President
Obama has announced that he supports gay marriage. As he said (1): "At a certain point, I've
just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and
affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married. . . . I had
hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought that civil unions would be
sufficient. . . . I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people, the
word marriage was something that invokes very powerful traditions and religious
beliefs."
Wow! How about that (as the famous old-time New
York Yankees radio broadcaster Mel Allen used to say)? The President has shared with us his personal
view on the subject, which he presumably "evolved" to. Well that's nice to know, but as our highest
elected official he takes no postion on the law. In fact he has made it clear that as far as
the law is concerned, the matter should be left to the states. And indeed about 40 of them have out-lawed
the institution, at one level of another.
So, how is the President, as the President, not just as some observer
whose views have "evolved," wrong on the issue?
Let us count the ways.
1. In all 50 states marriage (and its dis-solution)
is the subject of civil law. To deny same-sex couples access to that part of the
civil law clearly violates Section 1 of the
14th Amendment, which among other things provides that the states
may not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws." And this from a former professor of
Constitutional law. When I was young and
Richard Nixon (before EPA and etc.) was an unalloyed enemy, we would say of him
and his heavy beard "would you buy a used-car from this man?" Well, at a much more important level, would
you take a course in Constitutional law from this President, who a) makes a
pronouncement on same-sex marriage without referring to the Constitution and
then b) says that the states are free to discriminate against a particular
sub-group of the population based on their sexual orientation?
2. He has
acknowledged at
the same time he is telling us of his personal view that he is sensitive to the
views religiously-based opponents of the institution. Golly gee, Mr. President. You know that there are some folks who find
white supremacy on the Bible, and the justification for slavery can be found in
it too. The objections to allowing
access to that part of the civil law by same-sex couples are always based on
religious dicta, most often in this country drawn from Biblical texts (Old and
New Testaments and now, the Book of Mormon).
To do so clearly violates the first provision of the First Amendment to
the Constitution: " Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof."
The 14th
Amendment, cited above, also applies the provisions of the Bill of Rights to
the States. Since the banning of
same-sex marriage is always "justified" on religious grounds, it clearly "establishes
religion" in the law and thus violates the Constitution. At the same time, under the "free exercise" provision,
if a church doesn't want to perform same-sex marriages it doesn't have to. But under the Constitution that does not give
organized religion the power to ban same-sex marriage in the civil law, for
everyone.
3. "Anti-gay
marriage" laws and initiatives are nothing more or less than dog whistles, more
polite indicators, for homophobia. Can't
be openly against the gays, now can we?
But let's deny them their civil rights, because they are gay and we
don't like them. It is well past time
that there has to be an attack on this issue.
Homophobia is a deep-seated expression of hated for folks who are
"different," who are "not like us." It
is then easy to label gays as second class citizens, and then to make them into
second-class citizens by denying them equal rights under the law.
Many people do not know that the first identity group the
German Nazis went after, before they went after the Jews, was the gays. The mandatory wearing of the Pink Triangle by
homosexuals in Nazi Germany came before the mandatory wearing of the yellow
Star of David by Jews. It is fascinating
that despite the discrimination, in Nazi Germany there were (presumably
closeted) gay members of the Nazi Party.
In fact, Ernst Roehm, the commander of the private Right-Wing militia,
the "Sturmabteilung," the SA, the Brown Shirts, which did so much to push
Hitler to power, was gay. How do we know
this? Well, on what was called "The
Night of the Long Knives," September 30, 1934, when he was assassinated, not
because he was gay but because the Prussian Army wanted him and the SA out of
the way as part of their price for supporting Hitler, he was murdered in bed
alongside a blond 19 year old male.
4. Finally,
politically the most important point to make here is the use to which the
Republican Party puts this issue. Its candidates
run on it. In the 2004 election, Karl
Rove arranged to have anti-gay marriage Constitutional amendments put on 11
state ballots, to draw Religious Right voters to the polls so that they could
also vote for George Bush. None other
than Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post, a liberal/progressive (but surely
no radical leftist) has characterized the contemporary GOP as the "American
Faith Party" (2). (Interestingly enough,
that post has been taken down from the site.)
In fact, all of the leading planks in the Republican
Party platform (for years) on the so-called "social issues" (correctly termed
"religious issues") are based in a particular religious doctrine: defining life
as beginning at the moment of conception, the practicing of legal
discrimination against homosexuals, the banning of the use of stem cells for
either research or treatment, for some GOPers, the banning of the use of
contraceptives, the prohibition of personal decision-making at the end of
life. And Republicans never lose their enthusiasm
for telling us that we are a "Christian Nation under God," despite the fact
that neither word appears anywhere in the Constitution.
These are the issues that need to be joined politically
before it is too late. But where are the
President, and indeed all of the leadership of the Democratic Party? Well, I guess that they are still "evolving."