I fail to see why gay rights activists don't see the obvious flaw in their strategy of making this a 14th Amendment issue as opposed to an Establishment clause issue - the problem that religious conservatives have with gay marriage (at least the honest ones speaking in good faith) is that it, in theory, forces churches to perform marriages that violate the precepts of their religion, because someone thought it'd be an awesome idea to make make the religious ceremony and the secular contract the same fucking thing.
So to boil it down:
You have Church authorities performing State functions.
Thus, by simply decreeing that gays can get married, you violate the 1st Amendment.
By denying this to gays, you violate the 14th Amendment.
So what is the only reasonable solution? Separate the civil contract from the religious ceremony, remove from the religious authority the State power to legally recognize marriages, so we can stop fucking talking about it already. It's such a simple fucking solution, but apparently, neither the Left nor the Right want to actually try it.
The left doesn't want to do it because gays are just another bean for them to count and to divide into little identity politics Hypenated-american enclaves, and the right doesn't want to do it because we believe "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." To conservatives, words and institutions mean something and are not to be subjected to social experimentation needlessly.
Also, I briefly skimmed Deck's argument, the crux of which is:
Deck Knight said:
The other camp believes that marriage is a societal institution established to encourage the ideal unit for raising children and continuing a functioning society.
, but I *think* what it boils down to is not so much religious prejudice, but another view which *I* find morally repellent, which is the concept of
the State as defender of social order, which is not only deeply un-American (seeing that America is ideologically founded on Enlightenment Classical Liberalism despite its deeply Christian social roots, and the concept noted above is pretty much the
antithesisof Enlightenment Classical Liberalism) but repugnant to my anti-statist sensibilities. There is a reason the Founders refused to establish a national church like the English (despite the English also being a Liberal Enlightenment culture), there is a reason why they limited the power of the State to the unprecedented extent that they did (and keep in mind that the Constitution was a huge step forward in state power compared to the Articles) - there is a reason why the First Amendment was...first (there is a reason why the original text of the Amendment did not place any limits on speech, including speech that might undermine the traditional order - they did not intend any). The original intent of American republicanism is utterly inconsistent with the concept of government defending *any* traditional order, including that of marriage.
Societal institutions and their formation can exist
independent of the state. If the state were to immediately suspend all governmental benefits of marriage or double them, the social meaning of marriage would still be between one man and one woman. Marriage exists as one man and one woman because the overwhelming majority of Americans
live their lives as if it is. It worked for their parents, and their parents parents, and their grandparents parents, and so on and so forth throughout all living memory. You have fallen into the trap you accuse me of slipping into in believing the state is the ultimate arbiter of all institutions. The state as it currently exists reinforces and incentivizes marriage, but does not and indeed,
cannot define it.
No matter how many court cases activist judges win for the proponents of gay marriage, they will never be able to change the idea that marriage is the foundational institution for the creation and rearing of children and therefore, the genders involved in the relationship are foundational to its structure. No amount of legal handwringing can change physical reality. If biology is an insufficient failsafe to the logical apparatus then having the discussion is worthless because one side is not willing to admit a difference in kind between the arrangements. Until one side admits that the genders of the marriage relationship are not interchangable the debate cannot move forward because one side stands obstinantly athwart science. They get wrapped up in the word marriage and not its purpose.
Once you admit their are differences in kind between traditional marriage and gay marriage you can get to the actual substantive grievances of gay couples. They are concerned about hospital visitiations, about inheritance issues, about any of the myriad issues involved in caring for a special loved one. But none of these require a marriage to be properly addressed. In fact all of these concerns are within the purview of individual rights entirely removed from any discussion of sexuality.
