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May 15, 2008
Gaylifornia Dreaming
My Chicago Tribune alert brings me the latest court insanity, from the West Coast. Let's just close down our legislatures, burn or toss our voting booths, and swear fealty to the justices of the courts. Four to three, "gays" can "marry" out there.
Posted by James M. Kushiner at 01:49 PM | Permalink
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Jim,
I hate to break this to you, but the insanity is a lot closer to your home than you might like to think. Are you aware of HB1826 now pending in the Illinois legislature, which would create civil unions in your state? According to today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, unwed, heterosexual senior citizen couples are also supporting this legislation in league with gays and lesbians. See Civil unions bill gets seniors' support, available at http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/illinoisnews/story/F01EEB0926D3C0D38625744A00126910?OpenDocument
Posted by: GL | May 15, 2008 2:29:52 PM
It is tyranny, plain and simple.
The judges acted far beyond the character of their office.
They should be ignored on the ruling, and brought up on charges of tyranny.
Posted by: labrialumn | May 15, 2008 4:31:28 PM
Oh, my....
Any room for me back East?
Posted by: Bill R | May 15, 2008 4:55:31 PM
Agreed, Bill. Let's get out of here!
All the same, "Gaylifornia" is a bit beneath Mere Comments, isn't it?
Posted by: Bob | May 15, 2008 5:03:16 PM
To borrow a phrase from FDR, circa Pearl Harbor Day, 1941, this date, May 15, 2008, is a day that will live in infamy.
Posted by: Bill R | May 15, 2008 5:24:05 PM
>>>All the same, "Gaylifornia" is a bit beneath Mere Comments, isn't it?<<<
It’s the edge of the world
And all of western civilization
The sun may rise in the east
At least it settles in a final location
It’s understood that Hollywood
Sells Californication
The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Posted by: Bobby Neal Winters | May 15, 2008 5:46:07 PM
Bobby--
Yes, "Californication", but it's by RHCP. With apologies to James A., don't you know that the Peppers and their ilk produce rock music, which is evil? Clearly beneath Mere Comments.
On a more serious note, my dirty little secret is that I actually enjoy Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and I recall a guest on The Daily Show who was (gasp!) against gay marriage! Jon Stewart said he'd already lost--that is, the battle for the sanctity of marriage was over. His reply? "Oh, I know I've lost because of the courts, and it's just matter of the judges throwing their liberal weight around." Stewart responded with: "No, it's a matter of whether or not you accept homosexuality as part of the human condition and not some freak perversion." The audience cheered their ignorance.
I can accept homosexuality as part of the human condition. Just as I accept theft and murder and addiction as part of the human condition. The government's responsibility is not to run individual lives, but to oversee, secure and maintain a society. Therefore, it is perfectly possible for me to tell a certain friend of mine we will call X that I don't think he should ever be allowed to marry, because of what marriage is and what it is not. That a homosexual union can not produce children and therefore does not contribute in the least to our society or its continuation (preservation), but moreover undermines the natural order of things. X understands this, and even agrees with my point on a rational level. It is, unfortunately, more "personal" than philosophical for him, but he is not so blind as to miss the damage it poses.
He is, of course, free to pursue his "happiness" (even if the Declaration didn't establish any law, I hope we can all agree to it in principle), and therefore government cannot prohibit his choice of a life partner. They can, and should, however, protect society--which includes not allowing gays the benefits of heterosexual couples because they really aren't the same. When a gay man knows that much, why is it that his peers and the courts can't follow suit?
Posted by: Michael | May 15, 2008 6:30:32 PM
>>>>>All the same, "Gaylifornia" is a bit beneath Mere Comments, isn't it?<<<
Even the Archdiocese of Los Angeles Religious Education Congress was a bit more poetic. This year's theme was, "Lift your gaze... See anew."
Posted by: DGP | May 15, 2008 6:37:30 PM
Don't ya just love lawyers in choir robes?
Posted by: Sawyer | May 15, 2008 6:54:51 PM
Lift your gaze, see a gnu? What, was this a blessing of the animals?
Posted by: Margaret | May 15, 2008 7:35:43 PM
Margaret, haven't you heard the gnus? The honorable justices were simply complying with the instructions of the Archdiocese, and they lifted up California's gaze.
Posted by: DGP | May 15, 2008 7:45:04 PM
Marriage is holy. The battle is for people to remember this, that it is for one man, one woman, for life.
The unspeakable abomination that the four decreed against the 40 million, is the equivalent of a black mass, to marriage, and is a deliberate blasphemy against Christ and His relationship to the Church.
