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The
Marriage Wars
Will the
Court Have Brought Them to End or Ignited a New & Enduring Conflagration?
All civil states, with their officers of
justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are proved
essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the
spiritual, or Christian, state and worship.
- Roger Williams
A Plea for Religious Liberty
The Gauntlet Now Down
The decision of the decade has been made,
and done so by the margin of a single man’s vote. On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court, in a
bitterly divided decision on the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, decreed all
votes in the question of legalized gay marriage void.
We need not cover in detail all the
reasoning here. There has been enough
of it already, and anyone in this day can access it at will. We will merely cite two quotes from the
opposing view points on the court that were at the core of their decision.
From the pro-gay marriage pivotal Justice
Anthony Kennedy:
Without the recognition, stability and predictability
marriage offers their [gay people’s] children suffer the stigma of knowing
their families are somehow lesser. They also suffer the significant material
costs of being raised by unmarried parents, relegated through no fault of their
own to a more difficult and uncertain family life. The marriage laws at issue
here thus harm and humiliate the children of same-sex couples.
From the dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia:
They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a ‘fundamental
right’ overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and
almost everyone else in the time since.
These two quotes somewhat
encapsulate the basis of the division for each side: the slim majority cited their own
perception of what would be better and fairer law, and their view of
self-esteem concerns; and the minority objected to the changing of
Constitutional law on the basis of changing views on issues nobody knew they
were voting on when the laws were passed.
Justice Kennedy’s reasoning does beg
the question: Is it then that people who chose not to get married or choose
to get divorced are choosing to stigmatize their children and to make them
feel ‘lesser’ (to use his language of the left)? What should be done about them?
The Rule of One
There is no denying that the court
denied the people the right to vote on the subject of changing the definition
of marriage; and moreover, nullified actual votes held in most of the
country*, relying instead on quickly shifting public opinion, measured only
by polls reported on by a media almost monolithically sympathetic to one
side, to change the Constitution of the nation. One has to wonder what this same court
would have voted (or more specifically, one Justice by the name of Kennedy)
if this case had come before the court just five years earlier. Would the Constitution have been a
different one then?
*The mainstream media, from CBS to
PBS, often mentioned prior to the court decision that ‘already 37 states have
passed’ laws legalizing gay marriage.
However, this was at best sloppy reporting, and at worst, deliberate
misinformation, as in fact only eleven states had done so, and in the rest of
the states the courts overturned their votes against gay marriage.
Repeatedly most of the media and all
other gay marriage supporters insisted that the public was now in favor gay
marriage recognition identical to traditional marriage, and therefore, the
court decision was the right one. Yet, as with so many other issues in hot
contention the last forty years, despite the certainty expressed about public
support, the course selected was judicial imposition, not legislative
democracy.
True, there have been past court
decisions that dramatically altered the legal landscape, but these have
tended to be unanimous court decisions, with of course the glaring exception
of Roe vs. Wade (another five to four decision).
Whatever final and lasting legal
resolution might have been devised through a voting process that was seeing a
more gay-friendly generation replace a less gay-friendly one, we do not
know. And, the push is now on to make
sure it stays that way.
Hell Hath No Fury Like
An LGBT Scorned
The second assurance also repeated long and
often until recently was that religious freedom will not be infringed as a
result of this ruling. Specifically,
that people who morally objected to same-sex marriage would not be persecuted
or oppressed, or forced to violate their beliefs. That assurance is at an end.
In the last two years, in an effort that
manifested itself very suddenly and simultaneously in several states, small,
sole-proprietor businesses that declined to participate in activities related
to gay weddings have been targeted with aggressive PR, legal, and boycott
campaigns resulting in great harm to those businesses. Human lives have been harshly affected
because somebody insisted on a cake or photos for their gay wedding from a
specific business.
Just a week after the Supreme Court decision,
Chief Moral Inquisitor Brad Avakian, whose real job is supposed to be as
Oregon’s state labor commissioner to address employment disputes,
ruled that the owners of Sweet Cakes bakery pay $135,000 to a gay couple for
the “emotional and mental suffering” the couple suffered when they were
denied a wedding cake from that specific bakery. This on top of the closure of their shop
due to public pressure brought on by the lesbian couple, which the Christian
couple had spent their lifetime investments building.
