Two men–one a supporter of gay marriage, the other an opponent–joined forces to reach a compromise! So they wrote about it, and are so very proud of the deal they reached amongst themselves. Here’s how it would go down in their minds: the federal government would grant civil unions to any and all homosexual couples, thereby allowing them the financial and legal benefits of marriage, but it would also include a clause freeing religious organizations from any
obligation to recognize these same-sex marriages.
This is called separate but equal. Ask your local civil rights leader what he or she thinks of a separate-but-equal policy.
He or she will tell you that’s just another form of coded discrimination, a begrudging recognition of the need for equality without actually having to, you know, legalize it. The authors of The Times piece have similarly murky ideas about the legality of gay marriage and the rights of American citizens. Think I’m just being biased, because I’m a geigh? Let’s take a closer look at what these two gentlemen have to say!
“Our national conversation on this issue will be significantly less contentious if religious groups can be confident that they will not be forced to support or facilitate gay marriage,” they write. But I’m pretty sure that churches already feel they don’t have to “facilitate gay marriage,” and I’m equally sure that our national conversation is still quite contentious.
Then they throw a bone to us gay people! Gay people shouldn’t be worried about the church not recognizing their marital status, because “most state laws that protect gays from discrimination already include some religious exemptions, and those provisions are for the most part uncontroversial, even among gays.” Gays are fine with church exemption, right? They’re so fine with church exemption, in fact, that an op-ed piece has to run in the Times in an attempt to justify it! Also, Blankenhorn and Rauch are totally wrong and have exposed the fact that they really don’t know what those pesky gays believe.
I could go on and on, but I’ll skip ahead to the most infuriating sentence in the entire piece. “If religious exemptions can be made to work for as vexed a moral issue as abortion, same-sex marriage should be manageable, once reasonable people of good will put their heads together.” Reasonable people, like the two authors who make baseless assumptions about gay culture and broad, largely false generalizations about our nation’s attitudes toward the issue of gay rights. And it’s great that they think that the vexing “moral issue” of abortion has been managed. I’m glad that abortion has been solved, so The Times doesn’t have to write about it anymore.
I agree with their central thesis that “clinging to extremes” in moral arguments can “be quite dangerous.” But ignorant assumptions about broad swaths of American minorities is equally dangerous, as is the arrogant assumption that your own prescription for what’s proven to be
a thorny legal and moral issue is the only “reasonable accommodation” available. One of the authors of the piece, Jonathan Rauch, wrote a book called “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights and Good for America.” After reading this article, however, I don’t
see how he thinks it’s good for straights, the church, or America at large.
Photo: Flickr courtesy of CarbonNYC.
I response to religious organizations and whether or not they recognize the legal union of two people is irrelevant. Legal is the keyword. It is not up to churches to approve laws or legal matters of any kind. It is the solely responsibility of the state. There are plenty of things religious organizations support and don’t support, but the law is the law and is meant to objective. Religion is subjective and should carry no weight in the decision of this matter.
By denying same sex couples the right to marriage you are not only denying them equal civil rights, but also their right to happiness. Everyone deserves (within reason of the law) to be happy. Civil unions are not the same as marriage for the simple fact that there is a separate designation and name for that particular union. For it to be equal in the eyes of the law and regards to civil rights it has to carry the same designation and title. Marriage is marriage, period, and as it is a legal matter that should be blind to sexual orientation, color, and whatever other differences one would like to pose as that is not conducive to equality.
For their to be any stipulation as to whether two people are same sex or opposite sex is unlawful and immoral. Bottom line, the right of marriage is solely a legal issue and has nothing to with the subjective perspectives of religious groups. Their moral perspectives can be voiced but should be taken into consideration when it comes to the essentially objective and common morals and ethics of the LAW. Separation of church and state (which might as well be joke these days with all the people who let their blind faith guide them through their political careers).