GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

I rarely talk about my specific religious beliefs about the Torah’s obligations on Jews in the area of gay sex, nor do I spend much time specifically spelling out the disturbing evidence that a signicant minority of the gay and lesbian community has no objection to adult-child sex. I think talking about either issue can needlessly hurt people who aren’t Jewish or who think pedophilia is disgusting, so I rarely do so. But the most prominent opponent of the “ex-gay” movement, a petty, self-hating, ignorant Jew named Wayne Besen, has thrown down the gauntlet by banning me from his Web site for allegedly advocating the murder of homosexuals and comparing gay people to child molesters. As you will see, I did neither of the above, but since I am banned from his site, I must defend myself somewhere, so I’ll do so here.

1) Jews believe that almost any Jewish law can be suspended in order to save a life, because we believe life is precious. However, there are three categories of mitzvot (commandments) that supercede that principle. They are called yehareg v’al yaavor – be murdered rather than transgress. The three categories are idol worship, murder, and gilui arayot – certain sexual sins that include male-male anal intercourse. I confirmed to Wayne that I and all Orthodox Jews think a Jew is commanded to allow himself to be killed rather than commit the act described above. That does not mean I think it’s right for anyone to kill a homosexual! Far from it. That means if someone puts a gun to my head and says “Sodomize me” I and every other Jew who follows halacha (Jewish law) would refuse.

2) I never compared all gays to child molesters. I am fully aware that the majority of both the lesbian and the gay community is horrified by pedophilia. But there is significant evidence that a subset of the gay community has no objection to adult-child sex. In fact, there’s a participant in the discussion at Wayne’s site who insists that “the general consensus” is that pedophilia is a medical, not a moral problem. He didn’t specify but if I agreed with him I would want child molesters sent to psychiatric hospitals rather than prisons. I wonder how he feels about imprisoning what he calls “mentally sick” pedophiles. I will give just two other examples of the sympathy for adult-child sex in segments of the LGBT community, and if I am pressed, I have many more.

For example, I know of no gay or lesbian individual or organization who has objected to the stated position of the gay arm of the ACLU that “everyone agrees” that a mentally retarded 14-year-old can consent to sex with an adult. (For some reason my computer won’t access the site so the language might be slightly off but it’s pretty close.) I think by definition a 14-year old, especially if he is mentally retarded, cannot consent to sex, and I am disgusted at the fact that the LGBT project of the ACLU successfully fought to free the adult repeat statutory rapist of a mentally retarded youth barely out of puberty who allowed him to perform oral sex on him at first but then got uncomfortable and said please stop (which the predator thankfully did).

Second, a prominent gay-rights organization in Canada, Egale, argued against raising the national age of consent from 14 to 16 in part because it considers sex between a 14-year-old and an adult to be “non-harmful sexual activity.” Other pro-gay Canadian organizations opposed outlawing sex with 14-year-olds because “it would interfere with efforts to educate youth about pregnancy, disease prevention and sexual rights and responsibilities.” The executive director of Egale, Kaj Hasselriis, testified that “Egale believes very strongly that it is possible… even common… for 14 and 15 year olds to consent to sex, even with people over the age of 20.” My googling has found no evidence of prominent Canadian or American gays or even lesbians, nor important LGBT organizations in Canada, who were offended by Egale’s position and stated the obvious: there is something terribly wrong with a 21-year-old having sex with a 14-year old.

Does the above mean I advocate the murder of homosexuals and compare gay people to child molesters? I don’t think so. But I stand by every word I wrote, so you be the judge. If pressed, I will give more information on exactly how wrong Judaism thinks gay sex is, and how I know that a minority – only a minority – of the gay community has no problem with adult-child sex. I would rather not, but I will if it’s important to clarify that I did neither of immoral things Wayne Besen has accused me of doing.

Many marriage equality advocates have reacted angrily to my Los Angeles Daily News piece about male-male non-monogamy hurting marriage and to the recent New York Times feature quoting a “married” gay man in Massachusetts saying most married gay couples are “for the most part monogamous, but for maybe a casual three-way.”

