The Tyranny of a Short-Term Majority

A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America."

That reasoned argument against what de Tocqueville called "the tyranny of the majority" is a total crock. A bunch of hooey. Liberal claptrap from a French intellectual with no real understanding of democracy. Never mind that James Madison agreed in the Federalist Papers, warning of "the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority" -- Madison was just some loonie leftist. The majority is all-powerful. If you can get enough people to agree with you, you can do anything you want to anybody. There are no such thing as rights, only privileges that can be voted away at any time. Get enough people together and you can even take someone's First Amendment rights away -- if people don't like what you're saying, they can use the power of democracy to shut you the hell up.

So sayeth that great American patriot Kenneth Starr. Best known for an unsuccessful witch hunt against then-President Bill Clinton, Starr is the dean of Pepperdine law school -- which makes you wonder what kind of education Pepperdine law students get for their money.

At issue was California's Prop. 8 -- a ban of same sex marriage. The state Supreme Court had previously ruled that gays and lesbians had the right to marriage. Prop. 8, which passed as a referendum, would remove that right and retroactively undo the marriages that have occurred since the court's ruling.

But, since the court ruled that marriage was a right, not a privilege, Prop. 8 became a classic example of the "tyranny of the majority" -- with a simple majority vote, Californians took a right away from a minority group. The ballot measure is now in California's Supreme Court, where Ken Starr -- representing Prop. 8 supporters -- argued yesterday that there's really no such thing as "rights." At least, not if you're in the minority.

"Swallow the bitter pill and act with diligence if one is weak, enjoy all one's rights if powerful: that's my doctrine," wrote the Marquis de Sade. Starr apparently agrees.

Raw Story:

The people "have the raw power to define rights," he told the court while arguing in favor of invalidating over 18,000 marriages.

"The right of the people is inalienable to change their constitution through the amendment process," said Starr. "The people are sovereign and they can do very unwise things, and things that tug at the equality principle."

Chief Justice Ronald George posed a hypothetical: what if the majority demanded the right to free speech be revoked?

"After much banter back and forth, Starr says they do," reported Advocate.com. The Los Angeles Times reported similarly on Starr's alarming response.

So, if the majority votes that you should shut up, by God you'd better shut the hell up. In Starr's world, rights are a legal fiction. The founders basically argued that the person and the person's rights were one thing, inseparable -- "unalienable" as the Declaration of Independence put it. But Ken argues that your rights are granted to you by majority rule and can be taken from you at any time, presumably for any -- or no -- reason. As I've already pointed out, those aren't rights, those are privileges. Starr argues that people in California -- and Americans in general -- don't actually have rights.

What the right is really worried about here is the "normalization of homosexuality." When you get right down to it, same sex marriage is harmless -- it can't possibly have any effect on your life if your not in that marriage. If you're outside that family, what that family consists of can't possible harm you. There is no rational reason to oppose marriage equality.

However, "rational" is a bad description of the religious right. They're so panicked at the idea that same sex couples would be considered just people and not monsters that they're willing to give away all the guarantees they have to any rights at all. By Starr's argument, people could literally vote to bar Christians from holding office. But hey, that's better than having to look at two male or two female dolls on top of a wedding cake.

But the "normalization of homosexuality" is pretty much a done deal. Regardless of how people feel about marriage equality, the idea that homosexuality is some sort of national problem is losing ground rapidly. The religious right isn't just losing that fight, they've lost it. Same sex marriage isn't a question of "if," but "when."

A Harris Interactive poll taken after the 2008 elections found that "Three-quarters of U.S. adults (75%) favor either marriage or domestic partnerships/civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. Only about two in 10 (22%) say gay and lesbian couples should have no legal recognition." The numbers for legal marriage alone, as opposed to civil unions, was evenly split between pro and con.

This "normalization" train has left the station.

But the most desperate battles are often fought at the end of the war. That's when the craziest tactics will be tried. The religious right would burn the village in order to save it, by giving away any guarantee they have to any rights in exchange for a victory in a losing battle against marriage equality.

If Ken Starr really wants to argue on behalf of the tyranny of the majority, he might keep in mind that public opinion is moving away from him. It won't be long before he's in the minority, subject to the whims of the mob rule he advocated.

Unfortunately, when that happens, I don't expect him or any of his allies to shut up and "swallow the bitter pill and act with diligence," as the weak and rightless should.

Maybe we can all take a vote and make them shut up.

