Well, they’re granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples in California.
As always, I don’t know how to feel about this, because my opinions make no one happy. I have no argument with any group which wishes to deny the validity of these unions on religious grounds. But I eschew the fatuous notion that the United States was founded to be a “Christian Nation” in the sense that the founders somehow were a bunch of fundamentalists who looked through the New and Old Testaments, eked out a Constitution from it, and would be shocked at anyone who thought otherwise–that’s basically a total cock and bull fantasy. Separation of Church and State have been raised at times to ridiculous heights by the courts, but ultimately I’m just fine if relationships that most people may not approve of religiously are nevertheless recognized by the state. The state’s job isn’t to set right and wrong, and basic justice and fairness should apply to relationships like this. You don’t have to think homosexuality is great in order to say that it’s simply injust (and, by the way, UnChristian) to treat these people like crap or deny them simple things like property protections and other rights that are taken for granted by others.
All that said, I have no idea what the California Supreme Court was thinking or how it justified this. Isn’t there even an amendment to the California Constitution banning these things? Wouldn’t it have been better to pass something like this legislatively? Isn’t this likely to just give ammunition to conservatives who want to fight activist judges subverting the will of the voters?
Ugh. It gives me a headache. That said, I have a very hard time looking at the 80 year lesbian couple who just want to be left alone and protected from harassment and to keep the ability to share joint property and hospital visitations and shared credit and such, which are rights and privileges automatically given to married couples.
And no, I simply do not believe that marriage was ever a creation of the state, or that state sanction ever did much to strengthen the institution. I see precious little evidence that this has ever been true–the Christian concept of marriage is as something given by God, not by the state of California–so I take a dim view of those who suggest that this sort of thing will mark Yet Another Chip Away From Western Civilization, or similar hysterical right-wing anti-American rot.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 15 comments }
I have to wonder if you think it’s even possible to chip away at Western Civilization. Do you think it has in any way?
Civilizations rise and fall. The West will fall.
I wonder if the Romans thought as you do and only realized their great empire was doomed when it was too late to do anything.
This is another chip. Call me hysterical if you wish but at least I’ve learned the lesson of history and the lesson tells us all powers fall.
And great powers fall from within.
Dean’s position is more moderate than many. It seems to be "civil unions," but save the word "marriage" for the traditional understanding. It’s a reasonable position.
A few thoughts:
The United States was and to some extent is a Christian nation because it was made up of Christians, whose essential virtue was being able to live in a secular republic and restrain their own behavior to a certain extent. Some people mistake this as saying the founders were creating a Christian nation, and I’d say, well, no and yes. No in the sense that the U.S. is clearly a secular republic; yes, in the philosophical sense, that is, the founders believed in certain ways of looking at the world, in terms of natural rights, etc., that flow from a Christian (and to a strong extent Jewish and Greco-Roman) worldview, that informed the underlying concepts of the Constitution.
Â
The Constitution and a secular republic are like a bottle — it matters what you have in the bottle, to say what the Republic is and whether it succeeds. While I think the Constitution is a brilliant document, the people itself could twist its understanding beyond recognition. That’s a harsh thing to say, but it is, unfortunately, true.
Whether the U.S. will fall in our lifetime — I don’t know. My guess is no. Yes, all things pass. Yes, the acceleration of depravity, the attack on fundamental principles, and the sweeping away of our common cultural understandings so essential to a republic have been happening at alarming speed. "Gay marriage" would have been (rightly) laughed at even 15 years ago. Suddenly, it’s near acceptance. Still, there’s a strong underlying culture in this country that will won’t be swept away so easily. That underlying culture is Christian, but it’s also a maturity you don’t see in many cultures.Â
I should note that "gay marriage" is still only one leaf on the tree. I was far more worried about the Democrats’ reaction to the 2000 Florida vote. That showed a lack of personal restraint, an immaturity, and a Third-World mentality toward elections — let’s just count the votes until we win, let’s "interpret" the votes, let’s pretend that the margin of victory was NOT within the margin of error, let’s declare the new president illegitimate. That was a shock to me and a harbinger of dangerous things to come. The mature sense of "close enough, even though we didn’t win, we’ll get ‘em next time" didn’t to occur to them.
FWIW.
Kevin: To whatever extent there is a "Western Civilization" that can be defined, I think it self-evident that on the whole, whatever its shortcomings here and there, it is stronger, more vibrant, more morally upright, and more good than it ever has been . All of that is certainly true of the United States of America, which is a shining beacon of morality, enlightenment, decency, and tolerance, moreso today than it ever has been. Although it is not perfect and never will be perfect. Not in this life anyway.
