Category: Religious Intolerance & Persecution

It was the day America died. Or marriage.  Or marriage in America. Or Americans’ marriages.  Or something.

See also, The End of Christendom and Jesus Wept.

It was the day when five Supreme Court justices (or one, if you’re just counting Kennedy’s swing vote) destroyed Democracy, thwarted the Will of the People, made us a Tyranny, and Did A Real Bad Thing.

And it was all over two simple words, consisting of three letters:  “I Do.”

Yes, not only can gays marry in California again (or will be able to once the state gets its paperwork act together, unless someone who actually has standing decides to challenge the strike-down of Prop 8), but for gays in states where it is already legal, the Federal Government will be required to recognize those state marriages (they way they recognize all other state marriages) and provide the same benefits (and responsibilities) under the law as they do marriages between two ostensibly straight people.

It’s really that simple. And yet, based on the rhetoric out there from some of the religious zanies in our society, you would think that there are now Legalized Gay Rape Gangs dragooning our innocent children into Mass Gay Polygamous Marriages in Christian churches that they have desecrated by their very entrance.

Let’s start off with former Governor Mike Huckabee, who summed up the SCOTUS decision like this:

My thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined that same sex marriage is okay: “Jesus wept.”

Y’know, I tend to find glib assertions about how Jesus would react to modern events and political developments more than a bit annoying, not to mention hubristic.  I mean, it’s one thing to say that Jesus would favor food programs because he, y’know, actually talked about how virtuous it was to feed the poor (we can debate over whether that should be through private charity or through taxes and government spending, but the basic principle is sound).  But Jesus never talked about same sex marriage. Really. So that makes it a second-hand guessing game as to how Jesus would have felt about it.  My inclination is to think that he would be less concerned about the plumbing and more concerned about the emotional commitment of the couple involved, but you don’t see me tweeting, “Hey, I’ll betcha Jesus is really happy about these rulings.”

(Or, as one commenter to Huckabee’s tweet noted, “I’d weep too if I had Mike Huckabee pretending to speak for me.”

Second, for a former governor and former presidential candidate, Huckabee is being either unintentionally or willfully incorrect in the SCOTUS rulings (either of them).  In the Defense of Marriage Act case, they didn’t say “same sex marriage is okay.” They said, “If a state decides that same sex marriage is okay, the federal government can’t treat such married couples differently under federal law.”  Or, to quote them pricesely:

The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

I mean, that has nothing to do with the merits of gays getting married, any more than federal law giving certain benefits (and responsibilities) to married couples means that the federal judgment thinks asinine celebrity marriages are okay, either.  On the contrary, the feds don’t have any say in it, they ruled. Indeed, they didn’t strike down the DoMA provision that said other states don’t have to recognize what those gay-lovin’ states do.  But in cases where individual states have sanctioned marriage between gays, the Feds themselves can’t ignore it.  Again, from the decision:

By creating two contradictory marriage regimes within the same State, DOMA forces same-sex couples to live as married for the purpose of state law but unmarried for the purpose of federal law, thus diminishing the stability and predictability of basic personal relations the State has found it proper to acknowledge and protect. By this dynamic DOMA undermines both the public and private significance of state sanctioned same-sex marriages; for it tells those couples and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition. This places same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage. The differentiation demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects, and whose relationship the State has sought to dignify. And it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples. The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.

The Prop 8 case didn’t even get into the merits of the ballot proposition; it was simply a technical decision that the folks appealing it had no standing to do so. Happens all the time.

Of course, some weighed in on how this was an abrupt and radical recasting of marriage, such as Catholic Bishop Thomas John Paprocki:

It is becoming increasingly and abundantly clear that what secular law now calls ‘marriage’ has no semblance to the sacred institution of Holy Matrimony. People of faith are called to reject the redefinition of marriage and bear witness to the truth of Holy Matrimony as a lasting, loving and life-giving union between one man and one woman.