-Wisco

The Right's Stealth Campaign

The final USA Today/Gallup poll is out today and Barack Obama holds a national lead of 11 points. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll puts it closer, with an 8-point lead for the Democrat, 51% to 43%. Gallup also gives it to Obama by a pretty wide margin, 55% to 44%. We can pretty safely say that the consensus is that Obama's walking away with this thing tomorrow. In fact, networks will probably call it for Obama before the Mountain Time zone polls close. But, just between you and me, you can write McCain off if he loses Virginia. If that happens, the race is over early for most of the nation -- 8 p.m. Eastern at the latest. And it's looking like that's the way it's going to go.

For Republicans and rightwingers in general, looking for good news will mean looking elsewhere -- the national race is all but officially over. Where might they find these little rays of sunshine? In statewide victories for Republican Jesus. Down ticket races seem to be trending Democrat, so they're prepared for big congressional losses as well as the big one in the electoral college. They can't lose every race, but the wins will be nearly meaningless, given the lopsided nature of the next Congress.

No, the wins for the right will come in ballot initiatives. The stealth campaign for control of the nation comes in the form of control of the states through direct democracy. If they can't rule by elected office, they can rule by referendum. The highest profile referendum is Proposition 8 in California, which would amend the state's Constitution to ban same sex marriage. The good news there is that the proposition looks to be headed for a loss. The bad news is that it exists at all and that the loss looks to be a narrow one.

Los Angeles Times:

The Field Poll of 966 likely voters, conducted between Oct. 18 and 28, shows 49% opposed to the measure, 44% in favor and 7% undecided. The race is narrowing. A September Field poll showed the measure trailing by 14 points, 52% to 38%.

The new poll also found that "significant proportions" of voters on both sides are conflicted about the issue.

Women are more likely to oppose Proposition 8 than men, the poll reports; 51% of women and 47% of men surveyed oppose the measure. It also found that respondents who said they personally knew a gay person were more likely to be opposed than respondents who said they did not.

The problem here is that this ballot initiative, like similar discriminatory referenda, isn't only designed to change California's Constitution -- it's also an organizational tool. All those petitions become mailing lists, all those volunteer canvassers and phone bankers don't go away after they lose. They'll be told they'll keep up the fight and that Jesus will eventually prevail in California's battle with the Homosexual Menace. If they win -- which is still a very real possibility -- then they'll use that energy to move forward with other "pro-family" issues.





But the fact is that a loss is almost better than a win -- at least in terms of organizing. When the battle's over, people on the winning side tend to go home. When the culture war continues, the culture warriors fight on. This is where the Republican base will rebuild -- not around failed candidates, but around wedge issue ballot measures.

Arizona and Florida will both be voting on referenda similar to California's Prop. 8. In Florida, it seems close. Although polling shows the voters approving the ban 56% to 37%, Florida requires a super-majority of voters -- 60% -- to pass such a measure. This one's a nailbiter, but leaning the right way. Organizing after losing this one will be a pretty simple matter, since they can use that majority to claim "mainstream" status and because Florida conservatives tend to be pretty insane anyway (see Katherine Harris).

To give you an idea of how powerful these referenda become as organizing tools, we can look at Arizona. In 2006, Arizona became the first state to defeat an anti-marriage equality measure. The groups opposing marriage kept working, turned their petitions into mailing lists, and now a second attempt looks likely to pass -- 49% to 42%.

In Arkansas, voters will be asked to bar gays from adoption or foster parenthood. Thankfully, this looks like a big loser -- 55% oppose the measure, while 38% support it.

Don't get the idea that the right's stealth campaign is all about hating on the gays. It's just mostly that way. In South Dakota, it's about hating on the women. An initiative there asks voters to make abortion illegal in almost every circumstance. A similar ban lost last time around, but these people aren't taking no for an answer. Where the original ban had almost no exceptions, the current measure would include "limited exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the pregnant woman." That brought it much closer to winning. In fact, it's a tie -- 44% to 44%.

The S. Dakota measure is certainly unconstitutional and is meant only to challenge Roe v. Wade. There's absolutely no guarantee that it'll ever make it all the way to the Supreme Court, but it's all about the PR anyway. They're building the groundwork for a propaganda campaign to energize the crazies.

Want a reason to vote? There you go. And it's important to remember that these don't represent the right going away next year -- so neither should you. That's the danger of a successful presidential campaign, people go away. In a democracy, the fight is never over, by design. Wins must be defended.