“Most gay couples are monogamous!” they said. “Straight people commit adultery too!”

But I recently discovered there is a rarely publicized gay definition of monogamy that does not match the way virtually every straight person uses the term. The thorough “marriage equality” Web site of the Partners Task Force for Gay and Lesbian Couples features an article on “Keeping A Sexually Open Relationship Intact” in its “relationship tips” section. According to the article, monogamy “properly means individuals who only marry one person (as opposed to “polygamy”), which does not describe sexual agreements.” In other words two men who get married to no one but each other, but nonetheless allow each other to have sex with a different man every night of the week are monogamous in this new (to me) gay sense of the term.

The essay goes on to give 15 specific suggestions of rules that gay couples can consider for making sure the sex outside the relationship isn’t completely unrestricted. For example: no sex with mutual friends, sex is permissible only when one partner is out of town, and my favorite, sex is permitted at home, but not in the bedroom.

I am not making this up.

Now, before anyone screams that this is one minority opinion on an obscure Web site, I want to point out that the date of the article is 2002. If an article on even a medium-sized Jewish Web site said that married Jewish women could stay monogamous by having sex with as many other men as they wanted as long as they don’t marry them, it wouldn’t last a week. There would be an outcry by Jews who are offended at the open approval of adultery. The “how to have sex with many people while you’re still monogamous” article appears to have been posted for six years.

Further, as far as I can tell the Partners Task Force has never been condemned by major gay and lesbian groups. In fact, several of them actually recommend it as a “resource,” such as Marriage Equality USA, the Metropolitan Community Church (!), the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educators Network, and statewide groups in Kentucky, Washington, Texas, New York, and Wisconsin. Both PlanetOut and lesbian.com also link to the site. Even a group you would expect to value faithfulness and fidelity – the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry – lists the Web site with the “slutty monogamy” article as one of only two American same-sex marriage issue resources.

I think the idea that in six years nobody ever clicked on the article about how monogamy doesn’t mean sexual exclusivity and thought to complain or publicize the idea is simply preposterous. I’m not saying every group that linked to this Web site knew about its definition of monogamy, but certainly some did. And even if they never read about the strange definition of monogamy, lots of gays and lesbians browsed through the list of articles, and the one about keeping your sexually open relationship intact doesn’t appear to have batted any eyes.

As long as major gay groups are linking to the Web site featuring this article, in fact as long as the article remains up at all, I recommend that anyone – journalists, undecided voters, marriage defenders engaging in debate – ask gays and lesbians to clarify whenever they use the term monogamy, whether they main marriage to only one person or sex with only one person. That’s the only way we can have an honest conversation.

Secondly, everyone should give further consideration to my argument that same-sex marriage will change marriage forever, for everyone, and for the worse. This one example is compelling evidence that the gay and lesbian community generally does not value fidelity and faithfulness in the way married people have been expected to. After all, lesbians have a better track record on sexual exclusivity than gay men, but none of the lesbians who clicked to this Web site promoted by at least a dozen prominent gay organizations convinced the group to correct its misleading definition of monogamy or if they refused, blogged about how offensive the situation is. I believe the people who have always defined marriage should continue to do so, because there is too much evidence the LGBT community simply does not understand what marriage is.

UPDATE: I realized it was possible that the article I have criticized was one of many different perspectives on monogamy represented on the Web site in question, so I checked what other things the site had to say about monogamy. I found:

• an essay by an openly gay anthropologist disagreeing with President’s Bush description of monogamous marriage as “the most enduring human institution” by arguing that “few societies find it beneficial to restrict marriage only to this form.”

