Exactly how does Prop 8 PROTECT marriage?

[skyfire1228]

You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

I'm not seeing a lot of protection going on from Prop 8. Threatening, invalidating, cheapening, limiting, preventing, those things Prop 8 has accomplished. But not protection. Not by a long shot.

Comments

[skyfire1228]

Dude, I read late-career sex-crazy Heinlein on a regular basis. I couldn't bring myself to give a shit what consenting adults decide to do in their own lives, so long as they aren't doing serious, not-okay damage. So I'm with you on that.

Defending marriage by that definition may be reprehensible to some but it is a morally righteous crusade to others.

My point is that, when it comes to legislature, morally righteous crusades be damned. Equal rights shouldn't be subject to the whims of the Imaginary Friends in the Clouds; that's why we have the separation of church and state.

Remember that Prop 8 passed in CA, that means that marriage is defined as a heterosexual union no matter how unfair people believe that definition to be.

Yes, and putting the rights of a minority to majority vote is appallingly wrong. From the US Department of State: "The rights of minorities do not depend upon the good will of the majority and cannot be eliminated by majority vote." Homosexual couples had equal rights for half a year, until the majority voted to take away those rights. That was wrong, by the US definition of a democratic society.

I swear to all that's holy, if the Supreme Court comes back and says, "Y'all, fuck it. The word 'marriage' is unconstitutional. All y'all have domestic partnerships now. SUCK IT and STOP THIS FOOLISH SHIT," I will laugh and offer to buy the whole damn court a round of beers.

Without prop 8 religious organizations which offer services to people based on their married standing could be sued.

Ah, here we go. Discrimination based on sexual orientation was illegal long before gay marriages were allowed in California. That's a separate issue, and it has nothing to do with Prop 8. The NPR article is slightly misleading, in that it attempts to correlate these cases with the start of same-sex marriage amendments, even though some pre-date the Massachusetts law and most are in states that have banned same-sex marriage.

Additionally, whether courts come down in favor of or against the religious institutions is a mixed bag; that case about the Lutheran high school expelling lesbian students came down on the side of the school, upholding the expulsions. Other cases have upheld firing gay and lesbian teachers, while some have come down in favor of the fired individuals. It seems to depend on the district and the judges. Which we've never seen before. /sarcasm

California has a Domestic Partnership law that since 2007 grants all the legal rights of a marriage to a same sex couple.

Yup. California's better than a lot of states that way. And that's why we're back to "separate but equal". Yes, most or all of the state rights are accounted for in the domestic partnership law (I've heard both, but I haven't dug through the law for both to see exactly where and how they differ). According to a couple sources (thanks, Dr. Google!), it's actually easier to get a domestic partnership than to get a marriage license (though I'm not entirely sure how, since I've never gone for either).

However, the connotation of the term "domestic partnership" is of something less than true marriage, which implies second-class citizenship to those who have one. The majority opinion from the Supreme Court case included a great deal of analysis about this, and why it's unfair. It's really a thing of beauty.

Oh, and no worries, I didn't figure you for a homophobe. I like a good debate, and same-sex marriage is one topic that's bound to get interesting arguments from both sides. We be cool, bro. (or something, my ghettospeak seems to be broken)

[milescochran]

You're right discrimination based on sexual preference WAS illegal long before this whole debate. However discrimination based on legal marriage standing was not illegal which is exactly where some of the groups are hanging their hats. Adoption services, marriage counseling, married dormitories, are all specific cases to marriage status that will (and in some cases have) brought a whole new set of legal woes. It is as you say a mixed bag but also a bag with cat still firmly inside.

Okay the problem with the US State department is they're fucking wrong. They have a great idea but in practice that doesn't work. Ask the Japanese Americans put into camps during the second world war. Ask the polygamists in Utah when their right to marry went the way of the dodo. America isn't fair, it's democratic. Democracy is about popular not about right.

Also realize that this "fairness" thing that you speak of is a moral tenant and what the GLTB community is doing is crusading. Civil rights campaigns are based on a moral worldview that prizes equality. Other people have a moral worldview that focuses on tradition and on religious teachings. There are simply people in the world who do not believe that equality is preferable to a society with inherent divisions.

For example, criminals are discriminated against, they have their rights stripped and they are locked up. Almost everyone agrees that this is an okay form of discrimination. However some people say that drug offenses should not put people into the category of criminals. It's all about where the divisions are made and why they are made. You disagree with the reasoning behind this particular segregation.

Because God says so doesn't do much for me either. But I also believe that it's a fine reason to deny a gay couple Catholic church funded adoption services, just not marriage. I think gay couples are out of luck for married housing at a orthodox Jewish college, but they should be able to have whatever government form they want saying they are married.