No matter what's on your ballot, vote. But remember, democracy doesn't end on November 5. The religious right isn't going away on that day, so neither should you. We've got to win the big one and keep fighting the other ones. Democracy means that the fight never, ever ends.

-Wisco

Fighting for Freedom from Reality

In a ruling certain not to rock the legal and educational worlds, a federal court in Los Angeles ruled yesterday that you can't force universities to pretend that BS is true. In terms of common sense, the ruling -- Association of Christian Schools International et al. v. Roman Stearns et al -- wasn't much of a stumper. But there are people who think you get to choose what's true for you -- as if the universe were a series of multiple choice questions with no wrong answers -- and those people aren't pleased.

The perpetually panic-stricken WorldNetDaily kicks things off by completely misrepresenting just about every fact in the case:

Arguments were heard today in a federal district court case to determine whether a state university system can dictate that private Christian schools in the state teach their college prep courses from exclusively secular, Bible- and God-free textbooks.

As WND reported earlier, the University of California system adopted a policy last year that basic science, history, and literature textbooks by major Christian book publishers wouldn't qualify for core admissions requirements because of the inclusion of Christian perspectives.

Robert Tyler, who is representing Calvary Chapel Christian School and five students in the case against the University of California, told WND that the university's discriminatory policy creates an ultimatum for Christian schools. "If you want courses to be approved in private education, so your students are qualified to attend (UC) institutions, you must teach from a secular point of view," he said.

This is typical of the strategy of whiny victimhood that the religious right has been reduced to these days. The truth is that the textbooks in question managed to accomplish the seemingly oxymoronic task of teaching ignorance.



"And what did they teach in these science classes at Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, one of the schools that sued?" asks Karin Klein for the LA Times. "Well, one textbook in the class, published by Bob Jones University Press, informs youngsters that the earth is about 10,000 years old. The other textbook, "Biology: God's Living Creation," includes a lesson on how dinosaurs walked the earth with people, and might have faced extinction via flood. You know, THE flood."

I'm not sure what the reasoning of the plaintiffs was here. You get turned down for admission to a college because the high school your parents sent you to made you ignorant. If you win the case, you go on to college, where you flunk out of everything because your high school turned you into an ignoramus. At that point, post-secondary education becomes nothing more than a waste of money.

Of course, the strategy of the religious right was to sue their point of view into being true. Step one; get accepted to the University of California. Step two; sue every time you failed to get a passing grade. Step three; all the creationist horsecrap you believe magically becomes true... or something.

Basically, the Association of Christian Schools International argued that UC was violating the First Amendment. And that argument is pretty insane. To go back to the WND piece, attorney for the nutjobs Robert Tyler said, "We believe that UC's discrimination is clearly unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment, because UC is attempting to secularize Christian schools."

Yeah, you've got that backwards. You guys are trying to Christianize secular schools. What you're trying to do is create a separate legal truth all your own, where everyone has to pretend that all the crap you believe is real. Having failed to get your laughable BS past the scientific community, who in turn stand in the way of teaching it in public schools, you try to sue your way into education, as if some judge can just declare creationism true and force the universe to rearrange itself to conform to your new "science."

"The UC is intent upon defending some 'right' to discriminate unlawfully," Tyler said, as if calling a lie a lie amounted to some sort of inexcusable injustice. Colleges exist to educate, not to promote some religious mumbo jumbo that some weird cultists wish was true.

It's not just creationism that is the problem here, either. The textbooks also include history books that assume that God controls everything and explains things in terms of divine intervention.

San Francisco Chronicle:

For example, in Friday's ruling, [U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles] upheld the university's rejection of a history course called Christianity's Influence on America. According to a UC professor on the course review committee, the primary text, published by Bob Jones University, "instructs that the Bible is the unerring source for analysis of historical events" and evaluates historical figures based on their religious motivations.

Again, using this "information" as the basis for college history courses would be a guaranteed fail. And, again, that failure to pass would've been followed by another lawsuit. The people who freak out the most over "activist judges" are praying for judicial activism to somehow make all the crap they believe magically true. God, apparently, loves even the hypocrite.

With this decision, we're supposed to believe that the legal system has sadly abandoned us to the unrelenting oppression of reality. A universe who's laws cannot be appealed will be allowed to stand unchallenged and no waving of a holy book will be allowed to change it. Religious freedom suffers when reality can't be forced by law to conform to our beliefs. Truth, that unchallenged tyrant, will not be overthrown by the forces of biblical ignorance -- a result which, somehow, is supposed to make us less free.

