Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Civility and Civil Rights

Civil rights.

I find it interesting that when we speak of civil rights, many of us are neither civil nor right. Rather than exhibit the qualities of which Jesus Christ preached, or which Mohammed taught, or of which the Buddha spoke, we cast aspersions and denigrate and degrade others. I find myself guilty.

I am not a religious person; I am not a believer that the Bible is holy or that the words went from a god's mouth to Esther’s ear, although Esther might have thought so (Reading Book 1 of Esther leads me to believe that divorce is an okay thing, which is not what I learned from Sister Mary Oliphant.). I am not gay. I have been married for over 30 years to the same woman. I really would like to know what overriding governmental interest is served by barring gay marriage.

The social institution of marriage has been around for a long time. I could have done more research on the subject of the origins of the tradition, but I didn't; and I am guessing that the one major in Sociology that I had in college probably had a course on marriage, which probably gave me the answer, but that was way before the turn of the century and very difficult to remember.

I know that arranged marriages used to be the thing. The monarchies that existed in Europe were built on the practice, which turned out to be a lot of in-breeding, until the mid-to-late 1800's. So, marriage, rather than the voluntary union of two individuals, was the forced joinder of two persons for economic or political gain. Arranged marriages, the bedrock of many societies for many centuries, is now frowned upon by nearly all societies in favor of marriage based on the free choice of those who love each other, those who have genuine affection for each other, true trust of each other, shared values between each other, all of which are part of a true marriage relationship.

A wedding vow between two relative strangers does not create a true marriage relationship from what had existed, that is, nothing. There is no magic wand. Although words can create a ceremonial marriage, whether it be in a faith-based ceremony, a civil ceremony, or whether it be in private between two individuals, there are no words that can create a true marriage founded on love, affection, trust, honor, and shared values.

In the past and in many lands today, women who married became the property, the chattel, of their husbands and were unable to act for themselves. Women could not transact business and could not own property independent of their husbands.

In this country, at least, and maybe elsewhere, like in Canada, too, wives are not considered property and can act independently, although there are still barriers for women with respect to the marketplace, in jobs, earning potential, and the manner in which they are treated. In this country, although the Equal Rights Amendment was never enacted, laws against discrimination on account of sex have been passed as a part of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, which provides a remedy for the victims of discrimination on account of sex, among other things.

Marriage used to be a permanent bond from which there was no "escape," but now we allow divorce (I will not comment upon the use of the term "escape," when I realize that there are economic ties, offspring ties, and lasting emotional ties that do not really make divorce an "escape.").

Marriage was, until relatively recently, restricted along racial and religious lines, while now people of different races and religions are free to marry. Although some states still have laws on the books that outlaw marriage between persons of different racial groups, those laws and the attendant restrictions have been thought by many to be anathema to our sense of personal freedom.

Personal freedom. Where do we get the idea of personal freedom? It has a long history and has evolved, with each generation grafting its own ideas and meaning to the philosophy.

The founding fathers of the United States of America, with the Bill of Rights, tried to restrict the control of the government over what they considered significant personal freedoms of individuals. Unfortunately, written into the Constitution were concessions to various conventions that existed which did not meet the lofty ideals and goals that were mentioned in the Declaration of Independence as being the reason for such a declaration and the blood spilled for "freedom."

The Bill of Rights was felt by many to be inadequate to protect personal freedoms. After the War Between the States, the United States Constitution was amended. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states, in part, that:

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.

What's that all mean? The meaning, never really clear, has evolved over the years. Be that as it may, those rights that "are essential to the concept of ordered liberty" are those that are protected by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

And what does that mean? Rights essential to the concept of ordered liberty or to the American scheme of justice are those so rooted in the tradition and conscience of our people as to be called fundamental. Llke marriage.

Those who would want to restrict the definition of marriage would claim that marriage of one man and one woman is rooted in the tradition and conscience of the American public. But should people who make that commitment to each other founded on love, affection, trust, honor, and shared values be denied the protections of marriage just because they are of the same sex?