• a 1997 essay by a therapist that says “Gay couples are different from heterosexual ones, however, and several authors have noted that sexual exclusivity in relationships is optional, rather than required within long-lasting male couples.” Now, if I said that, I would be called homophobic and accused of representing the truth without proof. Yet this essay has been posted for 11 years without any apparent protest by the many LGBT people who had access to it, some of whom undoubtedly read it. Why is that? He goes on to criticize monogamy as “inadequate for male couples because of the complexity of male-to-male (sexual-predator-to-sexual-predator) relationships.” Do I really have to say that no mainstream Jewish, black, Asian, or Catholic Web site could get away with posting such an article for more than a decade?

• There are essays by politicians Ron Wyden and Thomas Keane that tend to support monogamy, but they are both married heterosexuals, so of course they understand what marriage is.

• The site quotes Gary who says “I would find it very difficult to be with someone who insisted that I be ‘monogamous.’ In fact, if would drive me crazy” and his partner Bob who says “I feel exactly the same way as Gary. I don’t want to base our relationship the same way heterosexuals do.” So why am I criticized for saying gay marriage will change marriage?

• There’s an interview with a lesbian couple, one of whom is a reverend who says “monogamy, sexual exclusivity” has been a “hard edge” for the couple.

• There’s a historical article without footnotes that makes some pretty bizarre claims such as that in Christianity, male-male marriages actually predated male-female ones, and that Western culture “did not view monogamy as essential to marriage” until the 14th century. Do I really have to ask if the same claim would go unchallenged for 15 months at the Web site of even a liberal religious group like the Union for Reform Judaism or the Unitarian Universalist church?

• An interview with Charlie and Bill (I happen to know Charlie) said that in nine years together they were monogamous “most of the time.”

• An interview with Bruce, who bragged that he and Sam “can afford to be non-monogamous.”

• An interview with Andy and Peter, who say they were monogamous for about half the eight years they were in a “committed relationship.”

Now, if this Web site totally misrepresented the gay community’s attitudes toward monogamy, why am I the first gay person to have protested it so far? If these ideas offend gay sensibilities, wouldn’t all major gay and lesbian organizations refuse to link to the site?

I’d be very interested in someone honest on the “marriage equality” side to just accept my assertion that gay people do not value monogamy the way straight people do. Then, you can still argue that it’s not fair to refuse same-sex couples marriage, but at least you won’t try to earn marriage rights through fraudulous misrepresentation.

UPDATE: I am stunned by the following statistic: I contacted 100 of the top linguists in the country, including virtually the entire departments at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, and Texas. Within 48 hours, exactly half (50) had answered my query. None had ever heard of a language that did not differentiate between “mother” and “father” – and several said they did not think I would ever find one. There are some arguments I have made in which I could be fairly criticized for not consulting enough experts, or experts with strong enough qualifications. This is, um, not one one of them.

Since I have one foot on each side of the homosexuality divide in America, I’m perhaps uniquely qualified to propose a compromise on the gay marriage issue that can appeal to enough people on both sides that everyone can live with it.

I am certainly not a big fan of what I am about to propose. I would much rather get to write all of society’s laws about sex, relationships, and the family myself based on my ideas and values rather than to have to consult other people. But in a democracy, I have to consult other people.

The first point I want to make is about tangible and symbolic concerns. Both sides have some of each, and nearly all are legitimate. Gays and lesbians have tangible concerns about losing custody of their children, not being able to visit their partners in the hospital, and not being able to designate various financial and health benefits to go to the person who is most important in their lives. Traditionally religious people have tangible concerns about not being able to use their own values in having their adoption agencies decide which families are favored for adoption and running their fertility clinic in a way that is consistent with their views on parenting. They also have tangible concerns about being able to write, teach, run their businesses, and raise their children using their definition of what a marriage is rather than that of the gay and lesbian community. Those are just a few examples on each side.

There are also legitimate symbolic concerns. They gay and lesbian community is concerned that being forced to use a different term – even if it provides the exact same benefits as in California – gives the appearance that they are second-class citizens. They see no reason same-sex couples shouldn’t be accorded the same respect and dignity by society at large as male-female marriages. Traditionally religious people are concerned that extending the word “marriage” to relationships that are significantly different and which they believe are not right and not even marriages will change the nature of the word as used in the culture away from the way they prefer to use it. They are concerned with the government no longer giving extra prestige to the family format they think is the best for children.