The truth is that you can believe whatever the hell you want to believe. What you don't get to do is force everyone to pretend that whatever the hell it is that you believe is true. That doesn't make you less free, it just makes everyone equally free. Truth may be an undemocratic tyrant, but it's the only one that can never be dethroned.

-Wisco

Played Out

Good news for marriage equality in California. At least one national Democrat isn't joining in on the irrational panic over same sex marriage there.

Associated Press:

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has come out against a ballot measure that seeks to outlaw same-sex marriage.

A club for gay Democrats in San Francisco says it solicited a statement from the Illinois senator's campaign in which he called the proposed constitutional amendment "divisive and discriminatory."

Obama also extended congratulations to gay and lesbian newlyweds who have gotten married in California over the last two weeks.

Wisconsin could've used a Barack Obama in 2006, when we foolishly amended our state constitution to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples. I say "foolishly" for more than one reason, but the primary reason is because it's an amendment that's certain to be repealed in the future. American history doesn't march in the direction of intolerance, but away from it. Repealing these state amendments and laws isn't a matter of if, but when -- will it happen before or after we're all ashamed of them?

Another reason why Wisconsin's ban was foolish was because it was a rush-job, put out to stave off electoral disaster for Republicans. It didn't work. The idea that anyone who would vote to limit marriage was automatically a Republican turned out to be a mistake. Their big plan to get right wingers to the polls by fighting the homosexual menace turned out to be a bad one. As a rush-job, it really wasn't very well thought out.

The Capital Times, "Same-sex Wisconsin couples willing to risk criminal penalties to marry in California":

Every summer, Bob Klebba and David Waugh take a family beach vacation to San Diego. Besides fun and sun, this year's trip will have a little something extra: a wedding.

[...]

"What we might be looking for is outside recognition of our relationship -- recognition from society," Klebba said. "This is a way to ask for that recognition. Happily, California is willing to give us that."

Wisconsin, however, is not. Not only will Klebba's and Waugh's marriage not be recognized here, they could be taking a legal risk by entering into it. Wisconsin is a state that imposes criminal penalties on residents if they enter a marriage outside the state that would be prohibited in the state. The law was created to prohibit underage couples from crossing state lines to marry, but it could be interpreted to apply to same-sex marriages, according to Glenn Carlson of Fair Wisconsin, an advocacy group for gays and lesbians. In Wisconsin, the penalty is a fine of up to $10,000, nine months in prison, or both.

"It would be interesting to be prosecuted," Klebba said. "It would really bring up a reaction in the public sentiment."

Agreed. It would be interesting. As I said, this amendment was poorly thought out. While I have absolutely no problem believing that the religious right morons who jammed this thing down our throat wouldn't have any problem sending gays to prison for just being gay, let alone getting married out of state, I really doubt the voters who passed the amendment would. That's another mistake the marriage-gamers made; they assumed everyone who opposes same sex marriage hates gays as much as they do.

But homophobia is fear, not hatred. I'd bet good money that the average person didn't vote for the amendment because they thought same sex marriage was evil, they did it because they thought same sex marriage was icky. That's not really the most solid reason for a ban. Had the Republican dominated legislature not rushed this thing through, things very well might have turned out differently. Putting someone on trial -- or even prison -- for getting married in California might not prove as popular as the religious extremist had hoped.

I'm not saying it would result in a repeal, but the law regarding marriages out-state would be changed. That's a step in the right direction.

For their part, California's marriage ban looks like it faces trouble. People in states like Wisconsin may be able to be wed there for a good, long time. Polls show that a majority approve of marriage equality there. For John McCain, however, the issue seems like a Godsend. Down in the polls on every issue but fighting terrorism (an issue, by the way, that polls show we're no longer freaked out about), McCain desperately needs something to stand for, some justification for his electoral existence. Unless he can turn things around, McCain's headed toward becoming this cycle's Bob Dole.

Crazy people are his only hope.

TIME:

At a meeting Tuesday in Denver, about 100 conservative Christian leaders from around the country agreed to unite behind the candidacy of John McCain, a politician they have long distrusted, marking the latest in a string of movements that bode well for McCain's general election prospects among the Republican base.

"Collectively we feel that he will support and advance those moral values that we hold much greater than Obama, who in our view will decimate moral values," said Mat Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group, who previously supported Mike Huckabee's candidacy.

[...]

