Part the Second: I decided to see what GayPatriot thought about the whole issue. I'm going to deal with some basic and I think fairly substantive issues about the "arguments" advanced by the president, which is what the post by GayPatriot West focuses on. (There's a lot about slamming the left for name-calling and for refusing to respond thoughtfully to the president's "arguments" which I will deal with in general at the end of this post.
This is pretty much symptomatic of the argument in GayPatriot West's post:
"For ages, in every culture, human beings have understood that marriage is critical to the well-being of families. And because families pass along values and shape character, marriage is also critical to the health of society. Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them. And changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure."
This seems to be the crux of the president’s opposition to gay marriage. So now that he has made this point, it behooves advocates of gay marriage to show how gay marriage could promote the well-being of society. And to show how gay families can pass along values and shape the character of our children. They need to make clear that changing marriage from a union between individuals of different sexes to a union of two individuals would not undermine family structure.
First, the assumptions: "marriage" is the union of a man and a woman. I don't think we can accept that, because that's the very point under debate. That becomes merely an assertion, with no particular weight. "Families" are, apparently, only those social units that involve heterosexual couples and their offspring. That is also under debate -- another assertion. I won't dispute that sound families are important to the well-being of society. What I do dispute is the assumption that only heterosexual couples can pass along "values" and "shape the character of our children." And there is the assumption that recognizing more families as legitimate is going to undermine families as a whole. That one still has me scratching my head.
This, also, is more than a little demonstrative of their willingness to swallow bullshit without chewing:
The president, in two different statements, civilly made his case for a constitutional amendment defining marriage. He made two basic points, (1) that an amendment was necessary so the people, not the courts, could decide this important issue; (2) that changing the definition of marriage would undermine this ancient institution.
Advocates of gay marriage should be taking issue with these two points.
No, the president didn't make a point that the people, not the courts should decide. He merely asserted it, based on a deliberate miscasting of the role of the courts in American governance. (Remember, this is a president who is above the law pandering to supporters who don't like the idea of laws with a rational basis, or frankly, the whole idea of equal rights for everyone.) It's time to trot out one of our basic lessons on the structure of American government: the people have limited, not absolute, sovereignty; laws are measured against the Constitution by the courts, who are solely empowered to rule on the validity of laws against that standard. "Activist judges" simply means, at this point, that the speaker does not agree with their decisions. That's all. If anyone can show me an example of flawed arguments in, for example, Goodridge, I'll be willing to look. Ideological considerations don't count. (It's worth noting that Antonin Scalia's pronouncements on the whole thing, starting with his opposition to Lawrence, are consistently based on asking the wrong questions.)
The whole thing about "changing the defition of marriage" is a mare's nest of half-truths, unwarranted assumptions, and ignorance. It should read "Changing the contemporary definition of marriage as decreed by religious conservatives would undermine their political power." (Actually, it wouldn't -- they'd have fodder to feed an entire generation of sheep.) The definition of marriage that we're asked to accept as "traditional" is not even a definition: "Marriage is a union between one man and one woman." What kind of union? What does it entail? What are the rights and responsibilities of each party? What is its purpose? That's the kind of definition that leads to a 50% divorce rate.
You're also going to have to do some real fast talking to get me to accept the "5,000 year tradition" of this definition. As I tend to ask people who start in on me about "traditional" marriage: Did you father-in-law accept payment in sheep, or did he insist on cattle?
Marriage is and always has been an economic (and sometimes a political) arrangement. No one needs a government to tell them they're married. Government recognition is simply to confirm the economic considerations. Before governments took a hand, it was handled by private contracts. (I might also add that church recognition is sort of a late-comer to the field -- marriage was not a sacrament in the Christian church until the end of the eleventh century. So much for sanctity. Remember, St. Paul, who had a child with a prostitute and then left them both to marry for money, was against sex. He said.)