If there was a way to accommodate every single tangible and symbolic concern of the people on both sides, I’d be all for it. But that’s impossible. I think that most people in the middle of this debate would like to accommodate as many of the tangible concerns on both sides, while not being as concerned about the symbolic concerns. So my proposal below, which again is not my first choice, aims at accommodating as many of the tangible concerns as possible, while not putting too much energy into the symbolic concerns.

I think that a compromise that addresses most or all of the tangible concerns on each side, but virtually none of the symbolic concerns on both sides, is good for our democracy, good for gays and lesbians, good for traditionally religious people, good for America.

The only other choice I see before us is some states that accommodate all of the symbolic and tangible concerns of one side, and other states that accommodate all of the symbolic and tangible concerns of the other side. Gay couples and traditionally religious people would need a road map to figure out which states they’d feel most safe in. Is that really a country we want to live in?

So here’s my proposal:

1) Each state that wants to find a compromise on marriage convenes 10 or 25 or 50 passionate but reasonable people from each side. They meet in a conference lasting a few days, and hammer out together two proposals, described below:

2) Proposal A retains the man-woman definition of marriage, but addresses through legislation or constitutional amendment all or nearly all of the major substantive concerns gays and lesbians have about the ways man-woman marriage tangibly hurts them. Hospital visitation, inheritance, and custody would undoubtedly make the proposal in nearly every state, for example.

3) Proposal B implements same-sex marriage, but addresses through legislation or constitutional amendment all or nearly all of the major substantive concerns traditionally religious people have about potential losses of freedom under same-sex marriage. I imagine most such proposals will contain language guaranteeing the right of adoption agencies and fertility clinics and teachers and journalists to use their own definitions of marriage in performing their functions even if it conflicts with the new state definition.

4) Then, both proposals are put on the state’s ballot to be voted on by the voters. The ballot initiative that gets the most votes (as long as it’s a majority) becomes law.

I really don’t like the fact that under Proposal A and Proposal B I get almost none of the symbolic things I’m concerned about. I also don’t like the fact that I either have to lose on what I’m most concerned with (marriage itself) or on a variety of benefits I would prefer not to go to people on the basis of their having a gay relationship. But the whole point of compromise is that each side gives in a little in order to have a whole package that provides the most satisfaction to the most number of people.

The proposal above tries to do that. I am very interested in the reactions of people on both sides, as well as proposals to make the compromise even more fabulous.

When I was a sexually active gay man living in places like San Francisco and West Hollywood, I knew that nothing was more pleasing to most gays and lesbians than being treated as if homosexuality were completely equal to heterosexuality. I remember getting excited when a college professor would lecture about gay sexuality in a completely matter-of-fact, approving way. During the Clinton Administration, I listened raptly to every State of the Union address hoping the president would use the word “gay.” When he did, I felt like a million bucks. When he didn’t, I was annoyed and maybe a little insulted.

The gay community’s obsession with marriage strikes me as an expression of excitement about a gay issue that makes same-sex couples look wholesome and all-American. That same attitude causes gays and lesbians to de-emphasize and even ignore urgent needs of our community that happen not to make us look good. It seems the gay community is setting its priorities as if we’re just in the middle of a big PR campaign to improve our public image. That’s really sad.

For example, here are four important issues I care about that involve real distress on the part of gays and lesbians that can be alleviated without hurting straight people:

• Lesbians are more likely to become alcoholics than straight women or men. I would support a few million dollars in federal funds to research why that is so, and to explore effective strategies to prevent and treat lesbian alcoholism. This is no small issue. Alcoholism is linked to terrible things like domestic abuse, drunk driving, and liver disease. Family members are often devastated by a loved one’s alcoholism. People who care about lesbians should want to find ways to work on this issue. But the Web sites of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), and even the National Center for Lesbian Rights combined contain one mention of lesbian alcoholism. They contain more than 6,000 mentions of marriage.