It strikes us that if someone
suffered $135,000 worth of emotional and mental suffering for not being able
to order a wedding cake from a specific bakery, they are in serious need of
psychiatric care, and should immediately seek that help instead of focusing
their mental demons on destroying the lives of two other human beings who
asked for nothing more than to be left alone (is that not what gay people
used to ask for?).
Imposition by Refrain
Sadly, many pro-gay marriage
advocates have explained, including supposed unbiased news anchors, that no
one may now enter the marketplace (i.e. make a living), if they are not
prepared to participate in gay weddings.
And, this all began before the Supreme Court ruling. It now will get worse.
When the likes of gay marriage
activist George Takei, (who referred to Justice Clarence Thomas as a “clown
in blackface”) and their followers say they “believe in religious freedom,
and people who argue that are entitled to their freedom…But they do not have
the freedom to impose their religious values on to others,” what they mean by
that is that no one can impose their values by refusing to participate in gay weddings. That this is a rather strange use of the
word ‘impose’ will cause not any qualms in the least from the new morally
absolute busybodies.
See next column >
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Ultrapolis
World Forecast & Review
Ultrapolis
Project – ultrapolisproject.com
832-782-7394
Editor: Marco Antonio Roberts
Copy
Editor: Michael Alberts
Contributing
Editors:
Mark Eastman
Mark Steele
contactproject@ultrapolisproject.com
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Our forecast record cannot be beat. One can follow the herd chasing the latest
hyperbolic, melodramatic, and soon-forgotten micro-trend, or one can be wisely
and judiciously in front of it with UWFR.
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< From
column 1
Public Accommodations
- by Definition
As we have stated
in previous UWFR issues, and in the column published in the Battalion of Texas A&M
University this April 1, what we have here is a deliberate conflation of
any and all services or products with ‘public accommodations’. Instead of applying the limited
definition of public accommodations as clearly outlined in the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, this new definition essentially means any product or
service.
Libertarians have
always objected to any law, including the Civil Rights Act, that forces
businesses to do anything at all. They have done so on the grounds that
this violates a person’s right to determine the use and purpose of their
own labor and property. They also
feared that once established, the right to coerce businesses into
activities they object to would be expanded, as it now appears to be the
case.
On the first
point, this real imposition on businesses was accepted by the Republicans
who passed that law in 1964 because the price was relatively small compared
to the wrong it intended to correct: the real inability of people to secure
basic services, or be secure in obtaining services while traveling, due to
their physical characteristics or religious beliefs. And, everyone ultimately benefited in
knowing that, regardless of where one traveled in the United States, they
could obtain food, lodging, housing - all products and services essential
to daily life and the ability to move about the country. Additionally, it also required this
unrestricted public access to any “motion picture house, theater, concert
hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of exhibition or entertainment”
that is open to the general public.
It is critically important to understand
that none of the public accommodations listed in the Civil Rights Act of
1964 required any business to either have knowledge of, or participate in,
any customer’s beliefs. (Remarkably, while libertarians have pointed this
out, no Republican or social conservative seems to be aware of this.)
Moreover, the Act did not require a business to change the
products or services it delivered to suit any customer’s preferences. For example, a paying customer of African
descent cannot be denied entry to a movie theater simply because of his
race. But, the customer cannot then
call upon the power of the state to force the movie theater to show movies
that feature more people of his race, or even that it not show racist
movies.
Whether marriage should
be indifferent to the sexes of the parties involved or not is a matter of
belief. Although many talk about the
14th Amendment and ‘equality’, and deliberately equate having an
inclination with the right to act on it, in truth, being homosexual is not
the same as believing that gay people should be able to marry, or even to
believe that acting on homosexual feelings is morally good. Possessing a trait is not the same as
possessing a belief, or a moral trump card, for that matter.
The Born Identity
Let us take a moment to pause
here and re-state again, lest anyone try to say otherwise, we here at the
Ultrapolis Project and UWFR have
a long history of unequivocally advocating for the rights of free speech,
freedom of association, and freedom from religious persecution, that is for
all the First Amendment rights, of all gay people, along with all the other
proper political, civil, and human rights that should be accorded all
persons in our country.
Still, this is a
difficult matter to discuss because the political and civic gay identity is
so closely tied to specific behavior and choices of belief on that
behavior.