The Hate-America-First Right do more to chip away at the values that made this country great than two 80 year old lesbians getting a marriage license.
Bill: I honestly don’t care what the government decides to call these relationships when it does the decent, fair thing and extends them reasonable protections. My view is simply that it’s entirely reasonable for religious groups to object and to decide whether to recognize these relationships religiously or not. But, as much as I think it’s the fair, decent thing to do, at the same time I’m not comfortable when the courts just mandate that these relationships get the state protections they deserve. I think it’s unhealthy in the long run (and it has, so far anyway, proven to have a deliterious backlash effect) when the courts just decide something like this. There’s a myth out there that most civil rights advances come from the courts, and that’s bullshit. The greatest and most enduring civil rights advances almost always come from democratic action.
There was a proposition passed in California keeping gay marriage illegal in 2000. This was a law, not an ammendment to the California constitution. Then the California legislature passed a law legalizing gay marriage, but Schwarzenegger vetoed it in 2005 and again in 2007, arguing among other things that the CA Supreme Court can decide.Â
CA already had domestic partnership laws on the books. I don’t believe that their are any legal incidents of marriage that are granted by this change, basically everything CA could give partnered gays it already had, so the change to a marriage is fundamentally a question of how gays should be treated and whether or not it was descriminatory to call their partnerships something other then marriage.Â
All of this muddles the situation. Those like me, who prefer the matter to be settled by the legislative rather then the court process have their arguments cut to peices by Schwarzenegger’s veto. Those who are interested in the legal incidents, but don’t think the terminology should matter have to face that it is only the terminology that was being argued about here.Â
And of course those who don’t think an ammendment, either at a state or a federal level is needed to prevent the will of the people from being overturned by the courts, have to acknowledge that something quite similar is exactly what happened here.Â
Dave Justus’s last blog post..Obama and Africa
Oh, as to your other points Bill: More than one of the Founders actively and vociferously denied any notion that the United States was founded to be in any way a "Christian Nation." And no, I don’t just mean Thomas Jefferson. I mean the likes of George Washington (who went out of his way to assure early Jewish Americans that America was not a Christian Nation) and John Adams, who himself was anti-Christian (or at least anti-Trinitarian, putting him outside more than 90% of the world’s Christians), and who as President proudly endorsed and put before the Senate a treaty in the 1790s which boldly proclaimed to our allies that we were not, and never had been founded to be, a Christian Nation. That particular treaty was ratified unanimously by the Senate a scant 10 years after the Constitution was written, with many of America’s founders members of that prestigious body.
The United States was founded by a coalition of religious, non-religious, and semi-religious people. A certain subset of them argued hard for the U.S. on Christian grounds, but they were countered by Tories who claimed that the rebellion against His Majesty George III was rebellion against God (which the Bible clearly suggests that it was, by the way). Those founders who gave a damn about the religious arguments were mostly busy arguing with their fellow Christians about it, while others didn’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other they just wanted the bloody British out. The myth that most of the founders viewed Christianity as central is just that: a myth. Religiously, a lot of them hated each other’s guts if they cared about religion at all.
America was and is a Christian nation in the sense that most of its people are culturally Christian, and have been from the beginning. And, believing Christians have long made a huge impact on our development, and continue to do so. The remarkable notion that religious freedom and individual conscience are to be respected by the state is ultimately a Christian good, but if that value is embedded in Christianity then it should be a great source of shame to Christians that it took 1,800 years to find it. A little humility would seem in order on that front.
Clearly and beyond a shadow of a doubt the founding fathers believed in protection from the government; from the begining religon and religous activity was considered a protected activity. The current "understanding" of the separation of Church and State is pretty new, like dating from the 50’s. You can argue that the nation was not founded as a Christian nation, and while there may be a flavor of truth in that premise, the Chirstian (rather, protestant) orientation towards rights, responsiblity, and choice of the individual rather than rights and ownership of central authority was the single unifying theme. And yea, there are lots of Christian churchs that trend towards central authority, and there are some tenets believing there is no choice but predestined fate, that doesn’t change history. There is no indication that the founding fathers thought anyone could do anything they could get away with; no one proposed total personal freedom.Â
If you choose to have a long-term homosexual relationship, that’s your choice. If you choose to smoke, drink, wear clothes that don’t match, have sex outrside of marraige, (feel free to make your own list) that’s your choice. That doesn’t mean I approve of the behavior and that doesn’t mean I should be forced to approve of the behavior. A marriage "license" is approval; as we are a gvovernment "by the People and for the People," approval by the government for specific behaviors (e.g., License) implies approval by the People, while the majority of people do not approve. In this case, the court is witholding rights of the people.
