6/26/15, “For the Children”
Augusta, Maine
I typically do not use this Travelogue to write about political
issues, instead preferring to focus on philosophical themes that transcend the
political issues of our day. However, to
ignore the events of today would be to ignore the very Zeitgeist. In possibly its most significant ruling in
years, the Supreme Court ruled this morning that State Legislatures cannot
restrict marriage to being between a man and a woman.
I have worded that sentence in a very careful
way, in contrast to the wording most news outlets have used. Why? Because,
to me, that was the issue at hand. The
Tenth Amendment clearly states, “The powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people.”
The wording is unambiguous.
Nowhere in the constitution does it give the federal government any
powers in marriage laws, nor does it prohibit the States from passing laws
defining marriage, as they have for over 200 years. Marriage is clearly in the realm of the
States. Right?
The obvious challenge to that is the
Fourteenth Amendment. The relevant
passage goes, “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.” It is the equal protection clause
that is at play. Are same-sex couples
being denied their equal right to marry?
Well, um, see, the thing is, couples don’t have rights. Individuals have rights. The question needs to be rephrased. Are gays and lesbians being denied their
right to marry? No, of course not. If laws were passed forbidding gays and
lesbians from marrying, then it would be very different.
Okay, let’s ask a different question. Are gays and lesbians being denied their
right to marry the person they love? Um,
what right to marry the person you love?
I’m not sure that’s a right. If
an adult brother and sister were in love, they would not be legally allowed to
marry. Are they being denied their right
to marry the person they love? The same
logic could be used to answer that question.
Is that the next step? To allow
adult incestuous couples to marry seems the next logical step, yes? To be clear, I am not supporting the Rick
Santorum argument, “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to
consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have
the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to
adultery. You have the right to anything.
Whether it's polygamy, whether
it's adultery, whether it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a
healthy, stable, traditional family.” I
am arguing from the opposite direction.
Note that, at this point, I have very carefully avoided giving my
opinion on any of this. I am simply presenting
the relevant arguments, as I see it.
See, the problem is, there is no debate on these issues. On one side are the mostly conservative religious
extremists who believe homosexuality is a sin and oppose gay marriage for that
reason. On the other side are the mostly
liberal gay rights supporters who attempt to ostracize anyone who says anything
that might be construed as slightly homophobic.
There is practically no middle ground, and there is no debate, just both
sides ranting and raving. Any policy issue,
and same-sex marriage is absolutely a policy issue, needs to be debated in an
open and constructive environment. That
debate has never happened on this issue, and with today’s ruling, the Supreme Court
has prevented the possibility of debate on this issue. Still haven’t given my opinion yet,
intentionally so.
As I see it, there are actually three questions here. The first,
should same-sex couples get married? The
second, should same-sex couples have a legal right to get married? The third, do same-sex couples have a
constitutional right to get married? (I
am condensing language here, meaning “individuals in a same-sex relationship”
where I write “same-sex couples.”) Okay,
so, the problem is, those are three very distinct questions, which people
should answer differently. Why, then,
would almost everyone answer each of those three questions either all yes or
all no. Where are the people who say, “Same-sex
marriage sickens me, it is a sin against god, but, unfortunately, the constitution
says same-sex couples have the right to get married”? Where are the people who say, “I’m gay, and I
love my boyfriend, but I just can’t see anything in the constitution that says
the State Legislatures can’t define marriage as between a man and a woman.” You never hear those positions presented, and
you don’t hear it because there really is no debate on the issue. All you hear is the two sides shouting their
answers to the first question, calling the other side sinners or bigots, and
letting their answers to the second two questions being defined by their answer
to the first question.