It is a hate crime against all Christians, Jews, Muslims, and most traditional peoples around the world.
Posted by: labrialumn | May 15, 2008 10:14:53 PM
Yea, but no one knows how to fight back those bustards.
Posted by: kiplock | May 16, 2008 9:17:28 AM
Kiplock,
Ammending the California constitution is one human option. One which Californians are now responsible to enact, in their vocation as citizens of California, before God.
God has additional options . . . there is a semi-circular bay at the south end of the Dead Sea where once there was a thriving bronze-age civilization. . ..
Posted by: labrialumn | May 16, 2008 10:22:35 AM
>>>He is, of course, free to pursue his "happiness" (even if the Declaration didn't establish any law, I hope we can all agree to it in principle), and therefore government cannot prohibit his choice of a life partner.<<<
A dangerous principle, even though I agree with this particular application. Things that make people happy include consensual polygamy, bestiality, necrophilia, and many other non-coercive acts that the government should continue to prohibit. (However, the grounds for doing so are slipping away rapidly.)
Posted by: Judy K. Warner | May 16, 2008 10:34:39 AM
>>>Yea, but no one knows how to fight back those bustards.<<<
Someone knows and He will in His own good time. In the meantime, I would point out that three decades of attempting to fight back at the ballot box, by petitioning the government and by lawsuit has failed. Does anyone doubt that this nation is in a worse moral condition now than it was three decades ago?
The time has long since passed for Christians to ask themselves how *we* are contributing to the moral demise of our society, confess our part in that decline, repent and work on amending our own lives by His power. I know that I have contributed to our current woes and for that I am truly sorry. I will repeat what I have said several times before, Christians need to do some real self-examination, confession and repentance so that we may, through Him, once again be salt and light in the world. We must remove the logs from our own eyes before trying to remove specks from the eyes of our non-believing neighbors. Doing the same old things will just get the same old results (a slow erosion of the moral foundation of our nation) unless there is also self-examination, confession and repentance on the part of the Church.
A good place to start, then, might be for you and me to pray, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
Posted by: GL | May 16, 2008 11:14:19 AM
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
Well, yes. Always appropriate! The only thing that slows down my sinning is age, which requires me to think up new, and physically easier, sins. I don't doubt your thesis, GL, except that we need to know what, specifically, makes us more wicked today than a generation or two ago. If we're simply repenting of the same ol' sins our parents and grandparents committed, why didn't society go down the toilet then? (Or did I miss that?)
Posted by: Bill R | May 16, 2008 12:36:04 PM
>>>If we're simply repenting of the same ol' sins our parents and grandparents committed, why didn't society go down the toilet then? (Or did I miss that?)<<<
It's a very slow process and has been underway for a long time, so, I am afraid that our parents' and grandparents' sins have contributed to it. Specifically, the idea that same-sex couples should be permitted to "marry" (which, in fact, is anatomically impossible) has its genesis with the idea that heterosexual couples (which are the only ones who anatomically intimacy and procreation. Once that was widely accepted, then it became much more difficult to explain why two men or two women couldn't get married, since procreation was no longer viewed as an essential purpose of marriage. I will once again quote that great theologian, the ABC, Rowan Williams (the man who wants to bring Sharia law to Logres):
In a church that accepts the legitimacy of contraception, the absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous biblical texts, or on a problematic and nonscriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures.
And don't think for a minute that advocates of same-sex marriage don't see the connection. Just last year, such an advocate sought to expose the hypocrisy involved in contracepting couples opposing same-sex marriage by promoting an initiative to limit marriage to couples not only capable of procreation, but who actually did so within a limited period after their wedding. See Wash. initiative would require married couples to have kids, available at http://www.nwcn.com/statenews/washington/stories/NW_020507WABinitiative957SW.546c6a4d.html.
I am not trying to reopen the debate here over contraception, but there is an undeniable connection which pro-same-sex marriage advocates readily see and exploit. Christian couples who contracept absent exigent circumstances should cease doing so before condemning same-sex couples. It's that pesky log and speck thing, you know. And, sadly, our parents and grandparents were largely guilty of getting the ball rolling on that one.
Posted by: GL | May 16, 2008 12:53:15 PM
Apparently, I accidentally deleted part of a sentence, which should have read, "Specifically, the idea that same-sex couples should be permitted to "marry" (which, in fact, is anatomically impossible) has its genesis with the idea that heterosexual couples (which are the only ones who anatomically can marry) could separate marital intimacy and procreation."