In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has been trying to spell out clear policy differences on social issues with the Obama campaign. Last week, McCain came out in favor of a constitutional amendment in California to outlaw gay marriage, which was legalized this spring by the state Supreme Court. Though McCain opposes an amendment to the federal constitution to ban gay marriage, he has previously supported similar state constitutional amendments.

"None of these people want to meet their maker knowing that they didn't do everything they could to keep Barack Obama from being president," said an unnamed attendee. "You've got these two people running for president. One of them is going to become president. That's the perspective. That that's the whole discussion"

Whether this is going to pan out for John McCain isn't really much of an open question. It won't. At least, not unless the Evangelical movement gets their act together in a matter of months. These leaders of the religious right have begun leading where no one is following. Tired of being freaked out over gays and abortion and evolution, Evangelicals have been moving toward issues that actually matter, like environmentalism, social justice, and poverty. The movement has lurched left, away from former leaders like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, and toward -- there's no other way to put it -- Jesus. It seems some have decided to read the Sermon on the Mount and decided that Jesus didn't spend a lot of time telling people who to hate. These so-called "Christian leaders" are losing their flock as all their followers convert to bona fide Christianity. Fetus worship is giving way to Jesus worship.

The religious right's version of Christianity never made any damned sense anyway. According to Christian tenets, it's faith, not actions, that lead to redemption -- making perceived "sins" illegal wouldn't save a single soul. It just doesn't work that way. Forcing people to adhere to your religious beliefs isn't the same thing as converting them to your religion. A right-living heathen is still a heathen and off to Hell they go -- and even that's not a consensus position among the faithful. The reasoning of the religious right is in conflict with their own stated religion.

However, former presidential candidate and current right wing nut job Gary Bauer believes the marriage issue can "save the GOP again."

"The marriage amendments had a buoying effect for President Bush and other conservative candidates, pushing to the polls many voters who otherwise might not have voted," Bauer wrote Monday. "In Ohio, for instance, a huge marriage amendment campaign registered 54,500 new voters, and thousands more Ohioans who were registered but rarely voted cast their votes for the marriage amendment. On the strength of the marriage initiative, Bush won in the battleground state, as did 13 of the 17 Republican candidates running for Congress there."

See, Gary, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, that's the problem. You guys used this to show voters exactly what a government made up of the Evangelical right would look like. And it was ugly. What they didn't get was anything the right promised. You guys promised "Christian values," but your idea of "values" included mass death, division, lies, torture, and runaway corruption. People have seen who you guys really are and have come to the conclusion that you're a bunch of phonies.

If this is John McCain's new "base," he's welcome to it. Fat lot of good it'll do him.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2008; Republican; Democrat; Obama; California; Wisconsin; law; If John McCain thinks the religious right can lead him to the presidency, he's sadly mistaken

Just One Good Reason

Here's a question that's both timely and informative; "Do you approve or disapprove of California allowing homosexuals to marry members of their own sex?" That question was asked of 1,052 California voters and their answers may spell bad news for opponents of same sex marriage in that state. 51% approved and only 42% disapproved.

Californians are now enjoying the fruits of marriage equality in their state, after a state Supreme Court ruling found that a ban on the issuing of licenses to same sex couples was unconstitutional. Writing for Slate, Yale Law professor Kenji Yoshino manages to explain the ruling in one paragraph:

Writing for the California high court, Chief Justice Ronald M. George first found that the exclusion of gays from marriage violated their fundamental right to marry, thereby drawing strict scrutiny from the court. This meant that the state would have to produce a compelling reason to bar gays from what the court deemed "the most socially productive and individually fulfilling relationship that one can enjoy in the course of a lifetime." In a crucial move, Chief Justice George rejected the state's argument that tradition was such a reason. Allowing tradition to thus entrench itself, he said, would have allowed for laws barring interracial couples. And, as he noted, the California Supreme Court struck down a ban on interracial marriage in 1948, almost two decades before the U.S. Supreme Court did in Loving v. Virginia.

Basically, the court found that there was no reason for same sex marriage to be illegal. It's a law that serves no purpose, other than to discriminate.

Which brings us to a second timely and informative question -- why should same sex marriage be illegal?

Turns out the finest legal minds the State of California could provide couldn't come up with a reason. For the life of me, I can't either. Some of the arguments don't make any sense. To no one's surprise, former Pennsylvania Senator and professional holier-than-thou idiot Rick Santorum made one of these nonsensical arguments.