Except marriage as covenanted in the Catholic sacrament of Holy Matrimony hasn’t been the law of the land since … well, ever, in this country.  We have church marriages, yes.  We also have civil marriage down at the courthouse. We even have marriage between people who aren’t Catholic, or even Christian — I mean, is a Buddhist wedding the same as “Holy Matrimony”?  Bp Paprocki’s assertion that only his church’s brand of wedding and marital bliss is the One, True Marriage is remarkably myopic (not to mention insulting), even if you assume he’s generous enough to recognize non-Catholic Christian religious ceremonies as such.

Bryan Fischer (dolt) is, of course, predicting the Societal Apocalypse:

The DOMA ruling has now made the normalization of polygamy, pedophilia, incest and bestiality inevitable. Matter of time.

Fischer (and Huckabee, et al.) all seem to labor under a misapprehension as to why laws are passed and how they are tested against the Constitution. Their idea is “Anything we like and agree with should be legal; anything we dislike or disagree with should be illegal.”  This is usually mixed and mingled with populism masquerading as democracy: “The majority feel this way so it must be true (and, thus, legal)” and “We have tradition on our side, which is like super-uber-democracy of the ages.”

While most of them would disagree with the idea per se that God’s will can be ascertained through a popular vote, in cases where they are looking for a particular outcome, they are more than happy to depend on “the will of the majority” to tyrannize the minority — and will continue to claim same even when the majority is slipping or has slipped away from them.

Back to Fischer.  Federal law does not provide certain benefits (and responsibilities) to marriage as some sort of moral judgment or religious mandate. It is not an extension of Judeo-Christian holy law.  Instead, such federal laws serve a secular purpose, noting that marriage helps (in theory) promote stability of relationships, both emotional and economic, as well as providing for child rearing, old age and illness care, etc.  Also, such marital relations are characterized by mutual consent.

That becomes far more problematic with polygamy (which tends to be less stable), pedophilia (lack of consent), incest (consanguinity and emotional health issues), and bestiality (lack of consent).

Also, what does “normalization” mean?  That now, because gay marriages are recognized on income tax forms and for estate taxes, that everyone’s going to be doing it?  Sorry, Bryan — if I were single, I would not be looking for some hot dude to pick up on, certainly not as a tax dodge. I simply don’t swing that way.  If by “normalization” you mean that people will think it normal, if unusual (note to Bryan: the population of homosexuals in this country is larger than the population of Jews), that’s probably true.  Since Fischer considers homosexuality a bad thing, he considers people thinking of it as normal as a bad thing.

But his laundry list of things next up to become “normal” makes little sense.  Bestiality and pedophilia not only provide no societal benefits (to warrant government support), but are highly problematic in and of themselves.  Incest is a bit dodgier, especially since even current US state law is more inconsistent than most people think — but, again, that’s a “state” decision at present, something most conservatives usually applaud except when the states do something they dislike (that laws against first cousin marriage are a relatively recent event in US history is also ignored by most “traditionalists”). Polygamy will likely also come up for a debate (as such luminaries as Glenn Beck and Rand Paul warn) …

… which leads to one thing about what Fischer implies is true, however — the djinn is out of the bottle as far as simply asserting that X (anything), which is not normal today and prevented by tradition and by (certain interpretations of) religious scripture, cannot be legally allowable tomorrow (if it isn’t already).  Society appears willing to look at such taboos and examine whether they still make sense.  That isn’t license, but a healthy engagement with reality.

Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association is banging the drum regarding the upcoming Great Persecutions:

Now, we must warn against the coming persecution, the barrage of criticism and the aggressive action of the homosexual agenda to indoctrinate and change the thoughts and convictions of Americans to accept this lifestyle as the new normal. In addition, the trend of classifying statements that have a biblical foundation as ‘hate speech’ is one that AFA will do everything in its power to prevent.

Along the same lines, we have Fr. Shenan J. Boquet of Human Life International:

Finally we note that these decisions do not bode well for the freedom of those religious institutions, such as the Catholic Church, who can only uphold the true definition of marriage. We expect that persecution of the Church will increase as opponents of true marriage demand that no dissent be tolerated, and that religious institutions participate in performing ‘marriage’ ceremonies for same-sex couples or suffer charges of discrimination. We are prepared for these inevitable events, and we stand in solidarity and hope with all who defend marriage.

