The piece that I am responding to can be seen here.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/...15003102330.xmlThe poor, persecuted, Kevin O'Brien. To read his piece of March 10, "Majority Should Speak Up", one would think that people who oppose same sex marriage lived in closets and never were heard from. One would think that if a person turned on the TV, he or she would see nothing but pro gay propaganda 24 hours a day and seven days a week; and that those with Mr. O'Brien's point of view never, ever saw the light of day. The truth is quite a different matter.
First, lets take a look at the poll numbers. From a September ABC Poll.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/Relation...oll_040121.html Same sex marriage should be legal 41% illegal 55% but only 38% wants to amend the Constitution while 58% don't.
From a December NPR Poll
http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/...re_1567690.htmlSame sex marriage support 30 oppose 56. Civil Unions are tied at 45 in favor and 45 opposed. The Constitutional amendment wasn't mentioned.
Yes, a bare majority oppose same sex marriage. But, it isn't the overwhelming majority that Mr. O'Brien would have a reader believe.
Now, let's take a look at the TV punditry. Same sex marriage has been discussed on CNN, Fox News, and Face the Nation recently. On the Capital Gang, the four pundits split two and two. Source (Feb 7, 2004)
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0402/07/cg.00.html On Face The Nation, they had one pro, and one anti speaker (source Feb. 29, 2004 Face the Nation). Finally, on The Beltway Boys, both people were opposed. Source (Feb 17, 2004)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111678,00.html This is, to be fair, by no means an exhaustive study. But, unlike Mr. O'Brien I did provide you some sources to decide what is really the case. It is possible a case could be made that people with Mr. O'Brien's point of view are very slightlyunderrepresented in the news media. (50% in the media vs 55% in the polls). That is hardly the picture Mr. O'Brien paints for us.
Mr. O'Brien goes on to say this:
"Furthermore, homosexual partners who want to make legal contracts with one another already may do so. The law provides such instruments as wills, joint tenancies and powers of attorney to anyone, married or otherwise. Contract with whom you choose, whatever your motivation. You don't need anyone else's blessing. "
That is just, plainly speaking, baldly false. Even to the extent that such contracts can be entered into, they are certainly not free, nor are they as binding as marriage. Wills, joint tenancies, and powers of attorney are able to be contested and routinely are contested, by family members. The law assumes that the next of kin of an unmarried person is his or her parents or siblings. In not a few cases these parents have disowned the gay person. Yet, the law assumes that those parents are to be given the full rights of inheritance, determining medical care, and visitation in hospitals. In addition, there are a whole host of rights that only governments can bestow. Yes, a same sex couple can inherit, but they will pay taxes. Yes, some businesses offer same sex benefits, but they are all taxed as income. Same sex couples can not sue for loss of consortium. can not inherit Social Security or other government pensions, can not generally collect from disaster funds, can be forced to testify against each other in court, can not bring spouses from other countries for immigration purporses, can not jointly adopt, can not file joint tax returns, do not qualify for emergency family leave, and I could go on and on as there are over 1000 rights that married couples have that unmarried ones don't. Same sex couples are legal strangers.
Then he says this.
""We think it's wrong, and we're not going to condone it here" was a perfectly good argument against slavery, child labor, bigamy and every other societal ill, up to and including murder. And it's a perfectly good argument against legitimizing a type of sexual conduct in which only a tiny minority of Americans engage, and many more find repugnant. This is not really about marriage at all; it's about getting government to endorse the practice of homosexuality. "
This is patently absurd. Slavery, child labor, and bigomy weren't wrong because Mr. O'Brien, or for that matter anyone else, thinks they are wrong. They are wrong because there are real victims of these practices. Slaves were real people, and really harmed, by slavery. Child labor had real children, who real real victims, of a practice which robbed them of their childhoods. Bigomy has real victims who often have no idea their spouse has married twice. Same sex marriage, on the other hand, has no discernable victim. No one is going to wake up tomorrow, have a V8 moment, and say "Good God, I could have been gay. I need to marry a man." or "Wow, you mean I can marry a woman, sign me up". Nor is anyone going to have less of a marriage because someone else can have one too. We don't except these non sensical arguements from our children. If our kids tell us that you can't love both my brother and me, we tell them non sense. Similarly, the fact that one's fellow citizens, who happen to be homosexual, can enter into a marriage, doesn't lessen the value of those of heterosexuals. The government has no business foisting Mr. O'Brien's, the Pope's, George Bush's, or anyone else's idea of what is wrong upon us. The government only has business protecting real victims, from real wrongs, not imaginary people from imaginary wrongs.
He goes on to say this:
"Religious texts - and not just Christian texts - make an unambiguous case against homosexual activity as an offense against both God and man. That argument won't get any respect in the secular, skeptical media, but that shouldn't stop believers from making it every chance they get."
There are many things which the Bible says are wrong. Is Mr. O'Brien going to go after all you can eat restraunts, adulterers who marry their mistresses, people who wear germents of more than one fabric, people who blaspheme, or any of a host of other sins the Bible bans? One should hope not. Again, there is one, and only one, standard which should be used to legislate, and that is the existence of real victims. The Framers were pretty clear about this. The Ninth Amedment tells us that the people retain the rights not mentioned in the Constitution. The Tenth tells us that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states. The Fourteenth Amendment tells us that all citizens are entitled to equal protection. It doesn't have a homosexual exception. It doesn't have a Biblical exception. It doesn't have an exception for what Mr. O'Brien thinks is wrong and won't condone.
This isn't about same sex marriage. It is about who gets to make laws and why they get to make them. The courts aren't out of control super legislatures. They are doing their jobs. Rights aren't rights if one has to go on bended knee and beg some potentates for them. They aren't rights, if lazy courts won't enforce them. Rights are endowed to us by are Creator, not bestowed to us by Mr. O'Brien.
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