Here are a couple of interesting columns by supporters of gay marriage who believe the California Supreme Court's decision was imprudent.
The majority is not always right, and in that instance, I thought the majority was wrong. But democracy doesn't say the people will always be right. It merely says they have the right to decide most matters of public policy. Here, by contrast, the California Supreme Court says the citizenry has no right to define marriage the way it has been defined by custom and law for eons.[snip]
Prudence and caution, which are virtues in the executive and the legislative branch, are no sin in the judiciary, either. What those attributes dictated here is that the court give civil unions a fair interval to show their merits or flaws in practice, rather than rushing in to pronounce them inadequate.
The justices would have been wise to mark time while the people of California continued on their path toward full equality for gays. Instead, the court has practically exhorted them to stop the journey. Opponents of gay rights have mounted a drive to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November, which stands a good chance of passing.
The exercise may end up not only overturning the Supreme Court's presumptuous decree but hardening public attitudes against the whole idea for years to come. In time, Californians would probably be inclined to embrace gay marriage. But if you insist they go there today, don't be surprised if they refuse.
If history and tradition had constrained us, equal rights for African-Americans would never have become law.But to find a constitutional right to gay marriage, the California majority chose to argue that the state's very progressive law endorsing domestic partnerships for homosexuals -- it grants all the rights of marriage except but the name -- was itself a form of discrimination.
This is odd and potentially destructive. As Justice Carol Corrigan argued in her dissent, "to make its case for a constitutional violation, the majority distorts and diminishes the historic achievements" of the state's Domestic Partnership Act.
That's true, and in many states, it will take years for a political and legal consensus in favor of gay marriage to develop. In the interim, civil unions or domestic partnerships are the best hope homosexuals in these states have for some form of legal recognition for their relationships. The danger is that foes of civil unions will use the court's own logic to argue that such arrangements are not a political halfway house but lead inexorably to gay marriage. It would be unfortunate if California's breakthrough were used to stall significant if more modest progress elsewhere.
There is a complicated interaction between court decisions and the working of democratic politics. On the one hand, there are times when only the courts can vindicate the rights of minorities. On the other hand, rights are more firmly rooted when they are established or ratified by democratic majorities. In the case of gay marriage in California, a majority could still overturn this decision by amending the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage -- and a proposition to this effect is likely to appear on this fall's ballot.
Corrigan stated flatly that she personally supports gay marriage but argued that in a democracy, "the people should be given a fair chance to set the pace of change without judicial interference." She added: "If there is to be a new understanding of the meaning of marriage in California, it should develop among the people of our state and find its expression at the ballot box."
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goodguyex,
Quoting frmo the Catholic League is akin to asking the KKK what they think about equal rights for blacks and expecting to get an unbiased answer. I ain't Catholic. Why should what they say have any influence on my life? And would you rely on any witness from the Unitarians?
David Blankenhorn has written about this in a new book, The Future of Marriage. Even though he is a lifelong gay rights supporter and liberal Democrat, he is against gay marriage. Why? Because, he says, across history and many cultures, the fundamental reason for marriage has been family – the proposition that children need a mother and a father. The state has an interest in preserving marriage because of what it does for children, and, in turn, for society. When marriage ceases to be about CHILDREN and becomes about COUPLING, it is not good for children, not good for society, and is no longer in the state's best interest.
He uses the example of Scandanavia, where gay marriage has become normalized:
"We can see the connection between same-sex marriage and illegitimacy in Scandinavian countries. Norway, for example, has had de-facto same-sex marriage since the early nineties. In Nordland, the most liberal county of Norway, where they fly “gay” rainbow flags over their churches, out-of-wedlock births have soared—more than 80 percent of women giving birth for the first time, and nearly 70 percent of all children, are born out of wedlock! Across all of Norway, illegitimacy rose from 39 percent to 50 percent in the first decade of same-sex marriage.
Anthropologist Stanley Kurtz writes, “When we look at Nordland and Nord-Troendelag — the Vermont and Massachusetts of Norway — we are peering as far as we can into the future of marriage in a world where gay marriage is almost totally accepted. What we see is a place where marriage itself has almost totally disappeared.” He asserts that “Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.”
Back to Blankenhorn, who reports this same trend in other countries. International surveys show that same-sex marriage and the erosion of traditional marriage tend to go together. Traditional marriage is weakest and illegitimacy strongest wherever same-sex marriage is legal.
"You might say, “Correlation doesn’t always indicate causation!” Yes, but often it does. Is there any doubt that liberalizing marriage laws impacts society for the worse? You need look no further than the last 40 years of no-fault divorce laws in the United States (family disintegration destroys lives and now costs tax payers $112 billion per year!)."
So, those of you who enjoying mocking heterosexuals who "fear" gay marriage will destroy their own are missing the point. It's not about protecting MY marriage... it's about protecting the INSTITUTION of marriage by keeping its founding principle (family and children) front and center. Contrary to what homosexual activists assume, the state doesn’t endorse marriage because people have feelings for each other. The state endorses marriage primarily because of what marriage does for children and in turn society.