Homosexuality is not a new phenomenon. It is not an illness. It doesn't rub off on someone who is a heterosexual. It is within the spectrum of the normal human condition. The percentage of those who are homosexual has remained relatively constant through the centuries. It appears from some research that homosexuality is genetic in origin. But there is some kind of religious thing out there that I don’t understand. Homosexuality is, I’m told, outlawed by the Bible as an abomination. I’m trying to figure out under the theory of intelligent design what purpose the designer had in making people homosexuals, if it’s such a bad idea. And if God did it … why did He say it’s an abomination. It makes no sense to me ... God loves all his children, doesn’t He? I’m going to stop right here because I’m confused about these religious things and evolutionary theories and natural selection.

Let’s look at this stuff another way. My President is planning, according to one of his buddies, Karl Rove, is going to push a Constitutional amendment defining marriage or banning gay marriage. A marriage amendment to the United States Constitution was proposed last year in this form:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the Constitution of any State, nor State or Federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

Backers of the amendment never mustered close to an adequate number of votes to bring the amendment to the states for ratification. In June, 2003, however, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, struck down bans on gay sex, ruling that a Texas anti-sodomy law was an unconstitutional violation of the right to privacy, with right-winger Anthony Kennedy, opining that Texas "cannot demean their [homosexuals] existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

So, what the heck is wrong with gay marriage?

Justice William O. Douglas, long despised by conservatives, is one of my personal heroes. He authored the majority opinion in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, which closed the bedroom doors to state scrutiny in a case striking down a Connecticut law that made the use of any "drug, medicinal article, or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception" a crime. Douglas, writing for the Court, affirmed that marriage was a fundamental right and held the government had no place in regulating behavior in the bedroom. He wrote,

Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.

Even earlier than this elucidation of the right of marital privacy was the statement by the United States Supreme Court that the concept of ordered liberty "denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

Justice Douglas did not pen the opinion to which I cite above. That opinion of the United States Supreme Court was written in 1923 by Justice James Clark McReynolds, a staunch conservative and leader in striking down Roosevelt’s early New Deal framework, who voted against the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Social Security Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act, during the Depression. McReynolds never married and is thought to have been one of the most unpleasant individuals to sit on the high court. He was a racist and anti-Semite; there is no official photo of the Supreme Court for the 1924 term because he refused to sit next to Justice Louis Brandeis as protocol dictated. He brought to us the notion that a part of the liberty we enjoy, one of the self-evident truths upon which this country was founded, is the right to marry.

William O. Douglas has stated, however, that: [T]he rule of law implies equality and justice in its application. … The rule of law, evenly applied to minorities as well as majorities, to the poor as well as the rich, is the great mucilage that holds society together.

Our President, who campaigned prior to the 2000 election, claiming that he was compassionate, that he would unite the country, and who recently said that he would reach out to those who did not vote for him, looks to cater to those with "morals" (I thought one of the Ten Commandments, by which we seem to measure morality nowadays, is "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," which commandment the President has ignored and violated time and time again) and refuses to apply the rule of law even-handedly. Could this be the reason this society is coming apart at the seams? It is the reason that there is a hue and cry against gay marriage.

Justice Douglas, in discussing the City of Jacksonville’s vagrancy laws, spoke of rights not written in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Personal freedoms, one of which is the right to marry, are those unwritten rights, the amenities of life. "These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be non-conformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence."

Gay men and lesbian women have suffered in that hushed, suffocating silence for too long. We must honor love, commitment, affection, true trust, and shared values between two individuals of whatever gender, not by defining "marriage" as between one man and one woman and restricting the right to marry, but by embracing these men and these women, who were "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," by allowing them to enjoy the personal freedoms, the amenities of life, that are part of the liberty we all should enjoy in this country and for which young men and women are dying on foreign soil tonight.

Posted by Bill at November 9, 2004 03:12 AM