• Prison rape is ignored by most of the gay community. The fact that forced gay sex is a de facto method of social control in our prisons should be a good enough reason to fight prison rape. But it’s also true that gay and bisexual men, and transgender women are disproportionately victims of this terrible phenomenon. Yet NGLTF mentions prison rape on its Web site a total of three times, which is actually impressive compared to HRC’s big fat zero.

• The main way people get syphilis is through gay sex. If there ever was a “gay disease,” this is it. And it’s on the rise. Victims of the illness face horrible pain, blindness, paralysis, and insanity if they don’t get the proper treatment. HRC’s Web site mentions syphilis among gay men twice – the same number of times they encourage lesbians to make sure the sperm they use when (selfishly) making a baby doesn’t have the disease.

• Currently, the Bush administration is pushing harder to pass legislation to allow HIV-positive men to immigrate to and visit this country than the major gay and lesbian organizations are. You’ll never hear it from the gay groups, but President Bush is unquestioningly the best president on AIDS issues ever. We don’t know if the next president will sign a bill lifting the ban. Most of the rest of this administration will be distracted by the election. So it is currently urgent that we pass the bill pending before Congress that would allow the government to lift the ban, so Bush can sign it and we can get rid of this homophobic legacy of the Jesse Helms reign of terror toward lesbians and gay men. With congressional legislation, HRC is the main gay group to lobby our representatives. Yet you have to look really hard at their Web site to find mention of the bill. It’s there – but only nine times. Yet marriage is all over the front page and virtually every page of the Web site.

There’s a GaysDefendMarriage reader named Mark who thinks when I raise issues like the above I’m “concern trolling” – I’m pretending to sympathize to distract and confuse people on the other side. I know that isn’t true. But even if Mark thinks it is true, the key question isn’t why I care about those issues more than marriage, but why do people like Mark appear to care about marriage thousands of times more than those other issues?

I think it’s because their main goal isn’t actually helping gay people. If it was, I’ve just listed four issues that would help gay people far more directly and clearly and compassionately than changing the word for the completely equal state benefits given by the State of California to same-sex couples. The issue, rather, is public relations. “See, America? We’re just like you.” Lesbian alcoholics and syphilitic gay men and transgender women getting raped in prison are most definitely not “like you.” So we’re not going to do anything that could make us look bad – even if it means those transgender women getting raped in prison and the lesbians drinking themselves to death and gay men going blind from syphilis have to suffer terribly.

And people get mad at me when I say most gays are selfish and morally obtuse. Well, I’m mad at them for being selfish and morally obtuse.

What’s worse, the only “victims” of a federally funded study on why lesbians are more at risk for drinking problems and how to best help them are taxpayers who are charged a fraction of a penny each. There are no victims to lifting the HIV immigration ban. And who are the victims of fighting prison rape – the rapists?

Yet changing the definition of marriage has direct negative effects on other people. In Massachusetts, it has meant that orphans who want both a mother and a father are less likely to get them. From what gay activists are telling me, it will put teachers and businesspeople and journalists at risk of losing their assets, their jobs, and even their freedom if they continue to live their lives as if the definition of marriage they believe in is true instead of the “new” definition. (Something that never happened to people who believed in gay marriage under the old definition.) It will hurt the monogamous expectation of marriage by admitting to the institution far more people than ever who openly reject monogamy as a necessary part of marriage. And it will hurt parents’ ability to instill in their children a traditionally religious view of marriage when the public schools start teaching that it’s bigotry to believe that man-woman marriage is the only acceptable kind of relationship to form.

Of course, gay activists keep telling me that those harms either aren’t harms or that they only harm “bigoted” people, which they say is OK. Well, when do we ever let the people causing the harm decide whether any harm is actually caused? It’s usually much better to speak with the victims.

