Tag: First Amendment

157. canonize

I started this as an email to my friend Christy, but figured I’d share it as an open letter instead.

Basically, here’s my pitch for voting NO on the constitutional marriage amendment in Minnesota — even for Christians.

Contrary to how it’s framed, this amendment isn’t about voting to legalize same-sex marriage. If it doesn’t pass on Tuesday, it still won’t be legal on November 7. There will still be a law in place. It’s about limiting the rights of citizens in order to enshrine a religious doctrine: i.e., God’s design for marriage is 1 man + 1 woman. It’s forcing the Minnesota constitution to take sides in a religious debate. This is a violation of the First Amendment, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

If there were secular reasons for banning same-sex couples from marriage, it would be one thing. But there aren’t any.

I’ve been through the “evidence” from Minnesota for Marriage, and it’s highly suspect.

  • Churches won’t be forced to marry same-sex couples. (Actually, in every state where same-sex marriage is legal there is specific language in the laws prohibiting religious institutions and clergy from being forced to perform same-sex ceremonies.)
  • Christians won’t be fired from jobs for speaking out against same-sex marriage or gay people.
  • Children won’t be taught about same-sex marriage in school any more than they’re already being taught about heterosexual marriage.

It’s all scare tactics.

The CDC released a study in 2010 on the results of a 6-year study that found that the only factor researchers could identify for raising healthy children is a two-parent home. The gender of the parents was not a factor for success. Children of same-sex parents were just as happy and healthy as those raised by opposite-sex parents.

If this were about protecting marriage, we’d be banning divorce. If it were about protecting family, we’d be incentivizing marriage by limiting it to couples who are able to or choose to produce children. But infertile couples are free to marry, just as couples who don’t get pregnant are also free to. And they’re free to marry and divorce as many times as they like. Yet same-sex couples can’t even get married once.

So for me this is about returning sanctity to marriage. When I want to make that kind of commitment, it’s not because I can. It’s because I will want to share my life with someone in a very meaningful way. After all, what is it that has kept same-sex couples together for decades when there was no incentive to do so? Most had to keep their relationships a secret, or had to live in insular communities where they could be safe. If anti-gay conservatives are right and relationships are just about sex for gays, why shackle yourself to one person when you could be out enjoying the smörgåsbord?

When a heterosexual person gets married, they are unwittingly bestowed with over 1,138 federal rights and benefits from the government. (There are 515 laws in MN that discriminate against same-sex couples.) It’s like the government sneaks a huge binder in amongst all the wedding present.

  • You can’t be compelled to testify against your spouse in court. I would be compelled to testify against Jay since the law would consider us “roommates.”
  • You’re entitled to the disposal of your spouse’s body and property in the event of death. If Jay and I bought a house together and his parents didn’t approve of our relationship, they are legally entitled to swoop in and take everything if he were to die, and I would have no legal rights over how to bury him. There are awful, heartbreaking stories about this. Heterosexual couples don’t have to have lawyers to ensure this doesn’t happen.

There’s more. Believe me. (Check out www.project515.org.) So how is all of this not discrimination against committed, same-sex couples? Why is the relationship between a man and a woman so different that gay people need to be excluded from marriage?

Marriage will NOT be redefined when same-sex couples are permitted to marry. (Yes, I said when.) Predictions made when Loving v. Virginia hit the Supreme Court in 1967 are being made today — and society is still standing. Bottom line: we’re not asking the government to redefine anything. We merely want to be included, the same as everyone else. The Supreme Court even called marriage a civil right:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival.

Last night during the Minnesota Public Radio marriage amendment debate, Kerri Miller asked Brian Brown what the consequences would be if same-sex marriage were legalized. He kept changing the subject and speaking in generalities, but he couldn’t name specifics. Instead, he kept kept bringing up the Bible — but this isn’t about religion. It’s about law.

Constitutions should expand the rights of citizens, not limit them. This amendment not only expands the role of government in permanently banning same-sex couples from marrying, it also enshrines a religious belief and the prejudices of those who hold it, enabling them to discriminate with impunity.

This is about the Golden Rule: do to others as you would be done by. Would you want someone voting on who you can’t marry? I don’t think so.

Resources:

American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota:

Marriage Matters

Minnesotans United for All Families

Project 515

RationalWiki

Southern Poverty Law Center

127. pettifog

pettifog, verb: 1. To bicker or quibble over trifles or unimportant matters. 2. To carry on a petty, shifty, or unethical law business. 3. To practice chicanery of any sort.