And just because this keeps popping up, interacial marriage was also only taboo along one party: The Democratic Party. They still treat it like it's controversial and confusing while conservatives (at least all the ones I have ever known) have grown out of it. Republicans grew out of the Democrat Jim Crowe-Woodrow Wilson-Robert Byrd segregation bean counter model long ago. Interracial marriage and gay marriage are two entirely different things and only get conflated by those who, as outlined above, simply cannot grasp the idea that homosexual relationships are different in kind to heteosexual ones based solely on function. There is nothing inherently wrong with Separate and Unequal. Arguably a greater injustice is to elevate something Unequal to a Co-equal status when it is not. Do you lavish mediocrity the same as excellence, or punish excellence to spare mediocrity? That's nonsensical. Note that in the context of all of these discussions I am referring to the
qualities of the relationship itself, not those who enter it. There are terrible heterosexual couples who by all rights should never have been married and there are morally upstanding monogamous gay couples, but that doesn't change the nature of their respective marriage relationships and their understood social functions. No matter how much fidelity, care, mutual love, trust, understanding, and all the other social values associated with a successful, societally beneficial marriage are exemplified by a given gay marriage, at the end of the day that relationship is about celebrating the love of two deeply committed adults, rather than as the central vehicle for societal continuation in a stable environment. That arrangement is definitely a net positive for society, but it is not a marriage as it is socially known through the instincts of most Americans.
Of course, the idea that the majority gets to decides universal rights, or even the rights under the Constitution, is something that is opposed by both Liberalism and Conservatism; the idea of absolute majority rule is more appropriate to Marxism and Fascism. Again, we look to the founders and notice that not only did they create an "upper house" that originally wasn't even electable by the people, they created a supreme court, also unelectable by the people, AND holding office for life, to interpret the law. Again, the original intent of the Founding was utterly opposed to total majority rule - why else did they put so many roadblocks to it?
Keep in mind majorities were against integration (though I oppose on principle the forced integration of private institutions, though that's a matter for another thread), and integration was essentially enshrined by "judicial activism" (never mind that both sides tend to protest only the judicial activism they dislike - I could point out a whole bevy of Supreme Court opinions that could only be considered judicial activism that conservatives applauded; the refusal to extend 1st Amendment protections to obscene or seditious speech cannot be considered "original intent" in any way, shape or form).
In short, the defenders of traditional marriage will do far more service for their cause by focusing their efforts to strengthen heterosexual love and heterosexual marriage (which is in dire straits at this point in time - culturally it is under assault from all quarters, while the economic incentives for marriage have been undermined for close to half a century, starting with the woefully misnamed "Great Society") than to waste their efforts acting as a vehicle for anti-gay prejudices.
I agree with you entirely on the last point, but you see only people who think marriage has a purpose anymore think like that. If you ask a supporter of gay marriage what the purpose of marriage is supposed to be, they reflexively call you a bigot for even asking the question. Their entire logical structure is that opposition to their pet cause is equivalent to fear and hatred of a class of people. Intellectual dishonesty is their bread and butter. This debate would go a lot more smoothly without drive-bys who simply use the topic of gay marriage to dump their religious bigotry and flit off to troll some other thread with their worthless smarm.
I'm just curious, for all the people who ask (or have asked) me if I know any gay people: Are you that intellectually dishonest that you think support for preserving the definition of a social institution that has been the same in America almost since its inception, that has been the standard for the entirety of nearly everyone's personal experience, is conclusive proof that you have an irrational fear or hatred of homosexuals? Have you ever examined the illogic inherent in that leap or have you glossed over it because that is all you have ever been taught, and it click-whirrs right past your logical apparatus? Just curious.
Not only have I met homosexuals, I went to a Bryant PRIDE meeting exactly because these same intellectually dishonest sorts thought I feared them. I knew they were being facetious when they asked me to come to a meeting but I showed up anyway, and gave constructive advice on their activities. Not that bean counting matters anyway, I don't sort my friends by their sexuality, skin color, or gender first and their character second, they aren't tools for me to pull out in a debate. I grow extremely weary of people who bash Christians day in and day out whining about bigotry and prejudice. I don't fear or hate anyone. Those are worthless, destructive emotions.
I understand the real concerns of gay people and unlike establishment liberals, I do not just view them as a bludgeon to use against religious people and then discard when it comes time to actually do something that would help them. I don't have it in me to be that morally bankrupt. My faith in God does not allow me to. To be truly religious is to be fearless and compassionaite. That is why religious people view marriage so strongly, because ultimately no matter how much damage is done to it we will still persevere, because marriage is written in our hearts, not our laws.