Posted by: GL | May 16, 2008 12:57:29 PM
GL, I firmly agree. My wife and I both came to that conclusion some years ago. There really is a correlation between the acceptance of contraception and the acceptance of homosexuality. I suspect this will become blindingly obvious to our descendants (what few remain!) in a generation or two, but alas--too late.
Posted by: Bill R | May 16, 2008 1:08:29 PM
Sadly, Bill, my wife and I were guilty of contracepting during our early years of marriage. It was after Lawrence v. Texas, that I really began asking myself how we got to that point and, after a little studying, it became painfully clear and I, like Pogo, came to the shocking realization that "We have met the enemy and he is us." That is when my wife and I confessed our sin and repented.
Posted by: GL | May 16, 2008 1:16:57 PM
"Sadly, Bill, my wife and I were guilty of contracepting during our early years of marriage."
That was the case with us as well, Greg. When we finally abandoned contraception, we feared for a while that this would result in a pregnancy. After a while, however, we found ourselves wanting more children! But we were never granted that gift. It was, I suppose, a fitting penalty: to be limited to what we once thought was the "blessing" of a smaller family. God has a keen sense of irony.
Posted by: Bill R | May 16, 2008 1:33:11 PM
No, no, it was "Lift your 'gays', see anew!"
Posted by: Joe Long | May 16, 2008 2:15:35 PM
Abandon Not All Hope for California.
I sent this to the 50-Word-Dash column of my local newspaper in Redding, California:
A four-to-three plurality of nine members of California’s Supreme Court rejected the 14 words: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” But in November, you can protect marriage. Vote “Yes” on the same 14 words of the Protect Marriage Amendment to California’s Constitution.
Posted by: David Haddon | May 16, 2008 2:57:24 PM
David,
Good luck and I hope it passes. However, without changes in our culture, it will be just a temporary victory. Polls consistently show that the younger the population surveyed, the more support one finds for same-sex "marriage." If that trend continues, it is just a matter of time until a majority of Americans will favor same-sex "marriage." Already, a majority favor civil unions, which, in fact, give all or nearly all of the same rights and privileges as marriage does, without the name.
Once a majority of states recognize same-sex civil unions (if not before) and when the mix on the Supreme Court looks favorable, there will be a case before it to find that state laws (including state constitutional provisions) prohibiting same-sex "marriages" violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the "right to privacy" created in Griswold v. Connecticut.
These political and legal efforts are all well and good, but they are dealing with symptoms of the disease, not its causes. Absent a return by Christians to the traditional Christian ethic on family and sex, your efforts to resist, long-term, are doomed.
Posted by: GL | May 16, 2008 3:13:23 PM
>>>Polls consistently show that the younger the population surveyed, the more support one finds for same-sex "marriage."<<<
This falsely assumes, however, that one's views do not change with age. In fact, they do (which is why I think the voting age should be forty--and the franchise limited to male property holders, but that's another matter). As (I think) Churchill said, "If you are not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at forty, you have no brain" (OK. I admit it--I'm heartless. But you all knew that). He was onto something. Poll after poll shows people become more conservative with age, with a major shift in outlook coming precisely with marriage, and above all, parenthood (A conservative is a liberal with a daughter in middle school). Married men are more conservative than single men. Married women are more conservative than single women. Married women with children are just to this side of Atilla the Hun. Divorced women revert to their teens. I don't know what happens to divorced men.
So, to say that because younger voters TODAY favor gay marriage more than their elders means nothing. In ten years time, it is likely that, with a few years of experience under their belts, those same young voters, now in their thirties, will have real second thoughts about the wisdom of gay marriage.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | May 16, 2008 3:38:21 PM
Stuart,
Of course, you have a point, but the trend line is obvious and, again, a majority of Americans already favor civil unions. Even if that only led to same-sex civil unions and never to marriage, it would just be a matter of labeling, the substance would be the same as far as the law is concerned (which is what is at issue here).
However, if you know anything about how all these social changes have worked their way through the court system, it is largely by gaining incremental victories over a period of years at the state level and then, at the right time, seeking a constitutional review in front of the Supreme Court that proponents of change were able to get laws against contraception in marriage, contraception outside of marriage, contraception by minors, abortion and sodomy declared unconstitutional. They also engage in sophisticated media indoctrination of the public to soften up the resistance. They are now following the same strategy on same-sex marriage.
Posted by: GL | May 16, 2008 3:48:20 PM
Married women with children are just to this side of Atilla the Hun.
Tha's why I call her "Huney"
:-)
Posted by: W.E.D. Godbold | May 16, 2008 3:59:34 PM
"I don't know what happens to divorced men."
Neither do their ex-wives.
Posted by: Bill R | May 16, 2008 4:36:51 PM
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