A depressing setback for marriage
November 4, 2009 at 8:52 am
At this point, it’s just depressing. Voters in Maine last night overturned their state’s same-sex-marriage law by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent.
The very idea that we should have the right to vote on whether our neighbors are fully human is offensive. The fact that the latest expression of “no, they’re not” comes from live-and-let-live Maine only makes it worse.
“God has given us this victory,” the Rev. Bob Emrich is quoted as saying in the Bangor Daily News. Perhaps KnowThyNeighbor.org will tell us how much cash the Big Guy ponied up.
Better news from Washington State.
Tags: gay marriage
And thus another round of the ritualistic taking of offense.
As long as we’re taking offense, the co-optation of an actual (black) civil rights struggle, described by Craig above, by gays, to describe their recent efforts to be able to “marry” instead of making do with civil union (oh the horror!) is an overreach of the language, and as such seems as offensive as anything else here.
The taking of offense is such a common tactic now that it’s easy to overlook the fact that it doesn’t constitute an actual argument. Instead it’s all dudgeon–jockeying for victimhood cred. Behold, I have taken offense, and am therefore a victim! How dare you say such a thing! Your opinion is offensive, so it is we who are the greater victims!
Just a thought, that resentment about this overwrought rhetorical approach might have more to do with the consistent rejection by popular vote, than bigotry per se.
@newshound, you write: “Like most of us I have had numerous friends and business associates of various diverse characteristics. Some are gay. That is for the most part an inconsequential characteristic similar to be being tall or short, athletic or not etc.”
Given this, would you also oppose marriage for short people and athletes?
This isn’t over. The state supreme court of Maine will take the issue on eventually they’ll find this unconstitutional. I think it will happen. A friend of mine from Maine said this referendum “only delayed the inevitable.” I like that attitude.
Oops, correction to my last sentence (even preview isn’t enough help sometimes!):
Just a thought, that the consistent rejection by popular vote might have more to do with resentment about this overwrought rhetorical approach, than with bigotry per se.
What’s the record now, 0 for 31? Surely this indicates something is wrong with the approach? Or is it just going to be more of the same old “we need protection from the bigoted citizenry” stuff.
Bob Fontaine, all that leaves out one critical concept: the US is a republic, not a democracy, and as such we delegate our rights to elected officials to decide. What the consensus opinion of the electorate on a given issue, then, is by design irrelevant. We vote, they decide.
Mike_b1: I’ll go one better, even though it applies more to other states than to Maine in this case. The courts are there to protect the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Even a majority of elected legislators.
Instead of using the loaded word “marriage” to describe what we are talking about, why not have the Congress legislate that hence forth it shall be called a radical new term that will take it out of all this truly unseemly semantic nitpicking.
Let’s hear it for universal consortanfiddle!
JennaMcWilliams – absolutely. If short people can’t get married the same should apply to gays. Tall people and athletes too.
I don’t discriminate and our laws shouldn’t either. All of us are entitled to individual preferences.
Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass who marries who or for what reason. The problem here is not marriage, the problem is the ridiculous amount of civil and legal rights that the state has associated with marriage.
Property ownership, living wills, spousal privilege, differences in the tax code, parental rights…the list goes on and on. By denying marriage to gays, you deny an incredible range of social and civil benefits to them as well.
Many of you ask some variation if we feel it “okay” if a man marries his sister. I put another question to you: is it okay if a woman raises a child from birth, for seventeen years, but then has all parental rights stripped away from her because cannot legally be married to the biological mother? Or what if the biological mother needs child support after separation? Whoops – too bad, your relationship had no legal standing.
The argument lends itself to civil unions, true. And if civil unions truly were “marriage in all but name” then I wouldn’t mind…but that sounds an awful lot like “separate but equal”. Whether legal or not, there’s an awful lot of authority figures…police, doctors, clergy, judges…who will lend a hand when it’s your “spouse” but curl it into a fist when it’s your “domestic partner”. And that’s assuming it really is the same civil benefits, which once you cross state lines it usually isn’t…unlike marriage.
Perhaps what gays should be pushing for is not so much for gay marriage, but instead for getting the government out the marriage business entirely. Give everything…gay or straight…a “civil union” and that’s all you get from the town clerk. If you want a “marriage”, too? Fine, go see your local religious official…but a marriage won’t mean anything in the eyes of the state.
By the way, the anti-gay marriage crowd won the vote with ads that spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) like how some mythical “homosexual agenda” would be taught in pre-school or some crap like that. That’s not about the “sanctity of marriage” – that’s hate-mongering, pure and simple. That’s starting the base assumption that homosexuality is inherently evil and then shamelessly exploiting the concept of “protect the children” to whip people into a frenzy about it.
Wow. Talk about a hot button issue. Media Nation hasn’t had this many comments since you offered that free iPhone deal. Oh wait, no free iPhone deal? Then this must be the most commented on post ever.
Brad, your argument sounds a lot like Mike Kinsley’s essay in Slate years ago.
Here’s the link: http://slate.msn.com/id/2085127/
tobe, almost any time Dan invokes the Red Sox, he gets a huge response, too. We’re still several scores short of the “record.” Funny post, though.
Brad Delton – I think you come very close to offering an acceptable solution to an impossible problem.
Mike_B1, you suggest “What the consensus opinion of the electorate on a given issue, then, is by design irrelevant”. In this instance the voters were not choosing candidates who were to decide the issue, they were voting on the issue directly. While I have not fully formulated my opinion on that specific matter at hand, I do respect the will of the people, even when i dont agree with it. That said, I neither find the will of the people “offensive” as Dan stated, nor “irrelevant” as you suggest. I think it a much more dangerous circumstance when another, who’s voice should be no louder than my own, would characterize it as either irrelevant or offensive, than I do the possible injustice of not being defined by a “word”. We can’t even define “marriage”, but we pretty much know what it means when we are told that our opinion is irrelevant.
Bob, we’re arguing different things. The problem with a referendum is that it overcomes by events the intent of the framers. A referendum is a tool of democracy. The US, however, is a republic. Implicit in the Constitution is the notion that individual’s voices would be heard not directly but through their elected officials.