Nonetheless, regardless
of why someone wants to engage in certain behavior, society does have a
right to discuss and consider whether any behavior is permissible, or
should be, under its laws – being “born this way” remaining totally
irrelevant to the merits of the case except in the extension of
compassion. People are born with all
kinds of conditions that vary from the norm. As we have said before, a condition’s
mere presence says nothing about whether it is good or bad. A homosexual man always had the “equal”
right to marry as any heterosexual man – he just was not interested in that
right as it existed in the recent past.
Now, if there had been a law that said homosexuals cannot get
married to anyone – period – then one could have honestly argued for an
“equal” right to marry. What gay
people were asking for – understandably – was a new, different right that
no one had: the right to marry someone of the same sex. And they demanded it for a brand new
reason: to have the state recognize (approve of?) their romantic love.
Marriage was previously
not seen as a ‘right’, but as a moral (later legal) ‘license’ to engage in
heterosexual sex. In fact, marriage
was so closely associated with the need to ensure children were not through
any heterosexual encounter born outside a stable partnership of a mother
and a father that in some instances in history marriage was not permitted
to infertile couples or couples that did not declare their intent to have
children. (One can imagine a conservative back then arguing strenuously
that allowing the infertile to marry would eventually lead to allowing men
to marry men, and then being laughed out of the public square.)
Belief Upon Belief
Now, we always supported
here the discussion of what ought to be the legal terms of marriage, and
openly advocated the extension of civil unions for gay people for purposes
beneficial to society (NEVER to legally certify who loves who). However, what has transpired instead is
the setting of a Constitutional premise that has established as supreme law
the notion that male and female are interchangeable (a long-sought goal of
the radical lesbian feminists that control the L-led LGBT movement). Worse, it has also cemented into that
supreme law the principle that the choice to believe that acting on
homosexual inclinations is morally benign is the same as possessing a
physical characteristic that one cannot change, rather than simply another
belief, like the belief that marriage is only between man and woman; and
therefore, that the first belief trumps the second.
Put another way, because
of the determination of homosexuality as more like a physiological trait,
it is being legally and rhetorically treated more like race or ethnic
background. However, in the process,
we have merged the protection of a person based on their traits with an
equal status protection of their choices as traits instead of as
beliefs. Thus, instead of saying “I
have an equal First Amendment right to believe being gay is OK and not to
have someone else’s views on homosexuality imposed on me”, they say “My
beliefs are part of my unchangeable traits, and therefore you must treat my
beliefs as if they were my skin color or ethnic background and thus, with
14th Amendment protection.”
This is critically
important, because while most people may not understand this distinction of
protected classes, it does subtly as well as firmly place one belief (that
homosexual behavior is morally benign and equal to heterosexual behavior),
over any other belief, religious or not, on the matter. And this will be the new launching pad
for the restriction of the First Amendment rights on any other beliefs in
conflict. Furthermore, as history runs
like a current, so will this new precedent run its course.
It may seem to the gay
left that it has won a great victory, and it has in so far as to the
specifics. But in the long term, its
adherents too will be caught up in the negative implications of how this
victory was won.
Continued column 3 >
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< From
column 2
Inclusion
and Diversity
Total
& Absolute
Now,
we are in a new place, where any person making a living is demanded to surrender
any right to refuse to perform a specific service, or provide a specific
product. Even religious institutions that officiate weddings are being
targeted for compliance, with articles, columns, and public comments now
questioning church tax-exempt status for any institution that refuses to
perform same-sex weddings. We
forecast here that an earnest campaign worthy of Soviet admiration, against
any expression of disapproval of same-sex marriage, will continue to grow,
even as its new belief enforcers deny – a la Takei - what they are doing.
This
belief suppression will extend even to most U.S. employees, as major
corporate employers will now require in job descriptions an employee’s
commitments to ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’ as defined by the corporation
(and the left). Already this is
being done in some corporations. If
you work for a major corporation, look for it in your next job description,
if it is not already there now.
A
black printer refusing to print perfectly legal white supremacist flyers, a
gay atheist photographer declining to be part of a Christian Revival event,
a Christian employee mentioning to anyone at work that they attended a
traditional marriage rally – these will be the potential new outlaws (but
only the last will be targeted by the left). Only money to be made is an allowed
consideration, not personal conscience (except as sanctioned by the state
or corporation) – or you don’t get to eat.