For a bunch of puritanical prudes who object to every manner of sexual deviance (at least according to their narrow and hysterical definitions), they certainly do seem obsessed with the subject.

To the point where I’m tempted to say, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

In case you’ve been living in the darkest parts of the Peruvian jungle for the past year, there’s been a bit of buzz in the news lately about contraception and its moral turpitude (or lack thereof, depending on who you ask).

Last week seven states filed lawsuits against the federal requirement that religious employers offer health insurance coverage that includes contraceptives and other birth control services. Surprise of all surprises, the Catholics are at the epicenter of it all.

The “Blunt Amendment” (so named for its author, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-MO) would have achieved just that end, allowing “employers and insurers to opt out of portions of the president’s health care law they found morally objectionable.” Which could cover just about anything. Find some spurious support in your holy book for why your so-called god finds such-and-such practice morally reprehensible and voilà! you now don’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else.

Thankfully, today the Senate rejected the effort to reverse the Obama administration’s policy in a 51-48 vote.

The funny thing is that these employers and insurers have qualms about offering birth control to their female employees (merely offering, mind you, not requiring every single woman to accept it), but have no qualms about accepting government money to, for example, run hospitals. Including Catholic hospitals, which are not private institutions.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

I’m all for freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The First Amendment is one of the core values of this country, that you can say and believe anything you like (given certain reasonable restrictions, of course—hate speech, inciting violence, supporting terrorism, defamation and infringing on intellectual property are not protected), regardless of how insane.

However, your right to free speech ends where it begins to tread on the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. You don’t have the right to kill me because your prophet commanded you to kill the infidels. You don’t have the right to lock me up and attempt to “cure” my gayness because you believe that homosexuality is a sin.

You sure as hell don’t have the right to tell a woman what she can and can’t do with her body. Which is precisely what republicans wanted to do with this amendment, and what conservative legislators wanted to do in Virginia by requiring women to submit to an invasive trans-vaginal ultrasound probing (I turned more gay just typing that) before they can receive an abortion. Fortunately, that bill was also shot down.

Mitch McConnell said on Rachel Maddow’s show last month that “[overcoming Obama’s opposition to their measure] would be difficult as long as [he] is rigid in his view that he gets to decide what somebody else’s religion is.”

Hello, Pot—meet Kettle. That’s precisely what they’re trying to do—imposing a Christian sexual ethic on the entire country. “Freedom of religion” does not come with an asterisk and the caveat, “*so long as Jesus died for your sins.”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines chicanery as “deception by artful subterfuge or sophistry.” It defines subterfuge as “deception by artifice or strategem in order to conceal, escape, or evade.”

And that is precisely what is going on with these measures, with the One Million Moms movement, with John Piper, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the conservative religious establishment. They know that their bigotry wouldn’t stand up in court if they actually came right out and said that they just didn’t like gays, don’t like to see two men or two women kissing or holding hands, and certainly don’t like even the idea of a gay couple getting married. So instead they point to things like the historical tradition of marriage, and the fact that only a heterosexual coupling can produce offspring. When all else fails (though this is increasingly becoming their first line of offense), they drag out the First Amendment and claim that allowing gays to marry will infringe on their Freedom of Religion.

Even though lawmakers in Maryland specifically stated that no one would be forced to marry a gay couple, provide pre-marital counseling, etc.

Just as no one would be required to accept contraceptives from their employer. This isn’t Brave New World. Nowhere in the policy were “Malthusian belts” mentioned. Employers only have to make contraceptives available.

But that’s not what’s really going on, as any magician will tell you when explaining how to do a bit of slight of hand. Religious conservatives are trying to hold on to whatever power and influence they have. For almost two thousand years the Church was able to direct the personal and sexual lives of its followers with promises of heavenly rewards, and threats of divine, eternal retribution.

They are terrified now that people are taking more charge of their own lives and decisions, and like an overbearing, controlling parent, they’re threatening to take away the T-Bird. Only I think they really know that it’s not their car to take away, and that they only ever had as much control as we gave them.

But they’re not for a moment going to let on that they know that we know that they know.

On the issue of contraception and the federal mandate that all employers (not excluding the ones who don’t want to follow the rules like everyone else) must provide access to birth control through their health insurance plans—if you don’t want to do that, find another source of funding. If you’re going to accept government money, then like any employee you are obligated to do things your employer’s way.