put in prison if you did. I know at least three or four people who would be serving prison time and whose kids would be misplaced if this law were still in effect.

On July 6, 2006, New York could pat itself on the back for doing two things – both of which uphold a legal tradition, one having the same law in place as Nazi Germany did in the 1935, and two having a law that has a great deal in common with the miscegenation laws of the 1940’s. When asked what he thought of the court ruling today, Governor Pataki, a man of few words, stated that it was not only a good ruling but it was supporting a hundred year old tradition that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. I wonder how Governor Pataki felt about the miscegenation laws, which were also in effect for quite a lengthy period of time before being overruled?

Why are people for a law against same-sex marriage? I don’t understand. I keep flipping over the reasons. No one has provided me with a reason that makes logical sense that is not deeply rooted in religious superstition and ignorance. If you can think of a good reason, please share it.

The main reason, the one provided to me by my work colleagues is because they feel that it degrades their beliefs and their marriage, that it weakens the sacrament of marriage, that it allows children to be raised without a parent of each sex – which they feel on an emotional not intellectual level is wrong. If you ask people why, the reasons they provide usually have God in the midst of them. Personally I doubt God cares. God wants us to love one another. A law against same sex marriage is not about love.

Now, let me explain something to you - two people getting married does not in any way affect you. Unless of course you happen to be in love with one of them or are their child or live with them, their marriage does not affect your life. No more than your neighbor across the street deciding to paint their house violet affects you. Or your decision to pierce your nose, navel and get that tattoo across your forehead with a swastika affects your neighbor. It may affect you emotionally. It may annoy you. It may offend you. But you can choose to ignore it. You can move away. You are not harmed physically by it. It does not infringe on your rights as protected under the law. And it does not change your rights or beliefs or views.

Two people of the same sex getting married are not telling you that you can't get married. They have not changed the status of your marriage. They are not taking your children from you. And they have not in any way shape or form infringed on your religious beliefs. Even if they got married in your church, synagogue, mosque, temple, what have you that would not infringe on your beliefs.

Also, two people of the same sex getting married does not mean that they are going to have sex on your front lawn, in the street, or with your young underage children. Any more than you getting married to someone of the opposite sex means that you will do any of these things. Thinking so is illogical. There is no basis in this fear.

There is no evidence that children raised by same-sex parents are any worse off than children raised by single parents, aged parents, or what society considers is the norm. I refuse to have children over the age of 46 and refuse to do it as a single parent, I want to give the child the same things I had. That is important to me. Just because I feel this way does not mean that I think others have to behave like this. Everyone is different. Everyone experiences life differently. We are not the same. If you know anything about domestic violence and child abuse - children are harmed by as many heterosexuals as homosexuals. There is no evidence stating otherwise.

So why do straight people care?

Why do religions?

Why do people who insist that others to be tolerant of their beliefs, their way of life, their ethnicity, so intolerant of someone else's?

The quotes I’ve cited are the result of the little research I did. There’s more information out there, if you are willing to hunt it down. I did the research because I’ve been debating writing a post much like this one but had decided it was a tad on the presumptuous side, also I'm probably just preaching to the choir, but then the judgment came down and well, I've had it up to here with people dictating what I can or can't do with my life and I can sympathize with others feeling the same way.

It enrages me that one male friend of mine can get married in two weeks and have a family, settle down, buy a house, have full benefits - while another male friend, a total sweetheart of a guy, can't. Why? Because he is GAY.

How would you feel if it were the other way around? If the other guy, who happens to be Jewish, were not permitted to get married to his fiance, who happens to be Catholic, because of a law ? (That law existed in Nazi Germany in the 1940's. And may still exist in some countries where interfaith marriages are frowned upon.) Would you care? Even if you weren't Jewish or Catholic? Or are you thinking, wait that is different. How is it different? How is a religious preference different than a sexual one? You can choose what religion you practice. You do not have to be Catholic, no matter what some Catholics think – it’s not genetically pre-ordained, and you do not have to be Jewish, there are quite a few people out there who have chosen not to be Jewish. You cannot however choose your sexual orientation. That is in your genes. That is biological. Who we love is not just based on intellectual attraction, it is also based on physical attraction. So if that is the difference, doesn’t it stand to reason to permit the same-sex marriage over an inter-faith one? Personally, I think both should be permitted.

Marriage should be about making children?

We are at a stage in our evolution in which that is not necessarily so. Nor should it be. There are people every day who are not equipped mentally or psychologically to raise kids who are having them like rabbits. While others, who are psychologically and mentally equipped to have children have artificial insemination or fertility pills or adopt. Modern medicine has made it possible for anyone, for a price, to have a child. Also not all people who have kids should remain married. In some instances the marriage is harmful to the children. Not all people who get married and love one another should have children. Everyone is different. Also if we go down that slope - what about the people who have bi-polar disorders or mental illnesses? They get married, they have kids - should we prohibit them as well? Where do you stop the rule? Who gets to be protected and who doesn't? The people you like?

The bible says so? The bible is a religious doctrine that is only held sacred by a specific number of religions and open to interpretation. Also which bible? The Koran? The Torah? The Catholic Bible? The St. James? The bible for wiccans? The Mormon Bible? The Christian Scientist Bible? Scientologist Bible? Let’s limit it to the Christian Bible, which translation are you quoting? Which interpreter? Also how do you know that it is God's word and not just the writer's? Your pastor says it is? If your pastor told you to leap off a cliff – would you? You believe it is? Why should your beliefs be held over everyone else's? What makes you so special? Well, I'm not, it's what the majority thinks. Yes, and the majority of Nazi Germany thought it was a good idea to exterminate the Jewish population. And hey, they may have gotten the idea from a book too. Some priest's even supported it. After all look what the Jewish people allegedly did to Jesus. The majority does not always make good decisions. If we learn anything from History, or the Bible for that matter, we can learn that. The majority elected Richard Nixon, who in the 1970s was impeached for an illegal cover-up. The majority in the US supported the slave trade in the 1800s and well several years before that. The majority supported the Romans in crucifying Jesus on the Cross. And the majority felt that inter-racial marriage was wrong.

Also it's not necessarily the majority - a Baltimore, Maryland court just ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. The Judge stating that “societal values and traditions” should not dictate a couple’s right to be married. People who believe it does conveniently fall behind those boundaries. I wonder how you would feel if the Nuremberg Laws were still in place? If you did not fall within those boundaries.

Why does a heterosexual woman care about this? Why should heterosexuals care at all? Well, let’s ask another question, why should Americans have cared about the German Jews in the 1935-1945? We didn’t, you know. Or our government didn’t. We got involved in that war only after we were attacked in 1942 at Pearl Harbor, by the Japanese. We went after the Germans so that England would help us with Japan. The War had been going on for at least three long years before we deigned to get involved. It wasn't any of our business. Because why on earth should we care about a bunch of jews, homosexuals, and gypsies being slaughtered in concentration camps half a world away?

When you abridge someone else’s rights you open a door to having your own abridged. Yes, I know it sounds like the slippery slope argument, but is it? Do you want the government, any government telling you who you can love and settle down with? And worse, justify it with a religious doctrine you may or may not believe in?

People, I’ve learned, are good at telling others how to live their lives but don’t like it much when someone starts telling them how to live theirs. We are, like it or not, hypocrites. But we can choose. We can learn. We can read history and choose not to repeat it. Some traditions should not be upheld, they should be spit upon.

There is nothing more inherently evil than infringing on someone else’s right to love another person, get married and have a life with that person. To do so, opens a door that I’m not sure we can close, a door that leads only to more restrictions and more pain.