"Look at Norway. It began allowing same-sex marriage in the 1990s," he wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer. "In just the last decade, its heterosexual-marriage rates have nose-dived and its out-of-wedlock birthrate skyrocketed to 80 percent for firstborn children. Too bad for those kids who probably won’t have a dad around, but we can’t let the welfare of children stand in the way of social affirmation, can we?"

Unfortunately for Rick, pretty much none of that is true. The Center for American Progress tells us, "Norway began allowing same-sex civil unions in 1993. But according to M.V. Lee Badgett, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Norway’s 'big surge' in the nonmarital birth rate occurred in the 1980s, jumping from 16 percent to 39 percent. In the decade after Norway authorized civil unions, the nonmarital birth rate rose only 'slightly,' and then, 'after a couple of years, leveled off at 50 percent.' These rates are similar to those in countries without such laws."

Of course, the fact that Santorum's lying shouldn't surprise anyone. One, he's a well-known liar and, two, his story doesn't make any damned sense at all. Maybe Rick didn't get the memo -- we can be pretty sure he skipped out on sex ed in school -- but gay couples don't produce children, married or not. Not that they can't, it's just that most don't, preferring adoption or already having kids from previous marriages. Most of these kids Rick's made up would come from heterosexuals. Why would same sex marriage result in fewer marriages? That's the kernel of the argument and it doesn't make any sense. Rick tries to give a good reason why it should be illegal, but fails miserably by resorting to lies.

Another attempt at a good reason for a ban comes from John Stemberger of Florida's Yes2Marriage.org which, confusingly, takes the No2Marriage position. In an email to supporters, Stemberger writes (emphasis his):

The innocent-sounding idea of gay marriage has wide spread and far reaching consequences to the transformation of law, culture and society. When marriage is legally redefined, it simultaneously changes thousands of other laws. Marriage license forms will issued to “Party A and Party B.” The words “husband and wife” will be removed and replaced with “partners.” The words “Father and Mother” will become outdated terms. Every aspect of the law is gender-neutered. Laws which reflected the reality of human femininity and masculinity will be erased. Further, public school curriculum and textbooks will be transformed to model homosexual families. In order to avoid lawsuits for discrimination, public schools will begin to teach homosexual behavior as the moral, social and legal equivalent of marriage between a man and a woman. Listen to this NPR radio interview on how public school teacher Deb Allen in Massachusetts teaches lesbian intercourse to eight grade students with models and charts HERE. I promise you that this nonsense will be coming to Florida at political light speed unless we all work hard to tell others to vote “Yes” on Amendment 2.

It's hard to know where to start. How will the terms "father" and "mother" become outdated? There's this thing called "medical science" and it talks about fathers and mothers. Unless we start reproducing exclusively by cloning, this is a crazy claim.

And Stemberger's sort of hoping you won't listen to that NPR interview. Deb Allen had been teaching about homosexual intercourse before Massachusetts legalized gay marriage. She's a sex ed teacher. The only real change is that she's more comfortable doing it now. How awful!

But the stupidest argument is that it'll force the state to change the wording on paperwork. Seriously, name a law that doesn't. If that's a good reason to ban same sex marriage, then it's a good reason to stop making law altogether. "Yeah, we'd love to make email scams illegal, but it'd be this whole big thing and we'd have to print new forms..." The laziness of the state print shop is a pretty lousy argument.

Other arguments are just as bad -- that it makes a "mockery" of straight marriages, that it encourages people to be gay, that gay people can't reproduce, etc. None of these are compelling reasons to deny marriage equality to homosexual couples. Other people's marriages have no effect on yours, gays don't need to be "encouraged" -- they're pretty much as gay as they're ever going to be regardless, and there are plenty of straight couples who can't reproduce. I have yet to hear anything approaching a logical argument against same sex marriage.

The final argument, the very last bastion of the bigoted, is that Jesus doesn't like it. My answer to that is that Jesus hasn't been elected to anything. When He becomes President Jesus or Congressman Jesus or Senator Jesus or even Governor Jesus, then we get to care what Jesus thinks. Until then, Jesus's opinion -- which many Christians argue would be pro-gay marriage anyway -- is irrelevant. We're a nation of laws, not Gods. Since I'm not a Christian myself, I could really care less what Jesus thinks about the law.

Maybe that's why California's new push to amend their constitution and ban same sex marriage is failing so far -- no one can think of just one good reason to do it. The only arguments in favor of the ban are irrational.

Given the opportunity to expand freedom, no one can think of a real reason not to.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; law; California; marriage; equality; gay; religious right; I keep looking for someone who has just one good reason to ban gay marriage -- so far, I've come up empty