Nobody Here
But Us
Lovers of Free
Speech
Interestingly
in our own Ultrapolis Facebook discussion group we saw an instance of this
new thinking when one member posted a link
to a story where a newspaper announced that following the Supreme Court
decision, it would no longer allow any letters to the editor advocating
against same-sex marriage published on its pages. After dozens of posted comments arguing
over what are the true and proper terms of free speech, with some arguing
that speech that “hurts gays” can be “curtailed”, and that now using the
term “gay marriage” is offensive, we put this question to the two main advocates of
the Supreme Court decision who were engaged in the discussion:
…So, the question
here is, as was at the start of this post: Is it now [] OK to say that
expressing opposition to marriage among gays…is speech that can be
curtailed, discouraged – whatever, because it can “hurt gays”, while the
opposite speech remains fully protected and considered polite and
appropriate in all venues? Is speech saying “I oppose same-sex marriage”
deserving of the same protection and consideration as equally appropriate
in all venues as speech that says “I am for marriage for gay people?” or is
the first speech now like using the “N” word, and no longer on
equal-footing with the 2nd speech which remains fully protected and
appropriate in all venues?
Did
our indefatigable friends, after dozens and dozens of postings, take the
one last opportunity to clarify and unequivocally express their support of the
equal right of those on other side of this issue to have their say? Here were their responses:
I have said all I
want to say on this.
-Discussion
Partner 1
As have I.
-Discussion
Partner 2
Lastly
in this regard, urgent speed in suppressing any speech ‘hurtful to gays’
will be of vital importance to the left, in an effort to pre-empt any
possible coalescing of opposition.
A Gay New
World
But
there is more to this UWFR
forecast then the new blitzkrieg to establish new precedents further
restricting public speech that offends the collective. To summarize:
There
will be a counter-current initiative, not as strong at the beginning as the
left’s assault, but decades-long, that will seek to reverse the Supreme
Court decision on gay marriage.
A
new movement to eliminate civil marriage, either through replacing it with
a different legal mechanism, or by its total abolition, will surface and
grow. Many voices who have always
objected to the idea of civil marriage on the grounds the state has no
business ‘licensing’ love, will now become much louder, with added proof of
their claim.
Marriage
‘rights’ will continue to expand in new ways both predicted and unexpected,
adding to the movement to eliminate or replace civil marriage.
The soft
sciences, led by the social, lesbian-feminist construct called Gender
Studies, will roll out a train of studies on the equality, if not
superiority of gay marriages as compared to those of husband and wife. (Incidentally, how many poor gay couples
do you think will be raising children?)
Again we stop here to be clear that this is NOT an argument saying
gay people cannot be allowed to raise children.
In
50-100 years, the hard sciences will inevitably uncover new evidence that
many behaviors are driven by inborn traits, and will make available new
pre-natal genetic therapies that can target sexual orientation, and these
developments will erode the moral foundation of this 2015 gay victory. Having built upon the cheaper but
fundamentally flawed ‘born this way’ argument* instead of the more stable
‘freedom to choose’ foundational premise, gay rights will begin to wither,
while leaving in place all the precedents of state control of public
expressions of belief classified by the state as ‘hurtful’, ‘offensive’, or
as ‘hate speech’ – unless a movement does coalesce to more strongly protect
‘hurtful’ speech.
*The
premise that being ‘born this way’ has relevance was supported by the far
right and social conservatives when they argued over whether people are born
gay, and this led to the inevitable dispatch by the left of their untenable
arguments – Just another
example of how social conservatives accepted the premises of the left,
assuring yet another political retreat.
The More
Traveled Road
Now,
it is true that often prejudicial religious feelings led to the
establishment of a legal form of the religious institution of marriage, as
when marriage laws were passed to prevent inter-racial marriages. And yet, despite the warnings of the 17th
century religious leader of colonial America Roger Williams, who stridently
called for the separation of church and state – not to protect the state
from religion, but to protect religion from corruption by the state –
conservative Christians
handed their religious sacrament over to the state. And now the state has redefined it for
them.
Thus,
it may be fitting that the civil institution that was born from the attempt
to suppress religious freedom may die by it. Yet another lesson that how we accomplish
a goal is just as morally important as the goal itself. And thus it is that to override today the
Constitutional process for changing laws or effecting new ones for the
purpose of expanding freedom today is to destroy freedom tomorrow.
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