The California situation is bizarre all around. As Dave Justus noted, Prop 22 is a statute, not a constitutional amendment. However, the California Constitution makes clear that the Legislature has no authority to amend or repeal a voter initiative without submitting the matter to a popular vote. Rather than complying with this clear constitutional (read: “actually written in the Constitution,” as opposed to “four rogue judges would really, really like to see it there”) directive, Mark Leno and his gang drafted a bill that would have amended all applicable Family Code provisions except Prop 22, which they frivolously “interpreted” out of existence. That flagrant violation of both Prop 22 and the California Constitution was the principal reason why Gov. Schwarzenegger rightly vetoed the bills; to do otherwise would have been to show the same disregard for the Constitution that the Legislature had done before, and that the Supreme Court would, later.
Now Prop 22 is back on the ballot, this time in the form of a constitutional amendment. Ironically, that means that the lawless acts of the Legislature and the Supreme Court have almost canceled each other out, leaving California with roughly the result that would have obtained if the Legislature had followed the rules: a gay marriage law, subject to a popular vote. The thumb is still on the scale in favor of the gay marriage position, however, due both to the inertia from having gay marriage now, and to the fact that a sizeable chunk of the population reflexively votes “no” on everything.  In a state where even non-substantive clean-up bills can only pass 75% to 25%, it’s a safe bet that there are some voters who would have voted against a measure to enact gay marriage, but who will neverthleess also vote against the new constituitonal amendment to ban it.
Xrlq’s most recent blog post..You and Your Silly Principles
As others have said, a statute, not an amendment — but the amendment is coming.
Always.
Yup. Of course, we’ve never seen self-destructive behavior from that side of the sexuality line before…
Phelps’s last blog post..Obama Fears McCain
Dean has it pretty much dead on correct.
In some ways, the only thing that was born half a century ago was the notion that nation was inherently Christian. Prior to that, religious right movements had tried again and again to pass amendments to the Constitution that would make it officially recognize God. They failed over and over, winning only occasional booby prizes. The founders good orthodox Christians? The religious right spent a century calling them (falsely) heathens and atheists! (The reality is simply that they were diverse: most were what we moderns would happily call Christians or at least Unitarians, but few felt that Christianity and the very mundane, partisan business they were about had much to do with each other. They even voted down having opening prayers.)
But then, starting around or after the Civil War, someone hit upon the idea that they should just declare that it always had been a nice simple Christian Nation, and a whole fount of silliness was born. Eventually, Jefferson’s powerful and inspiring motto was replaced with a petty sectarian one, the pledge of allegiance (itself a new and questionable addition to the country) was changed, ironically splitting apart the "one nation, indivisible" with another petty division.
I think, at this point, Christian arrogance has had quite enough fun scrawling their self-obsessed graffiti all over our symbolic traditions. Sorry, but they aren’t going to get our actual system of government too.
Most of the Separation of Church and State ethic has been good for the country, whining to the contrary. There have been some cases in which people have taken it too far, confusing government action with personal, but quite a lot of that has involved individual bureaucrats, and has actually been opposed by many of the SoCaS organizations that protect our form of government.
Most of the objection to what the ACLU does, for instance, relies on deliberately confusing government action with civil society, and playing on the ambiguity in the word "public" (which can mean either "government owned and run" or "civil society/out in the open") and claiming that people want to take religion out of the public.
"There is no indication that the founding fathers thought anyone could do anything they could get away with; no one proposed total personal freedom."
And no one is proposing it now, "head for the hills!" rhetoric aside.
Bad’s last blog post..McCain Panders to the Left, Bitter Hillary Supporters Pander to the Right?
My thoughts on this are very simple:
I don’t much care for the practice of courts finding a "right" to homosexual marriage in the auras and penumbras of state or federal constitutions.
But, at the same time, I can’t really oppose the basic idea. I’ve yet to have anyone clearly articulate what, exactly, the possible objections could be, without veering off into irrelevancies like the harm homosexual marriages could presumably do to heterosexual marriages, or the religious sanctity of the institution, or the supposed "need" to continue increasing the population of the settled areas of the Earth.
I just don’t get it. If adults want to marry each other, in whatever numbers or combinations all parties are agreeable to, I pretty much don’t have a problem with that. I do think such changes to the legal system properly belong with the people, via their elected representatives, however.
