Today is the first day that the state of Vermont has allowed "gay marriage" to be permitted. After reading some conservative websites and blogs today, I was amazed at the amount of alarmism--it was like I was listening to a liberal environmentalist discuss global warming. "If we allow gays to get married, it'll bring down the institution of marriage, which will bring down society as a whole." This hot-button issue, of course, is not one to take lightly, especially since I'm a practicing Jew. Nevertheless, it raises important questions. I'm not going to start a discussion here on Judaism and homosexuality--I'll leave that for another day just because it would take up twice the ink that a secular/civil argument would. Plus, America is not a Jewish state, so in the case of Vermont, it's moot. One thing I will say regarding that, though, is that in order to truly be tested, you truly need to be free, free to do a mitzvah as well as free to commit an issur (trasngression), G-d forbid.
The question at hand is the one of whether or not this civil (not religious, but civil) institution dubbed as "gay marriage" will cause ruin to society. As always, I have my two cents.
First of all, we do live in a society where we have the freedom of religion, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution. But we also have an implicit freedom from religion, because if we didn't Fundamentalist Christians would be able to force their religion upon me. As a religious minority, I fear that prospect as much as an atheistic government taking away my G-d-given right to practice Judaism. The Religious Right, of course, will say that the institution of marriage predates the creation of the nation-state and government. But guess what else does? Homosexuality! Look at any ancient society, minus the Israelites, and you'll find that there are varying degrees of homosexuality that were either tolerated, or even more glaring, accepted. It's not as if homosexuality is anything new. What's new is how we respond to the issues at hand.
Second, the notion of freedom is at stake in this discussion. When I used to be a conservative ideologue (admittedly!), "freedom" was a buzzword that was often used, as was the phrase, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." When it came to discussing freedom and abortion, I argue[d] that because there is more than one life at stake, the life of the fetus superseded the mother's temporary inconvenience. When I came to the issue of civil unions (or gay marriage), I was stuck because this did not, in any way, violate the libertarian principle of non-aggression. A homosexual couple co-habiting doesn't violate a heterosexual's couple to commit themselves "until death do them apart." As such, they should be afforded that freedom. As Kinky Friedman so eloquently stated, "I support gay marriage because I believe they have the right to be just as miserable as everybody else!"
Third, gays cannot, from an objective standpoint, be blamed for the downfall of heterosexual marriages. Homosexuals make up roughly 5% of the population. Even if every single one of them married and ultimately divorced (which is such a statistical unlikelihood it's not even funny), that still would leave 90% of divorced couples unaccounted for. If religious people were in any way sincere about ameliorating the current state of marriage, they would identify the real problems to marriage: no-fault divorces, promiscuity, male womanizing, and workaholism. It's clear as day that homosexuals are such a negligible threat to marriage, If you want to improve the institution of marriage rather than partake in scapegoating, you first need to be intellectually honest in terms of identifying the real root problems.
Finally, and I say "finally" only because I don't want this to be longer than it already is, but this is a fine example of how the Tenth Amendment, that being the amendment regarding enumerated states rights, should be used. If Vermont wants this institution and Alabama doesn't, fine! Oddly enough, Alan Keyes would actually agree with me on this point. In addition, I truly think the Founding Fathers were genius in creating this amendment because it gives America the chance to be innovative and try new things. Prohibition would have worked out much better if it hadn't become the 18th Amendment. Let's say that a few states had tried prohibiting alcohol, and it was a complete disaster. The other states would know not to implement it. If it had worked, then the ban on alcohol would have become more widespread. In short, it gives this nation to try something new, and if, for whatever reason, it doesn't work, at least the damage is more isolated. The analogy also implies to gay marriage. Let's face it--we don't have enough studies proving or disproving it. And even the studies we do have to be taken with way more than a grain of salt simply because this is such a hot-button issue. Even though this has already been tried in Scandinavia, Netherlands, and Canada without the sky falling, the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution gives us the objectivity to test and see if it works. For those who are against it, if it doesn't work, then it's isolated in one state, and you'll have all the empirical evidence you'd need. And odds are that it's a "blue state" anyway, so do you honestly think it's a huge loss? If it does work, however, other states can say, "Oh, it worked there, let's see if it'd work here, too." Not only do we get to find the answer to a highly controversial topic, but we also preserve freedom and constitutionality in the process.
I'd be careful Steve with using the phrase "freedom from religion"; because it is often used to keep legitimate private expressions of religion out of the public sphere.
ReplyDeleteI'd add that I prefer civil unions (for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike) to gay marriage as allowing the government to define marriage seems to me to be allowing it to give some kind of moral endorsement to a particular lifestyle; heterosexual, homosexual, or otherwise. Of course you are correct though with the reading that the U.S. Constitution in no way empowers the feds to define marriage one way or the other, however the full faith and credit clause would require all States to recognize marriages created in Vermont.
"Marriage" should simply be treated as a contract between two people. I don't believe the government has any business trying to legislate the morality of purely private and consensual behavior; and this is why the debate centers mainly around marriage as opposed to civil unions, with each side seeking the Government's moral endorsement of their lifestyle.
"Freedom FROM religion" was used because we need to find the balance between allowing we need to strike a balance between total deprival of religious rights and imposing a theocracy, i.e., "freedom OF religion."
ReplyDeleteAs for civil unions vs. gay marriage, I much prefer phrasing it as a civil union. A marriage, by definition, is a religious institution, whereas a civil union, well, is a civil institution. If a religious institution wants to accept a certain civil union, that's fine. But if not, at least one's civil rights aren't eroded in the process.
It is also interesting to point out that a much larger percentage, 65%-70%, depeding on which polls you look at, support civil unions, whereas the concept of "gay marriage" is about as controversial and as close as the controversy surrounding the polls on abortion.