GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

I found a comment at BoxTurtleBulletin I wanted to comment on. “Kristie” said, in part:

Whether “marriage” was ordained by God or not isn’t the point and that is something opponents of marriage equality don’t seem to get. They have the right to their religious beliefs but they don’t have the right to foist those beliefs on every other citizen of this country.

I bring you this comment because it represents something supporters “of marriage equality don’t seem to get.”

Nobody on my side of the debate is trying to force “opposite marriage” on gays and lesbians in a theocratic way. We’re doing it in a democratic way – using our one vote apiece and our freedoms of speech, the press, petition, and assembly to support public policies consistent with our values.

Gays and lesbians do the same.

Then, our votes get added up, mostly through our representatives, and public policies are determined. What else would gays and lesbians have us do? Vote and speak out using your values instead of ours? Not vote or use our First Amendment expression rights at all?

Or are you saying we can take any position we want as long as it’s not based on the Bible? Leaving aside that Barack Obama disagrees with you, how are we to regulate rules about where positions can come from? Right now, Americans can make political choices based on family tradition, what Jon Stewart said on TV last night, their horoscope, or flipping a coin. Why is the Bible not allowed to be part of that list?

Or, if you’re saying that we’re allowed to use the Bible to determine our political stances, but we’re wrong to want to use the Bible to do so, well, duh. I think you’re wrong for NOT using the Bible to determine your political stance. So? We determine who’s right and who’s wrong through the democratic system. Or is there some other system you’d propose?

I have a piece in today’s Buffalo News on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that’s scheduled for Monday’s Philadelphia Daily News in a slightly different version. A shorter piece appears as a letter to the editor in the International Herald Tribune. An excerpt:

While gays and lesbians are clearly capable of heroic service, heroism is not enough to merit serving in the military, which is a privilege, not a right. The military has legitimate concerns about unit cohesion, morale, good order and discipline that it must explore thoroughly before introducing openly gay individuals into our troops.

But there is another way. I propose that Congress repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” for non-combat jobs immediately, and then consider extending the change to combat positions in five years, after the initial repeal has been tested….

Indeed, the push to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is just one manifestation of what I like to call Equality Mania, the attitude by gays and lesbians that nothing is more important than complete and total equality — not the welfare of children, not religious freedom, not even national security.

But equality isn’t everything. There is literally nothing more important than a strong military. While I’m sympathetic to gays and lesbians who want to serve their country, Obama and Gates are right that we have to be very careful before making a change that can hurt the only mission to fight and win wars.

More evidence that the gay-marriage debate is not entirely black and white. Ari, one-half of a matched set of “hitched” female “queer vegan artists and activists,” liked my piece in the New York Daily News:

I wrote what appears to be the first piece anywhere highlighting the Vermont Clause I blogged about earlier in the New York Daily News (online) today. An excerpt:

…the Vermont Clause certainly could go farther. I would like to see protections for individuals – not just organizations. Still, it’s a vast improvement over the other states that have implemented gay marriage without concern for its repercussions on the traditionally religious.

Without serious religious freedom guarantees, disturbing punishments have been meted out to people and groups who have acted consistent with their belief that marriage is between a man and a woman and that children are best served with both a mother and a father….

Being forced to perform a medical procedure or take photographs when you don’t want to smacks of involuntary servitude. Why do organizations like “Freedom to Marry” feel that gay freedom has to be won on the backs of other people’s lack of freedom to work or not work based on their beliefs?

If some states are going to have gay marriage, people like me need to be protected if we choose to continue to behave as if the definition of marriage that we think comes from God is correct, rather than that of the gay and lesbian community – and the government.

It’s not a coincidence that the first real protections for religious organizations in a gay marriage state came in the first place to implement same-sex marriage by legislative action rather than judicial fiat. The legislative process usually involves compromise, and the need to get a majority often leads to amendments that incorporate each side’s concerns.

The courts in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut and Iowa, however, have implemented same-sex marriage unilaterally, with dissenting voices relegated to, well, the dissents. It’s much healthier for our democracy to deal with its most heated issues in the legislative arena rather than in the courts.

Ideally, we would have federal legislation guaranteeing individual conscience rights when it comes to marriage. Barring that, conservative lawmakers ought to push for strong “Vermont clauses” in all future gay marriage legislation.

With all the Green Mountain State’s double-bride and double-groom celebrations, nobody has seemed to notice that the Vermont gay-marriage law contains a clause offering some of the same protections I’ve been calling for here at GaysDefendMarriage.com:

§ 4502. PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS

* * *

(l) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a religious organization,

association, or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated,

supervised, or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization,

association, or society, shall not be required to provide services,

accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges to an individual if

the request for such services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or

privileges is related to the solemnization of a marriage or celebration of a

marriage. Any refusal to provide services, accommodations, advantages,

facilities, goods, or privileges in accordance with this subsection shall not

create any civil claim or cause of action. This subsection shall not be

construed to limit a religious organization, association, or society, or any

nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised, or controlled by or

in conjunction with a religious organization from selectively providing

services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges to some

individuals with respect to the solemnization or celebration of a marriage but

not to others.

The pro-gay-marriage lawsuit was occasioned by Iowa’s version of the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman. The court used the lawsuit as an occasion not only to overturn Iowa’s DOMA, but to rewrite all state statutes limiting marriage to male-female couples.

Which makes me wonder – if there never was an Iowa DOMA, would the Iowa Supreme Court not have had a chance to implement gay marriage, at least not right away?