(Aside: I do agree with Kevin that Western Civilization is on the way out – for different reasons, though.)
Here’s my position.
The state should not be in the marriage business. People should be able to enter into whatever contracts, compacts and communes that they want. However, since the government has decided that it is in the marriage business and we don’t have the will to throw them out of it, it is up to us to manage it.
Same-sex marriage is a slippery, slippery slope. The next spot on the slope is polygamy. I would put it about eight years past a federal acceptance of gay marriage. After that, I’m guessing that we would be about 15 years from incestuous marriage. Maybe even incestuous polygamous marriage.
Once you start redefining marriage to satisfy the emotional needs of subcultures (as opposed to the classical economic needs) then the sky is the limit, especially if you have done it because you decided that there is a right to have those emotional needs accommodated.
Phelps’s last blog post..Obama Fears McCain
P Mike and Bad: Well, I agree with much of what both of you say, but not all of it.
Protestantism was and remains the dominant strain of Christianity in the United States, even though Catholics have been here from the beginning and many fought for the Revolution, some of them quite heroically (Casimir Pulaski and the Marquis de LaFayette being notable examples). Still, while Protestantism was a crucial influence on multiple levels, culturally and otherwise, it’s key to understanding these issues to realize something that’s happened in the last few generations: particularly in certain parts of the country, "Protestantism" has frequently become a sort of amorphous blob of no-particular-creed Bible-Centric Christians who generally believe that if you’re not-Catholic you’re Protestant. It’s not clear to me that these folks even should be calling themselves Protestant, but I guess if they want to use that label they can. Let me explain why this is important, because it’s something a lot of people don’t grasp:
Probably the most dominant strain of Protestantism in America during the time of the Revolution was Episcopalianism, which for all practical purposes, especially at that time, can be viewed as "Catholic Lite." They maintained the hierarchy of bishops and the priesthood, in apostolic succession traced all the way back to the first Archbishop of Canterbury (Augustine). George Washington, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and many other founders were raised Episcopalians although some of them drifted toward Deism or its very close cousin, Unitarianism (i.e. anti-Trinitarianism that completely flies in the face of the beliefs of most Protestants).
Washington’s views are not clear but when he did go to Church he almost always went to Episcopalian services, just for example. The State Church of Virginia (and some of the other early states) was Episcopalian.
Indeed, one of the major forces behind the crafting of the 1st amendment was efforts by Southern Baptists, particularly in places like Virginia, who wanted to make sure that their religious liberty would not be hampered by Episcopalianism under the new Constitution. Those same exact Southern Baptists who were so instrumental in giving us the 1st Amendment also eventually gave us Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, as well as Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King.
Although I’m not fond of this particular Bible translation (the NIV) it is wildly popular amongst that minority of the world’s Protestants who are known variously as "fundamentalists" or "evangelical" (or what I think of as "Bible-Only"), and it is very easy to read and accurate on issues like this, so I have here a quote from it that should be useful:
"Romans chapter 13: 1 Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4 For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor."
This and other parts of the Bible was used by many early Americans on the anti-Revolutionary side to assert that rebellion against His Majesty George III was rebellion against God. Indeed, unlike the Roman authorities at the time that St. Paul wrote that passage, George III was a Christian, crowned by a bishop, who maintained the title "Defender of the (Christian) Faith."
Some of the quotes mined from the founders about God and the Revolution came from efforts by the rebels to assure their fellow Christians that the fight was legitimate. This context is key to understanding the occasional passages you’ll find from the likes of Jefferson, Washington, and others: political necessity forced some of them to turn to religious matters when they would have preferred to ignore the issue. The Christian faith was being used against them by their fellow Americans who were loyal to the Crown, and they had to fight back. (After the loyalists lost, some of the Christians among them even hightailed it up to Canada or to the UK or even to places like Australia, declaring the United States a work of the devil. Others basically turned inward and did their best to ignore the new government.)
Thus it is not quite right to suggest that Protestantism formed the core of the American experiment. But it, and Christianity in general, played an undeniably huge role. And yes, while the Lutherans maintained their own apostolic-succession-derived Bishops as well as the Episcopalians, they and the Calvinists and related Protestant groups like the Baptists, with a stronger focus on individual conscience than other Christians, were a huge influence on the idea of individual freedom of conscience being a key right.
Congregationalist Protestantism, which basically throws out the hierarchical authority of the bishops (and is anathema to Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics, and many other Protestants), also is arguably part of where the idea of populist democracy gained a foothold in the popular imagination, although the idea also went back to the ancient non-Christian Greeks and Romans.