When I say same-sex marriage is not a good idea, and a lesbian says “but your position could cause me to lose my children,” my immediate reaction is to look for a legislative solution that ensures she won’t lose her children – but still respects my values that marriage is between a man and a woman. Yet I have never heard a gay man react to any of the points above by saying “Well, what if we have gay marriage, but ensure your kids can learn your values about marriage by barring the schools from teaching anything about marriage until sixth grade.” or “Oh, good point. Well, what if we pass gay marriage but add a stipulation that no teacher can be fired by teaching her own definition of marriage.” Instead, I get people like Mark, who tells me he intends for people like me “to lose pretty much totally.”

Same-sex marriage is the most important issue to the gay community because it makes them look good and feel good, not because it helps gay people very much, especially in places like California. Yet the lack of action on issues like prison rape and the HIV immigration ban and lesbian alcoholism shows that the gay community cares very little about helping gays and lesbians affected by problems that make the gay community look bad.

I think the gay community needs to show it is “equal” in moral reasoning before it starts demanding to be equal in marriage law.

I am happy that there are many people out there, including on this Web site, making cogent arguments for same-sex marriage. I’d rather debate a smart person than a dumb person. In the last week, however, I have heard at least four different people make the dumbest argument for same-sex marriage I have ever heard. What is it?

“The California Marriage Protection Act is unconstitutional.”

Huh? It’s a constitutional amendment. It is by definition constitutional. When I point that out, they usually continue to argue, as did Shannon from the Web site of the Los Angeles Daily News:

Me: Do you agree that if the CMPA passes, discrimination against same-sex “marriage” will be completely and utterly constitutional? If not, please explain.

Shannon: No, I don’t agree and never will agree and your answer is right there in front of you: BECAUSE IT’S DISCRIMINATORY.

Wow. I really don’t know what to say.

Not letting 16-year-olds vote is discriminatory. Not letting 45-year-olds go on Medicare is discriminatory. Closing the Post Office on Sundays but not Saturdays is discriminatory. Are those things unconstitutional, even if we pass a constitutional amendment allowing them? On what basis should the Supreme Court decide what’s constitutional, if they’re not supposed to look in the text of the constitution?

I should stop here. This is far too easy.

In honor of the June weddings taking place all over California today because of the Supreme Court’s decision in In Re Marriage Cases (the lamest name for a court case I’ve ever heard of, by the way), I have a piece in today’s Los Angeles Daily News responding to the frequent claim that gay marriage won’t hurt straight marriage. Regular readers of the site will recognize some of the arguments, which I first explored here.

Update: A longer version of the “harm” piece is now up at the Web site of the Sun-Sentinel, the second largest newspaper in South Florida. Florida is likely to be the #2 marriage battleground this fall. GDM reader Mark Barton may or may not be pleased to see I mentioned him (not by name) in that version of the piece.

Excerpted from the piece:

DEFENDERS of the same-sex marriages set to start today in California have repeatedly claimed that the new definition of marriage will in no way hurt male-female marriages. Even the state Supreme Court decision paving the way for these June weddings declared its move would not deprive any male-female couple “of any of the rights and benefits conferred by the marriage statutes.”

But marriage is not just about rights and benefits. It is a social institution that existed long before the state of California. Extending the word “marriage” to couples that have never before been considered married will cause real and appreciable harm to male-female marriages, and to all people who believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman….

If people think that, on the whole, detaching monogamy from marriage and making it harder for parents to control their children’s education about homosexuality are not nearly as big of a problem as the self-esteem of same-sex couples who are told that their relationships with completely equal benefits are only domestic partnerships and not marriages, fine. Don’t support November’s California Marriage Protection Act.

But please stop saying same-sex marriage doesn’t hurt anybody.

The gay Internet is abuzz with a new report by blogger Timothy Kincaid with the dramatic title “David Benkof: Behind the Mask.”

Kincaid calls me an “anti-gay activist with strong ties to the ex-gay community.”

