Some Thoughts on Prop 8

Hi again! Once again I'm going to try to commit to blogging on a more regular basis. We shall see...

I was actually moved to post today because of the ongoing controversy over California's prop 8. Those of you who know me will recognize me as the original bleeding heart liberal, although I am not gay myself I am fully in support of gay marriage. As far as I am concerned, if two consenting adults love each other and want to get married, more power to them. It's hard enough in this world to find someone who loves you without imposing restrictions on who that person can and cannot be.

I can understand why people are uncomfortable with the idea of gay marriage. It challenges the idea of what a vast majority of people consider "normal". It's different from the way most of us were brought up, and it forces us to redefine our ideas about what makes a family. For some people, it is directly opposed to what their faith teaches about what is and is not acceptable in society. I understand that change makes people uncomfortable. I would have a lot more respect for people who voted for prop 8 and similar legislation if they would just come out and say "the idea of gay marriage makes me uncomfortable, and so I voted against it".

What I don't understand are the excuses. Let's take a look at some of these

1) "It makes my marriage somehow less to know that two men or two women could have the same thing I do". Really? You love your wife or husband less now because some people you don't know in Massachusetts got married? The 2 or 10 or 50 years you have spent together are now less meaningful? If that is really the case then that indicates that there must be some other problem in the marriage. To me, a marriage is a very personal convenant between two people. You promise to love, honor, and respect. Those words mean something very real, and sometimes something very different to different people. Ideas about what makes a marriage real vary widely between couples and between different cultures. It's about an emotional bond that you choose to make with another person out of love. How you choose to cherish that bond has no relation to how other people choose to do so, regardless of their sexual orientation.

2) "What about civil unions? We'll give them civil unions!" I'm all for civil unions. For some people, that is all the committment they want or need. Straight couples would call this "common law marriage". And I think that the granting of civil unions by several states is an important step on the path to change and equality for all. But it smacks a little too much of "separate but equal" to me. I think most people would agree that there is a difference between a common law marriage and a marriage. The legal rights are similar, but the emotion behind the two terms is vastly different. Common law marriage says "I want to share my life with you right now, as long as it remains convenient and we're both happy". Marriage says "I want to share my life with you forever". It often involves a religious ceremony as two people commit themselves to each other before God or some other deity. It also involves non-religious traditions as each person's family formally welcomes a new member. It's not the same thing, and trying to pretend it is is insulting.

3) "God hates gay people" - The modern world's God always seems to be busy hating somebody. Whether it's the gays, or the Kurds, or the Americans (yeah, that's right, God hates Americans too), or the Moslims, or the Catholics, or the Protestants, or whoever. The shortest verse in the King James Bible is "God is love". I'll admit I don't know much about other religious texts but I'm sure the essence of that idea is in most of them. I don't think God hates anyone, but it's a lot easier to say that God hates someone than to admit that, in fact, you are the one doing the hating. Stop using God as your scapegoat and take responsibility for your own thoughts about the world!

4) "My church is totally OK with gay people, we love them! But sex is for procreation only, and only between a man and a woman, and only within the context of marriage. So, you can only get married to procreate, and so we won't let gay people do it. But we're totally cool with the celebate gays!" So, I'm a Catholic, and the Catholics are absolutely the originators of this idea. While I completely disagree with it, I think that one of the coolest things about America is that our legal system allows us to completely bypass this issue. The founding fathers knew what they were doing on that one, when they talked about the separation of church and state. No governing body can tell your church what it can and cannot do, and who it can and cannot marry. In fact, at least in the Catholic church, the priest can still refuse to marry straight couples who confess to having had sex before marriage. This usually doesn't happen, as most priests accept the idea that there would be almost nobody getting married in the church anymore if they actually acted on that. But there are still a few priests who do, and if you're a couple who finds yourself in this situation, then you have to go and find another priest who will consent to marry you. The same thing kind of applies to gay marriage, if you are not comfortable with the idea, you are free to worship in a place that does not allow gay marriage. If you are comfortable with it, you are free to worship in a place that does. You are free to pay L Ron Hubbard to tell you all about Xenu, or to await rescue from the alien mothership, if that is what makes you happy. And even though I support gay marriage, I respect the rights of other people who do not share my views to worship in a place that is more in line with the way they view the world.

But you have to accept that the reverse part of that separation also applies. Namely, no church can tell the government what it can and cannot do. No church is allowed to force America as a whole to accept its particular doctrine. This is why we do not have a national religion. Freedom of religion is one of the major tenets on which this country was founded. But freedom of religion does not mean I am free to have my religion because mine is right but you are not because yours is wrong. Marriage is still primarily a religious ceremony in a large part of this country, and the government is not free to tell churches who they can and cannot marry. But churches are not free to say just because you can't get married here means you can't get married anywhere. Actually this logic applies to #3 as well. Just because your God hates gay people doesn't mean mine has to as well.

5) "If we allow the gays to marry, the next thing you know a) everyone will be forced into a same sex marriage or b) people will be wanting to marry goats!!!!!!! GOATS!!!!!!" Yep, if we let Rosie O'Donnell get married, she's coming to marry YOU! And there's nothing you can do about it! Right..... and if you can't tell the difference between a human being and a goat getting married, then you've got other problems that you probably should be dealing with. There's just no accounting for stupidity sometimes. And I say that in full understanding that the liberals are often equally as stupid, that kind of thing goes both ways.

Those are the major excuses that bug me, because I feel like they're just all different ways for people to pawn their discomfort and bigotry off onto someone else.

The other thing I don't understand about this whole thing is just kind of a general point that I feel about a lot of issues that this country often tries to solve by passing laws. What gives one person the right to vote on taking another person's rights away? You've got to accept that people in this world are going to live their lives in ways that are different from how you live yours. But they have the right to do so. This comes into play a lot about the issue of abortion. My personal feeling is that I probably would never have one, I don't think I could handle doing that emotionally. But I don't have the right to tell other people that they have to deal with that kind of a situation the same way I would. For another woman, perhaps having a baby is not something she would be able to handle emotionally and abortion would be the right choice. Being gay is not a choice, but the same kind of logic applies. Just because I don't want to marry a woman doesn't mean that I have the right to tell someone else that she can't.

OK that's my rant. I promise to get back to cheerfully critiquing bad Lifetime movies soon!