I might also note that the United States had, and still has, strongly Pagan roots. That’s what you’re looking at whenever you look at a statue or portrait of Lady Liberty, just for example. She’s Libertas, a Roman Goddess. Many of the intellectual Founders, like Jefferson and Franklin, were *huge* fans of Greek and Roman mythology; there’s even a semi-famous letter from John Adams to his son John Quincy Adams admonishing him not to neglect his studies of ancient Greek, which he viewed as indispensible to the educated and cultured mind. If you spend much time in Washington D.C. you’ll see an awful lot of statuary and such that’s straight out of Greek and Roman mythology–undeniably so.
The intersection of faith and politics has always been a complicated and fascinating business in the United States. It isn’t new. The friction’s always been there. I already gave the examples of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jesse Jackson, and Martin Luther King, but it’s not like these religious folks went underground in the 1790s and popped back up in the early 20th Century. William Jennings Bryan, noted anti-Darwinist and social progressive, was three times nominated by the Democratic Party for President of the United States. His status as a Presbyterian minister and firey religious orator was inseparable from his political life, as he viewed Darwinism as both a religious abomination and a threat to the progressive, populist-liberal values he championed, and his best known speech contains his most famous line:
"Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
That speech was delivered at the Democratic National Convention in 1896. He was a pro-silver progressive, you see, because he wanted to increase inflation in order to help poor struggling farmers and laborers with easy credit. But don’t kid yourself that populist Christian rhetoric was not central to his popularity. It was. And while we’re on the subject of famous Democrats, let’s not forget ordained Baptist minister James Earl Carter, who wore his status as a "born again Christian" on his sleeve and still teaches Sunday School last I heard, and whose religious affiliation was crucial to his successful election in 1976.
So, it is not true that Christianity and/or its Protestant derivation all by itself was central to the American revolution, but it did play a crucial role on both sides. It is also not true that religion and politics only became a source of conflict and misunderstanding in recent decades. Our status as a "Christian nation" has never been official, and was actively denied by many of the founders. But it’s a fact that Christianity has played a huge role in our politics from day one, and that’s never stopped. I don’t see it stopping any time soon, either.
So there.
I’ll throw my two bits in on the topic although it looks like the thread has already died.
I don’t see anything about the status quo before the CA ruling that speaks to me of injustice. I can see where some people would prefer change, but that alone doesn’t imply injustice. "Basic fairness" is really a subjective assertion, and not well defined for most people.
Homosexuals and same-sex couples in general have all the basic property rights. They may lose some default inheritance rules, which they can overcome with a will. They also may not be eligible for some special tax treatments. But either the govt can offer special goodies, such as special tax breaks, to some groups, or they can’t. Let’s resolve that before worrying about specific groups. People that own their homes without a mortgage, or rent a home, might prefer some "basic fairness" in income tax laws.
Hospital visitation is the canard that frequently comes up. For over a decade, CA has had a law that guaranteed same-sex domestic partners the same access in hospitals that married couples receive. I’ve heard of other states passing such laws. But I’ve never heard of a law (and maybe some exist and I’m just ignorant of them) that guarantees married couples hospital visitation. Indeed, when I looked into it a decade ago, nobody ever heard of such a law. So much for a "basic right" that is tied to marriage. Most hospitals allow visitation for adult patients, depending on the medical situation, of whomever the patient wants to allow.
Folks with no emotional or sexual attraction can jointly own property. And in many states ownership and credit are frequently distinct for even married couples. Hardly any basic rights being denied. Just circumstances that some folks don’t like.
I don’t think you’ve looked hard enough at it, Roger. It’s a much more complicated thing to arrange joint property and inheritance when you don’t have a marriage when you do, and it’s much more hazardous for the surviving partner if there is no marriage. There are several other things just like that. Hospital visitation is increasingly a non-issue, I agree, but it’s still not always.
There are other protections that automatically accrue to marriage which are so basic people don’t even think about them.
Dean,
I’ve been following the issue for over a decade. Discussed it with a lot of proponents of SS marriage. None of them seem to be able to articulate exactly what "complications" are disabling.
Again, I admit that there are advantages to being married. There are also disadvantages, as most people who have gone through a divorce can assure you.
Yes, you have to affirmatively think about what you want to accomplish as a SS couple, and take affirmative steps to do so. But it isn’t generally rocket science.
If you wish to offer specifics of what you think I’m missing, that might be helpful. But merely asserting that I need to look "harder" isn’t much of an argument.
Comments on this entry are closed.