So, to agree with Gay Patriot West, that does indeed seem to be the crux of the president's opposition to gay marriage (a topic about which, we are advised from other sources, he doesn't really give a s**t, but we do need to energize the base, after all). So, the president has basically said nothing, and GayPatriot is nodding and smiling.
As for the name calling: You have to understand that the FMA is a sham. It has one purpose and one purpose only: energize the base around an emotional issue, without framing any sort of rational debate. It is a tool of demagogues -- Frist, Santorum, Wildmon, Sheldon, Dobson. So the president was herded into throwing a bone to the Christianists, because it's payback time. He doesn't care about FMA, and there are strong elements in the administration who oppose it. For GayPatriot to sit there an slam those who are calling it like it is is beyond ludicrous. Of course it's divisive -- it's meant to be. It's perfectly in line with the Rovian strategy: divide and rule. It's about votes. Period.
The debate is taking place, in ballot boxes, OpEd pages, online discussions, and just about everywhere else, when people can be bothered to stop worrying about gas and food prices, the war in Iraq, identity theft, the erosion of civil rights, and the host of real issues confronting this country right now: it is not on most people's radar, which only points up the true nature of the FMA and the dog and pony show in the Senate.
And, if you want to frame the debate in real terms, you have to start with the legal background, which is what this is all about. State courts have overwhelmingly found that laws limiting marriage to heterosexual couples violate any number of constitutional guarantees. That's the fact, and it starts with Hawai'i in, I believe, 1994. Key point: "constitutional guarantees." Fuck the will of the people. The Founders had no great respect for the will of the people, which is why federal judges are appointed for life: the will of the people is subject to the restrictions embodied in the Constitution, as interpreted by the courts. That's also why it's so hard to amend the Constitution. Let's face it, we are a nation of faddists, and the Founders were too smart to leave the governance of the country completely to the whims of the people.
OK -- you have courts consistently (with, I think, one exception) finding that marriage laws as presently constituted, are discriminatory against a class of people based solely on social prejudice. This is not the first time this has happened. Go look up the decision in Loving vs Virginia (which, incidentally, found that marriage to the partner of one's choice is a fundamental human right). This is not activism -- this is the courts doing their job. In the simplest possible terms, the courts evaluate the law based on the Constitution, the needs of the state, and community standards. The Constitution gets pride of place, and the needs of the state and community standards must demonstrate a critically important interest, based on rational criteria, to override those guarantees. So far, in almost all cases, marriage laws have failed the test. Since Lawrence, it's going to get harder for them to stand up to scrutiny, since that decision severely limits the state's right to interfere in personal consensual relations. (The Christianists are right on that score. Too bad.) It's the natural outgrowth of the decisions in Griswold, Loving, Roe. Basically the government is invited to butt out of our bedrooms.
Frankly, the talk about family and 5,000 year traditions and all this other crap is irrelevant. It's useful to the right because that way they don't have to try to address the real issues involved, which are essentially the same issues that have been involved when we have dealt with any historically disenfranchised group: Can we legitimately and morally continue to exclude this group from the benefits of our society? The Christianists are panicking because the opinion on SSM is getting closer to being evenly divided rather than overwhelmingly against as time goes on, gay couples get married, and the world doesn't end. (And I am biting my tongue, so to speak, to avoid examining the sex-obsession so evident on the right, although it occurs to me that that's another strategy: if the right casts the debate in terms of sex, that means they don't have to admit that gay people love one another just the same way straight people do. It's called "dehumanizing.")
The repeated references to the enactment of anti-marriage amendments in the various states is also a sham. The people have not spoken. Those who have spoken are a majority of those who are likely to be galvanized by the inflammatory rhetoric on this issue and haul their asses out to the polls to vote on it. So, the majority of those people are against SSM. Big surprise. If they weren't, they wouldn't have been there. The fact that they could be motivated by what is to most people a complete non-issue should give you a clue.
Not a lot of critical thinking going on at GayPatriot.
Here's the text of the president's speech, via the White House website. I may go back and fisk it later, but you should at least have the reference.
Well, Mr. President -- it's payback time.
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