Well, no.

I’ve responded at length at Kincaid’s Web site, but I thought I’d put some excerpts here:

So, apparently, when I write a column for a gay publication that doesn’t agree to run my work in every single issue, I’m not a columnist? If I work on various people’s teeth, but they don’t commit to me permanently, does that mean I’m not a dentist?

You’re simply wrong that there are no other influential LGBT people who support marriage as the union of husband and wife. What about Al Rantel, the openly gay conservative radio talk show host on KABC in Los Angeles? I met him on the Ricki Lake Show when we were both presented as examples of members of the gay community who oppose same-sex marriage. I was later a guest on his program for an hour in which we talked about some of the reasons the gay community is wrong to ask for same-sex marriage rights. He’s the most prominent gay voice in Los Angeles radio, and one of the most prominent gay talkers in the country.

As for my identity, I have been clear that none of the labels fit me well. I use bisexual most of the time, gay some of the time, and queer when I’m confident nobody will think I’m using a homophobic slur. No deception is intended; I simply don’t think any of the options presented is a perfect descriptor for my particular sexuality. Given that I have written at length about how I do not believe every person is born with a specific sexual orientation permanently etched in their DNA (and gay history proves it), I think my ambivalence about labels is perfectly consistent with my worldview.

You say you don’t know anyone who doesn’t oppose prison rape. Well, the Human Rights Campaign doesn’t oppose prison rape, at least as far as hrc.org is concerned. The Web site of the largest gay political group mentions marriage nearly 4,000 times and prison rape not once. Those are some pretty f’ed up priorities.

I find the gay community’s choice of opponents in various fights they pick to be, well, queer. Boy Scouts, New York City cops (the “villains” at Stonewall), and orphans in Boston are generally thought of by the wider society as admirable, sympathetic individuals. Yet LGBT people regularly demonize and victimize such people. I mean, even if the Boy Scouts’ policy is wrong (and I think it is wrong), don’t gay people have more important things to do than to make it harder for 11-year-old boys to hike, swim and build campfires on public property?

You write that I am “seeking to advance the rules of his faith by making secular argument, and not being honest about it.” Well, yes, but I’m being honest about it. I’m purposefully doing what the man you probably want to be the next president thinks people like me should do.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in 2006, “our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.” However, when religious people argue for policies based on their beliefs, Obama says we should articulate “some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

So which is it? Should I argue in religious terms only, and if my policies win, then people with my religion really will be imposing our beliefs on everyone else?

Or, following Obama’s advice, should I continue to be motivated by religious belief, but make secular arguments to convince people who don’t happen to be Orthodox Jews?

Or do you really just want me to shut up? My hunch is it’s the latter. If so, in a free society, that’s not going to happen.

We haven’t heard from many women lately, nor many left-of-center opponents of same-sex marriage, so I thought I’d link to one of the first pieces staking out that territory. It’s from Salon, and it’s headlined “Same-sex marriage: I don’t care if it is legal, I still think it’s wrong — and I’m a lesbian.”

Author Dr. Laurie Essig is an assistant professor of sociology at Middlebury College in Vermont. She teaches a variety of undergraduate courses including “Sociology of Freakishness” and “Sociology of Heterosexuality.”

Some excerpts:

Although we like to pretend that marriage is natural and universal, it is an institution founded in historical, material and cultural conditions that ensured women’s oppression — and everyone’s disappointment. Monogamous, heterosexual marriages were an invention of the Industrial Revolution’s emerging middle class….

What annoys me is that no one, not even queers, can imagine anything other than marriage as a model for organizing our desires….

But why should those of us who have organized our lives in a way that looks a lot like heterosexual marriage be afforded special recognition by the government because of that?….

The legalization of gay marriage does not make me feel liberated as much as it makes me feel depressed. It’s sort of like getting excited about gays in the military — until I remember that I don’t really care about the military as an institution.