“Hate speech” is, of course, politically protected speech, nor have there been any cases I’m aware of  where preachers have been hauled off from the pulpit for speaking out against homosexuality. Every state that has passed laws to recognize gay marriage have included copious exceptions to make it clear that nobody is compelled to give a religious blessing for same (nobody, as a parallel, has insisted that Catholic Churches have to marry Muslims or face a religious discrimination suit, since that’s clearly protected policy by the First Amendment).

On the other hand, there may be social consequences that will have to be dealt with.  Fifty years ago, someone who overtly militated for gay rights (let alone gay marriage) probably wouldn’t have been invited to a lot of public speaking events; I suspect that, increasingly, people who overtly militate for criminalizing homosexual behavior (or at least keeping them in the closet) will face the same sort of social opprobrium. That isn’t persecution, it’s social reality; it may be rude, but it’s human, and legal, regardless of whether the person speaking out against gays is doing so ostensibly based on the Bible or not.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council demonstrated he really doesn’t understand how government works:

However, by striking down the federal definition of marriage in DOMA, the Court is asserting that Congress does not have the power to define the meaning of words in statutes Congress itself has enacted. This is absurd.

No, it isn’t.  The Court is asserting that the definition of marriage has traditionally been defined by the states, and the federal government has accepted each state’s definition.

The Defense of Marriage Act imposes no uniform definition of marriage upon the individual states. However, the states should not be able to impose varying definitions of marriage upon the federal government.

I’m not quite sure how Tony can handle those two sentences together without his head ‘splodin’, but … actually, yes, the states should be able to do so. That’s called “federalism.”

The ruling that the federal government must recognize same-sex ‘marriages’ in states that recognize them raises as many questions as it answers. For example, what is the status of such couples under federal law if they move to another state that does not recognize their ‘marriage?’

Scare quotes!

Actually, the discussion of incest above applies here, I suspect, in the realm of first cousin marriages.  Thirty states have laws forbidding first cousin marriages (though only a handful criminalize first cousin sexual relations), but most of those still recognize marriages from out of state — and in all cases, the US recognizes their marriage if it was valid in the location where they were married, not based on their current location.

This goes with Ralph Reed’s tweet:

So in DOMA case, feds can’t trump state def of marriage. But in CA case, feds can—by judicial fiat. This is jurisprudential incoherence.

Now that’s actually an interesting argument, until you realize that the California / Prop 8 case, that’s not an accurate summary. First off, SCOTUS punted the Prop 8 case, basically saying the plaintiffs had no standing to bring the case (any number of court cases, including to the Supreme Court, get punted based on standing).  They said nothing on the merits of the case itself — though I’ll note that both cases were a matter of how the law applied to the US Constitution and being treated equally before the law. In the DoMA case, it was a matter of whether the feds were constitutionally justified, by statute, in discriminating against people that a state said were equal under the law.  In the Prop 8 case, the question was whether the state itself could positively declare that people were not equal under the law through ballot proposition; SCOTUS did not evaluate the merits of that case.

The bottom line issue in both cases (even if the Prop 8 one was ducked at SCOTUS) was the extent to which a law is, or is not, constitutional. That’s not incoherent — that’s the way our judiciary works (and is applauded by the likes of Reed when the decision is one they like).

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League gets it to some degree, so is going big into the constitutional amendment realm:

It is clear from today’s two rulings that the ball has been moved down the field to a point where the pro-gay marriage side is in the red zone. Whether they can be stopped from crossing the goal line depends solely on the prospects of having a constitutional amendment affirming marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Bill forgets that the whole reason we had DoMA and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was that, even twenty years ago, conservatives couldn’t round up the support for such an amendment. It seems highly unlikely that it could happen today, given the majorities needed in the chambers of Congress and the number of state legislatures that would have to approve it. But I’m sure he’ll keep raising money for it.

Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America wants us to think of the children:

The Supreme Court rulings fly in the face of reams of research showing that the best household arrangement for children is a married mom and dad. It contradicts centuries of experience across time and cultures for the best family structure for strong nations. It represents a national experiment in social reconstruction at the expense of our children’s futures and the future of America.

Except, of course, these rulings had little to nothing to do with that.  I mean, even if every gay person in the US went out married another gay person (unlikely, given that not all straights get married) and they adopted kids (also hardly universal, but let’s assume), the numbers involved would be insignificant compared to the kids in troubled homes based on straight marriage. It seems to me that the CWA (et al.), if they are so concerned for children, should be tackling those problems, not the edge cases of gays who marry and adopt — even if the research demonstrated what they are claiming (it doesn’t), and even if one assumed a false alternative of “if you didn’t allow gays to marry other gays, then they would settle down in happy, healthy straight relationships and raise happy and healthy children.”

Matt Staver of the Liberty Counsel argues that Marriage = Marriage and will always be Marriage:

Marriage predates government and civil authorities. No civil authority, including the Supreme Court, has the authority to redefine marriage. Marriage was not created by religion or government and is ontologically a union of one man and one woman. For any Court or civil authority to think it has the authority to redefine marriage is the height of hubris.

Given the breathtaking broadness of marriage traditions around the world — who can marry whom, and when, and how many people can marry, and who needs to give permission, and in whose name the marriage is celebrated, and what the property and power are around marriage — across both time and space, Staver’s statement is similarly breathtaking in its myopia. Even a simple review of the Bible demonstrates that.  And even if one believes in a particular Deity, the idea that civil authorities and society as a whole don’t redefine marriage all the time is simply willful blindness.

Staver does go on to demonstrate a broader agenda, though:

While today’s decision on DOMA did not redefine marriage, it has provided the foundation on which to do so. Today’s decision is the equivalent of the 1972 contraception decision involving unmarried couples and the so-called right to privacy on which the 1973 abortion decision in Roe v. Wade was constructed.

I read that as not just rolling back Roe v. Wade, but rolling back the ability of unmarried couples to buy contraception. Yeah, Matt, let’s go for a constitutional amendment on that.

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention runs a parallel Marriage = Marriage message:

Defining marriage for the American people is way above the Supreme Court’s pay grade. God created marriage, and He has defined its parameters, regardless of what the majority of Supreme Court justices might think.

Bryan Fischer also weighed in on this:

God defined marriage at the dawn of time as one man and one woman. What God has defined, the Supreme Court may not redefine.

Really? I don’t recall Adam and Eve’s relationship being defined as “marriage” or “matrimony.” Indeed, they were created without knowledge of Good and Evil, which makes it difficult to consider them consenting adults, among other things.

That begs the issue of whether we should be passing law based on Bible history (and, if so, that gets us back into all the other interesting variations on marriage law discussed in the Old Testament).

Note, of course, that the SCOTUS decision didn’t “define marriage for the American people” or “redefine” marriage.  It said that the states define marriage, and that the federal government should take its cue from them.

*     *     *

So, aside from some cheap laughs, what do we have?

1. People who think homosexuality is against God’s Law. That’s certainly their personal religious prerogative.
2. People who think American Law is supposed to reflect God’s Law. Except when taxes are involved.
3. People who think the Supreme Court should be ruling based on what those people believe the popular opinion is. Or else on the Constitution. Or perhaps on those people’s interpretation of God’s Law.  When SCOTUS gets it right, the justices are Wise, Sage Protectors of American and Jesus.  But when SCOTUS gets it wrong, then clearly the justices are Godless Liberal America-Hating Heathen.
4. People who are having a hard time adjusting to not having the loudest voices and biggest presence in room.

At the same time, we now have a Federal Government not dictating to states that their recognition of same sex marriage is invalid on the federal level. And we have gay married couples who will get to file federal income taxes jointly and get family discounts on estate taxes.  Not the end of the Republic, but a nice step forward for civil rights.