I’ve expressed in the past my opposition to the “get the government out of marriage” so-called compromise to the SSM controversy. I have said that it’s not a compromise because one side gets nothing. But I’m starting to rethink that.

If the government gets out of the marriage business, and every person and organization gets to decide for themselves what marriage is or isn’t, maybe that’s a compromise that would accommodate my religious-freedom concerns. Why can’t, for example, a caterer only accommodate those weddings she believes are actually weddings? The government has no stance on what marriage is.

If the government has no stance on what marriage is, it seems to me that a lesbian teacher could teach that marriage can be between two women, and an Orthodox Jewish teacher can teach that marriage cannot. Curriculum on marriage and the family can be written by each school district with the guidance of the elected or appointed school board.

I’m not saying I’d support such a compromise. But I would acknowledge that it is, indeed, a compromise.

The anti-gay-marriage folks in Washington state are using the most unfortunate phrase I’ve written in 10 months of op-ed writing. In my second op-ed during that time, which appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I wrote:

Openly gay Washington state Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, and a representative of the largest Michigan gay-rights group, the Triangle Foundation, have both told me that people who continue to act as if marriage is a union between a man and a woman should face being fined, fired and even jailed until they relent.

While Murray and the Triangle Foundation rep did say that people continuing to behave as if marriage is between a man and a woman should face being fined, fired, and even jailed, they did not say “until they relent.” Murray did refer to Martin Luther King and Gandhi, who were jailed until they relented, but that’s no excuse for the sloppy paraphrase. (Note: it’s not a misquote because I didn’t quote them. It’s a poor paraphrase.)

As soon as this was called to my attention I apologized.

Anyway, the phrase has now made it into a campaign commercial against a gay-marriage bill in Washington state.

I of course like being quoted, but not in this case.

I recently returned from my vacation in Maui (thanks for your patience, everyone!), where I had a chance to observe the debate over the civil unions bill currently under consideration in Hawaii. I was particularly interested in the letters to the editor in various Hawaii newspapers, especially the small ones targeting Maui or even West Maui.

The pro-civil unions side (including representatives of churches) made the point that civil unions are not marriage and will not lead to marriage.

Ah, would that it were so. I’ve demonstrated on this blog and elsewhere that a pro-gay promise that “this will not lead to marriage” is completely valueless if later the measure can possibly be used for marriage. For example:

In Massachusetts, the Goodridge decision was based in part on a law that specifically said could not be used to support gay marriage.

In New York, Gov. Paterson used the SONDA law to recognize gay marriage, despite a clause in the law saying that was not to be done, and a legislative history of promising that the SONDA job-protections bill had nothing to do with marriage.

In California, the gay-marriage Supreme Court decision declared that the gay-marriage side had a lower burden of proof because of the domestic partnership law. This despite the fact that the domestic partnership law was sold to legislators and the public as not being marriage and not leading to marriage.

Thus, in three states, passing gay-rights measures that were sold as “not leading to marriage” led to marriage. And the appalling part is, not a single gay-rights leader (except me) has objected or apologized. Anything that leads to gay marriage is fair game, even if one has to lie, cheat, or steal to get it.

I’m increasingly thinking that with such wily opponents, it does not make sense for defense-of marriage people to give a single inch when it comes to “special rights” for gay individuals or same-sex couples. The Salt Lake City plan, yes, but that’s not special rights. But civil unions in Hawaii and elsewhere, no, because when we’re promised a measure won’t lead to gay marriage – and then it does – nobody says, “Whoops, that’s not the result we had promised.” and certainly not “We’ll try to overturn gay marriage, for now, and fight fair another day.”

I have a piece in today’s Jerusalem Post explaining exactly where I stand in the gay-ex-gay continuum. I coin a new term, “Delta,” which is explained in detail in the essay, which I have excerpted below:

I have a suggestion. Instead of gay or ex-gay, those of us who have stopped thinking of ourselves primarily as same-sexers can emphasize the fact that, whether we’re celibate or in opposite-sex relationships, we’re ‘Deliberately Living Traditionally.’ The handy acronym Delta corresponds to a Greek letter representing change; it can be a rival to the use of the letter Lambda to represent all things gay. Delta can serve as a new identity and community for people who are making or have made that tough transition. (Perhaps the Hebrew version will be known as ‘Dalets.’)

The ‘Delta’ idea correctly focuses on how people behave and organize their lives rather than what their sexuality bar codes are. Such an attitude, by the way, is consistent with Torah Judaism. By contrast, the ‘ex-gay’ approach accepts the gay community view that all of us have an innate sexual orientation, merely adding that those orientations can be changed through ‘reparative’ or other therapy….

People who are unhappy with their homosexuality will almost certainly find it much easier to try ‘deliberately living traditionally’ than to somehow transform their inner make-up. After a few years of living celibately, or perhaps in an opposite-sex relationship, such people might find their same-sex attractions have decreased or at least become less important to them. This is parallel to the Jewish concept of ‘Naaseh v’nishma’ ¬ the idea that actions precede what is internal. Also, the Talmud says with regard to King David that the libido is hungry when satiated and satisfied when
restrained.

Of course, some gays and lesbians will accuse Deltas of ‘not being true to themselves.’ But who decided that our libidos and hearts represent our true selves, even when they’re in conflict with our minds, consciences, and spirits? Shouldn’t each of us get to decide who we truly are?

Indeed, whereas the gay community celebrates National Coming Out Day, and some ex-gays have commemorated National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day, the Delta community could mark National Choose Sexual Behaviors and Family Structures Consistent With Your Values Day (We can work out the acronym later).