A Web user responding to one of my arguments in favor of the California Marriage Protection Act wrote, “Allowing a majority of the people to decide the civil rights of a minority through a popular vote is simply bad policy. Should we have allowed the majority to vote on whether segregation should be ended or not?”

Actually, yes.

But allow me to explain: the reason defenders of man-woman marriage are pushing a vote on same-sex marriage is that is the only way a constitutional decision by the California Supreme Court can be overturned. A unanimous vote by the 120 members of the legislature, along with the governor’s vigorous approval, would change nothing without a vote of the people. Supporters of “marriage equality” can hardly complain that the system is unfair given that none of them objected to the process before the Supreme Court decision, and many of them voted for liberal California constitutional amendments in recent years on environmental, anti-smoking, education, and other issues.

I certainly feel that defenders of segregation in 1954 should have been allowed to introduce a Constitutional amendment overturning Brown v. Board of Education. That decision, which was one of the moral high points of the 20th century, had no special status that made it permanent. I definitely would have fought them, but if segregationists had convinced two-thirds of Congress and the Senate – and the state legislatures in 38 states – to pass a Segregation Amendment to the Constitution, what should have stood in their way?

A Super-Decider who gets to overrule constitutional amendments that aren’t consistent with his values would be the mark of a dictatorship, not a democracy.

The fact that California has a popular vote to amend its Constitution whereas the U.S. has a more complicated process is an accident of history, not a plot against gays.

The people crying foul that someone is trying to amend “their rights” should think about the Dred Scott case. That 1856 decision ruled that a white man had a property right to “own” an African-American. Do today’s complainers about the California amendment think Dr. John Emerson could have legitimately complained about people trying to amend his rights through the 1865 votes on the Thirteenth Amendment? Because contrary to popular opinion, it wasn’t the Civil War or even the Emancipation Proclamation that abolished slavery in the United States. It was the Thirteenth Amendment.

There has to be a process under which the people and/or their elected legislators can overrule constitutional decisions they don’t agree with. The process does carry the risk that good decisions may be overturned, yes, but that means bad decisions can be, too. I don’t want to live in a state where four justices (or a country where five justices) can have the absolute last word about important issues relating to the way we live.

Finally, while “marriage equality” advocates have the right to claim there is a civil right to same-sex marriage, very few experts agree with them. The Supreme Court has never recognized a federal right to “marry” a member of the same sex, and gay and lesbian groups have actively fought lawsuits seeking such a right, because they know they would likely lose. Massachusetts has a state constitutional right to same-sex marriage, and there will be one for about 4.5 months in California, at which point the people will decide whether that right should cease. The other 48 states provide no state constitutional right to same-sex marriage. And what is the opinion of the civil rights phenomenon of the century? “I don’t think marriage is a civil right,” said U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) when running for the Senate four years ago.

My newest “Fabulously Observant” column appears in today’s Dallas Voice. It’s mostly about other things than marriage, but I thought I’d link to it because it describes five issues that people on both sides of the homosexuality debate have an interest in working together on, even if we don’t yet see eye-to-eye on subjects like marriage. Here’s an excerpt:

• Adoption: Gay parents and religious conservatives are unlikely to agree on state policies like Florida’s, which ban gay adoption, or Massachusetts’ that bar agencies from giving preference to families with both a mother and a father.

But in those jurisdictions which do allow gay adoption, traditionally religious people have a joint interest with gay and lesbian parents to foster government policies (like tax credits) that benefit families that adopt.

The more adoptions, the fewer abortions, so traditional people can push for pro-adoption legislation alongside those of us who disagree with them about the fitness of gays to be adoptive parents….

Working together on the above issues is unlikely to make a Southern Baptist hope for a lesbian daughter, or to make a gay man become “born again.” But by cooperating on important policy areas we’re all invested in, perhaps we can stop seeing each other as the “enemy.”

Then, down the road, when discussing the definition of marriage or non-discrimination laws, we will be better able to listen to each other and try to find some common ground.