Since this thread has broadened to include the normalcy (normality?) of homosexuality, whether it should be taught to school children as normal, etc., let me throw in my two cents.
True story. After college I continued to live close to campus. I got to know a freshman, who was thus several years younger than me. He and I became close friends.
He was a talented artist, and a deeply troubled young man. He had learning disabilities, including dyslexia. He suffered from depression. And he often used drugs, only to forswear them, and then to fall back into the habit. I did my best to give him good advice, encourage him to stay off the drugs, let him sleep over when he was going through a depressive phase, etc.
He started spending a lot of time with a group of friends at school who were gay. And they did their best to convince him that he himself was gay. He wrestled with this, and began to believe what they insisted on. They kept pressuring him to admit his identity, come out of the closet, start enjoying his freedom from societal norms, etc.
Personally, I just didn't see it. My friend seemed too conflicted for it to be so simple. I thought he was troubled about many things that had nothing to do with sexual orientation, and that the pressure he was being put under by his gay friends was unhealthy, and even coercive.
Eventually he decided that he was not gay. And his gay friends basically rejected him and made his life miserable. They considered him to be a coward who was dishonest about his true nature. Because of his problems with depression and drugs, my friend eventually dropped out of school, moved away, and I have not been able to locate him since.
This is why I don't want children and young people taught about homosexuality as "normal." I don't want kids who are going through their own person struggles and problems to become convinced of something that is not true. I don't want them coerced into a lifestyle that is not an honest one. I don't want teachers trying to "help" young people be faithful to their sexual orientation, when in fact those teachers might be mistaken.
If schools have the right to teach homosexuality is normal, I fear the consequences for the many troubled youth who may become convinced that they are gay, when they are really not.
"I don't know of a single gay person who is legally barred from marrying a consenting member of the opposite sex"
Yeah, gawd forbid people should actually be allowed to marry the person they love and want to marry, eh? Yeah, let's have more false marriages. That'll help. (Not.)
You miss my point; my point was, no more and no less, that marriage as currently defined isn't denied to anybody. From my point of view, what is sought is not an extension of rights but a reformulation of what something intrinsically means. To put it another way, I would define marriage intrinsically as a 2-person heterosexual union, as opposed to defining marriage as a relationship upon which we just happen to have a heterosexual restriction with an arbitrary number for purposes of privilege. You may claim that's a distinction without a difference; I don't see it that way.
I think we can agree that an intrinsic characteristic of motherhood is being female, yes? As a man, I might be able to insist that my (as yet hypothetical) children call me "mother" (and they might even do so voluntarily with a two-syllable extension on the end in their teen years), but it would be a spurious appellation at best. I can be a father, I can be a parent, but I can't be a mother without a ground-up redefinition of what the word means.
Going along with that set of premises, I find that I increasingly buy the argument that the state, under the current set of cultural circumstances, has no particular dog in the fight of defining the word "marriage" one way or the other, and that everybody might be better off with the state getting out of the marriage business altogether. Words have meaning, but it's not up to the government to publish a dictionary.
"If homosexuals want to argue that they should have the same right to that [the legal benefits that come with marriage] as anybody else -- frankly, they have us there."
I have always argued for nothing more, less or other than "the same right" as you have, Richard. Thanks for being gracious in your admitted defeat.
Well, if you're going to use brackets, at least use them to actually convey the whole of what I said, not what you decided to cherry-pick. Therefore:
"If homosexuals want to argue that they should have the same right to that [institutionally-legitimized sex with legal benefits] as anybody else -- frankly, they have us there."
Jim:
You mischaracterize a good deal of what I said. Effectively, I was suggesting that certain amount of self-reflection on the part of heterosexuals (including myself) as to whether or not we're truly walking our own talk might not be a bad plan. If we're not, then perhaps we should focus on doing so ourselves first rather than joining our voices to an already too-shrill cacophony and pointing fingers at other people.
Richard
I was intrigued by MargaretE's actual data from the real world, insofar as Scandinavia exists in the real world. The question it brought to my mind is why, in a marketplace of ideas, is traditional marriage faring so badly? Why does it need the vast power of the state and religion to enforce it? Is there something about traditional marriage such that most people, given the choice, don't want to do it? And what is that something?
The second thought about Nordland etc was--so what? The only effect stated was an increase in illegitimate, ie out-of-wedlock, children. And so? Are these children unloved? Uncared for? Developmentally hampered? Prone to antisocial behavior? Those kinds of effects, if they exist, is the proof that is needed to justify enforcing traditional marriage, apparently against the desires of the people if only they were given a choice. I am myself a fan of heterosexual child-rearing, since I have done it myself, but I am not so vain as to imagine there is no other way to do it. Perhaps the Nordlanders have found a way to have a happy and peaceful society without the risks inherent in traditional marriage.
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