[skyfire1228]

And this is where we get into fuzzy territory about private versus public institutions. In my opinion, private religious institutions should be able to act according to their tenants. For example, the Christian-based adoption service - there are other options for adoption that *will* adopt to same-sex couples, and their rules on who they can adopt to are part of their contract agreement/charter/whatever. That's fine. That's a private institution, they can be unfair if they want to. Same thing with private school "married" dorms. However, I think that the recently-passed Unmarried Couple Adoption Ban in Arkansas is a piece of shit.

Health care starts to go to gray areas, depending on the circumstances. For those who feel that adequate health care is a right, not a privilege, and in cases where health insurance only allows a person to go to one or two doctors, denying service to same-sex individuals and couples is often viewed as denying a basic right. Kind of like if a police officer refused to respond to an incident that involved gay people. Except, because health care professionals are mostly private entities and not part of public institutions, we get thrown into a gray area about whether it's okay for a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, or psychologist to deny service based on sexual orientation and marriage status.

In my personal opinion, professionals at public hospitals - suck it up, do your job, pray about it later. Hospitals and clinics that are part of a public institution (ie, state-funded university clinics) - suck it up. Pharmacists - suck it up; yeah, they're mostly private, but god damn do I get my hackles up hearing about pharmacists denying to fill prescriptions for birth control. They are not doctors, they do not know the history or the reason behind the prescription (many women who have ovarian cysts take birth control to manage their cycles, which has nothing to do with killin' teh baybees), they don't get to pass judgment on what a woman has decided with her doctor. Fully private institutions - they have the right to deny service.

Of course, the courts have never asked me for my opinion on these issues, so take that with a grain of salt.

As for the US State department - sure it works. Just not when people are terrified, either of change or of that ubiquitous "them". I'm not saying that we've got a perfect record of fairness and equality over here; our government has done some shitty, shitty things in the past that weren't fair and catered to the hysterical majority. What I am saying is that I hold the government to a higher standard.

As much as we like to say we're an example of true democracy, we aren't. We're a constitutional republic. It's our government's job to represent us equally, so that no majority can fuck over any minority. And so we can't just vote ourselves bread and circuses till we collapse and die. Sometimes, the government fails to do its job, and we get shit like Japanese American internment camps; sometimes it doesn't, and we get things like integration. The government is still just people; it is not infallible.

Civil rights campaigns are based on a moral worldview that prizes equality.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

That's the moral worldview of our government - or it should be. That is the ideal we strive for, and that is the standard we should hold our elected representatives to, even if it's unpopular. Anything less undercuts the very foundation our country was built upon.

(continued, 'cause LJ has a bitchy little character limit and I'm wordy as hell)

[skyfire1228]

As for criminals, since we aren't an anarchist nation, we have rules. Most of those rules come back to "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness". Breaking those rules is tantamount to breaking the contract our government has with us. At that rate, I don't see jailing criminals as discrimination per se, but as a consequence of violating the rules.

Murder, theft, fraud, rape, assault, all of those crimes come back to those basic rights. Then we get to politeness laws, ones that make it easier to live in a society of so many: traffic laws, public drunkenness, noise ordinances, etc, which sometimes carry a jail time consequence but mostly carry fines. Things like sodomy laws, anti-gay laws, anti-polygamy laws, and their ilk are attempts to legislate morality according to the morals of some (but not all) religions. Those, in my opinion, have no place on the books. As I've said before, I don't care if a dude is buggering the brains out of five men and eight women, as long as it's all consensual. If it's not, it's the *rape* that should be illegal, not the orgy.

I think part of the debate over drug offenses is whether or not they truly violate any part of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness", since subsequent crimes about/under the influence of drugs (beatings, robberies, manslaughter, etc) are already considered offenses.

But, as you point out, that is where *I* draw the line. Others draw the line based on their Bibles, which usually say that a whole fuck of a lot more should be illegal than I do. Personally, I don't think the Bible should have any influence in lawmaking, as that violates the "no advancing or inhibiting religion" prong of the Lemon Test regarding separation of church and state. If we need a text to guide us, we have the Declaration of Independence.

As I've said, I see nothing wrong with individuals imposing strict rules from their Bibles upon themselves and/or their private organizations. I'm cool with the Amish and the Mennonites. Restricted enrollment and employment in private religious schools is fine by me - it's not fair, but they don't have to be. I take issue with individuals trying to impose strict rules from their Bibles on everyone else through establishing state or federal legislation. That crosses the line. Not just my line, the Supreme Court's line. The separation of church and state line.

Certainly, our government isn't perfect at promoting equality despite the cries of the hysterical majority, nor is it always awesome at respecting the separation of church and state. DOMA is a fucking travesty and should be repealed. "Don't ask, don't tell" is the same. But, Obama has stated that he'll pursue ending "don't ask, don't tell", and DOMA is being challenged. It's our slow and imperfect system, and maybe I'm just naive enough to expect it to eventually work in favor of equality and the ideals it began with.