Reader, have I
made it clear at this point how I see the issue? Now, what is my stance? How do I answer those three questions? The first two questions are easy. I have two female friends who are romantically interested in women, coincidentally
both have the same name. One has a
girlfriend, whom I recently had the pleasure of meeting. How could I possibly say in good conscience
that, if they decide they want to spend the rest of their lives together, that
they shouldn’t get married? To do so
would be to say, “I don’t approve of your relationship,” which, in turn, means,
“I don’t approve of you.” The two
friends I mentioned, I love them both very dearly, and I love them for who they
are. To say that I don’t approve of them
would in turn mean that I don’t love them, and that is completely opposite to
what I just said. So, my answer to the
first question is that same-sex couples, who choose to get married, should
absolutely do so. The second question is
even easier. I am a staunch
libertarian. I do not want the government
telling people who they can and cannot marry.
In fact, I don’t want the government to have anything to do with
marriage. Marriage should be a private
contract between two individuals, and it should not need to be sanctioned by
the government.
Now, the third question
is so much more complicated. Do same-sex
couples have a constitutional right to get married? I have always favored a strict interpretation
of the Constitution, and I think I have explained in the opening of this entry
why a strict interpretation of the Constitution does not support a constitutional
right for same-sex marriage. This entry,
as I have just written it, is exactly how I would have written it when I woke
up this morning. When the Supreme Court
issued its Opinion this morning, I was not sure what to think. My immediate reaction was that it was a great
victory for gay rights at the expense of the destruction of our Constitution,
but I knew that I had to read the whole Opinion before I could figure out what
my opinion was. As I read it, I was
basically thinking to myself, “Alright, Kennedy, give me a reason why your
interpretation of the Constitution is correct and mine is wrong.” He did not.
However, he did one better. He
gave me a reason to favor a liberal interpretation of the Constitution. “Without the recognition, stability, and
predictability marriage offers, children suffer the stigma of knowing their
families are somehow lesser,” he wrote. “The
laws at issue thus harm and humiliate the children of same-sex couples.” Oh, crap.
I never thought about it that way.
How could we possibly tell a child that the reason his parents can’t get
married is because a document written over 200 years ago does not prevent a
State from defining marriage as being between a man and a women. Tell that to a child with two moms. Go ahead.
That was a serious thing. Reader,
if you are continuing to oppose same-sex marriage go explain to a child of a
same-sex couple why his parents can’t get married. No?
You don’t want to. Or are you in
the civil union camp? Allow civil unions
with equal rights as marriages? Okay, go
tell a child why parents are only allowed to have something called a “civil
union,” but his friends’ parents have a “marriage.” How is that not a stigma to the child? So, what’s my opinion on all of this? We must allow same sex-couples the legal
right to get married. Not, they should
have the legal right. They must have that
right. Why? For the children.
Alright, why have a spent so much writing
about same-sex marriage in a Travelogue.
Not because it is the defining issue of our time. No, because it was the biggest news story of
the day, so much so that it dominated all of my social media feeds today. While I communicated privately with a few
people about it, I carefully avoided posting anything about to social media,
instead opting to save my thoughts for this entry. I had to wake up early since I wanted to
leave early. I quickly packed and rushed
to make it to work by 7:37 AM. I went
for my traditional pre-departure lunch at Hop Won, bought some cigars for the
trip, and finished up at work, heading down to meet Pablo. We got our tickets and took the train up to
North White Plains. I had reserved a
full-size car, which is called by the car industry a mid-size, and it felt like
the smallest car I had ever driven.
I put
on Red and lit up my Nic Toro, which I hadn’t smoked in quite some time, maybe
not in over two months, since this was the first time I have driven in over two
months, I have realized. Of course, we
got stuck in traffic, and a trip to McDonald’s proved quite a detour. All in all, we lost well over an hour,
showing an arrival time past midnight. After
dinner, I switched to Taylor’s eponymous 2006 album and lit up an Aging Room,
which also lasted into much of Fearless.
I smoked a Las Calaveras for Speak Now.
It was a long and boring drive, 11 PM by the time we got to the all-too-familiar
border sign to Maine. I rounded out the
Taylor collection by listening to 1989 without a cigar, and I finished up the
drive with an Avo, listening to the first half of Les Miz. It was not long before we got to the hotel,
checked in, got coffee, and headed upstairs, where I lit up a Prensado and
proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish and
get to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment