Separating Product and Politics

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/08/01/this-chicken-fight-wont-hatch-real-change/

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/08/02/chick-fil-a-appreciation-day-reveals-liberal-intolerance/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noah-michelson/chick-fil-a-first-amendment_b_1733305.html?ir=Religion&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

GLBT rights remain prominent in both politics and culture. A few weeks ago, I discussed the appropriateness of supporting political positions as a company in “You Can’t Boycott the Gay Away” and it seems that the reverse applies as well; you can’t support a company to make the gay go away. Chick-fil-a was already in the news a few years ago when it was revealed they give millions of dollars to anti gay companies like the Family Research Council. But this year, their president, Dan Cathy, brought the company into the spotlight again when he stated that his company was founded on “Biblical principles” and supported the “traditional family”. This brought a great deal of hostility towards and protests across the country at Chick-fil-A, ranging from mayors saying they won’t allow new CFA restaurants in their cities to people planning gay kiss-ins at the establishments. But Mike Huckabee, former presidential candidate in the 2008 race, supported a counter protest in the form of a “buycott” where people would eat at CFA to support their opposition to gay marriage. This doesn’t really seem to have worked, since the company is losing popularity overall in their brand recognition in the last month or so. And even if CFA manages to keep its profits at an even keel, I imagine they will lose a great deal of patrons and likely close a few locations where profits aren’t maintained, keeping their main locations in places where it maintains popularity with a conservative demographic, such as where it started in the Southeast. But is it really appropriate to always protest or boycott a group merely because they don’t agree with your politics? Can you distinguish between the policies a company supports and the product they sell you or are they too overlapped when it comes to where the money used to pay for it goes to? And should corporations really be involved in politics or should they focus on making profit in their ventures?

First off, this shouldn’t be argued to be about first amendment rights. Like the Oreo thing, it is within a company’s rights to say they support a certain political position. The limits of the first amendment are primarily to hate speech, which hasn’t been uttered as far as I’m aware by Dan Cathy. Even his ridiculous claim that we’re “inviting God’s judgment” by trying to achieve marriage equality is not illegal, since it’s a claim that has no real basis in fact like Westboro Baptist Church’s similar warnings. Terrible things happen to America as much as they happen to other nations, so God’s judgment is all over the place by that sketchy logic. CFA has every right to take a stand on this issue, but at the same time, there is such a thing as too much involvement. Companies can become too invested and literally start to campaign through their funds by donating to political organizations. This fundamentally undermines the initial purpose of a democratic government. When companies get involved, they take away the real value of the individual votes, because they’re campaigning with much more money behind them and it’s voluntary for different reasons. Asking for funds is one thing common in election season, but restaurants or the like get consistent cash flow, which makes their situation more ideal to take advantage of the lack of limits in other political contexts.  The Supreme court has made it law, from what I understand, that corporations cannot donate more than a certain amount to presidential or other such candidate based campaigns, but say nothing concerning such things as legislation in general. The Family Research Council, one of CFA’s recipients of funds, was against Congress condemning a bill in Uganda that would have made it legal to kill homosexuals, though they tried to divert the blame from them directly by saying they were trying to avoid “normalization of homosexuality across the world”. That same organization has been deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. These facts alone should be enough to make you think about calling CFA out on that blemish of their otherwise spotless record. What is ultimately at stake here is not whether CFA is going to go out of business, since a free market of both business and ideas necessitates that we have both crappy or subpar food and beliefs. If someone thinks that gays shouldn’t get the same rights as straight people, that’s their prerogative. But when you start trying to legislate those beliefs in reality, that’s where you stop being free under the constitution to do so. The same applies to companies. The goal should not be to protest, boycott or support CFA because of their political stance on gay marriage, but petition them to stop funding hate groups and stay out of politics as much as possible, if not entirely.

Chick-fil-A has stated that they intend to leave the policies of same sex marriage to the government and political arena. If this is the case, then I hope that they also cease their funding to people who are involved in politics. The National Organization for Marriage advocated a boycott of General Mills and Starbucks; plus I believe Million Moms suggested the same for Oreo. The vast majority of companies either 1) aren’t involved or 2) try to do it covertly, as CFA seems to have done in the past and may continue to in the future. Any company should maintain neutrality in this issue, especially when it comes to funding. They can take a position in the nominal sense, but to actively try to advance it through their profits is potentially unconstitutional, if not just insensible. Why waste funds trying to do what the people should be allowed to do without interference from entities that are not individual persons? It’s one thing for explicitly political groups to get donations from individual citizens, but private companies should concentrate on maximizing profit and marketing the items or services in question they provide. It’s just practical common sense.

To separate politics and product completely in terms of being a consumer misses the point, but as a producer, it is essential to doing good and efficient business. Policies and legislation are unnecessary to selling chicken sandwiches, or any other product, food related or otherwise. Just market the items through various media and progress from there. So this is a double edged conclusion. On the one hand, a consumer shouldn’t try to separate product and politics, since they can be interrelated. CFA can be argued to sponsor discrimination, so you shouldn’t go there. But you also should be able to separate the company’s employees from the policies their higher ups, like Dan Cathy support. They may not support that, but they still work there regardless. And for producers, the goal of entrepreneurial enterprises and franchises is to make money, not to use that money for purposes other than making money. Charitable organizations may be an exception, but to advance a partisan agenda is not what you should do with the money you get from people of all political persuasions. Keep your money either to charity or consumer interests and I think everything would become a little better in terms of political campaigns and their natural flow. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Distinction Versus Discrimination

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/05/11/the-answer-is-civil-unions-there-now-shut-up/

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/05/11/a-straight-answer-on-gay-marriage/

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/05/14/exclusion-does-not-equal-discrimination/

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/05/15/the-rainbows-almost-complete-some-closing-thoughts-on-the-gay-debate/

Last week I spoke on Dan Savage and his confrontational method for engaging opponents of GLBT rights overall, but this time the issue that’s becoming more contentious across the nation is defense of “traditional marriage” as various states continue to challenge rulings about gay marriage laws’ constitutionality or reinforce their own ideas of marriage in the form of discriminatory legislation, such as in North Carolina about two weeks ago. There are a few particulars I think are especially important to discuss when talking about this with anyone, such as whether the government should be involved in marriage at all, whether civil unions are the same as marriage by any stretch of definition, and defense of “traditional marriage” laws on the grounds that the government has leeway to discriminate even with the 14th amendment in place to limit such things as anti-miscegenation laws which were repealed in Loving v. Virginia in 1967. All of these can create large conflicts between otherwise reasonable people and it’s crucial to see why the issues aren’t so cut and dry as we make them, especially when there’s so much history and culture connected with a thing like marriage and sexuality.

On the more radical end of the political spectrum are conservatives and liberals alike that say the government shouldn’t be involved with marriage at all. The reasoning is that since marriage is a personal matter, there shouldn’t be federal arrangements surrounding it, but only state level at most; sometimes not even that. I wonder if the state should even be involved if marriage is so personal. If there are limits or regulations of the institution, then isn’t that excessive meddling by this very libertarian sort of position? Common law marriage may be a solution that gets the government out of more intrusive aspects of marriage law and the like and also allow gays to be considered married the same as straight people and get associated benefits by the same law. The problem is that this would have to be extended to a federally mandated, country-wide law instead of state by state, which many would oppose in saying that the government doesn’t have a compelling interest. But the fact that we register for marriages and the like, even if the primary source of the commitment is a religious ceremony, is a testament to how important it is to the government, if only to manage shared property, create structures of relation and kinship, and provide for children if the couple should unexpectedly die. The government has a responsibility to be involved in marriage, but there can be too much intervention, as well as giving the impression that married people are getting privileges beyond what they may deserve as a couple with shared property, taxes, etc. Striking a balance between the federal government’s intervention, as was done with state laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and states’ individual rights in terms of managing marriages in the more technical senses, without restricting rights based on irrelevant qualities, such as sexual orientation, will take cooperation that many people entrenched in their political parties may not be willing to do until marriage has become something unrecognizable even by traditional standards of male/female couplings. Would it kill marriage to expand it ever so slightly with the same regulations we have on straight marriage? Seems to me we can’t go much further with divorce laws beyond just allowing couples to annul their union without a lawyer at all, so marriage can only go up if it includes a group of people willing to conform to the basic values of marriage, even if they aren’t the majority.

Civil unions might have the same legal rights in most cases compared to marriages, but this is usually only on a state level. There is already inequality in that there are government benefits given to straight and married couples that gay and “civil unioned” couples don’t get. But even if this were not the case, there is still inequality in the same sense that existed with blacks getting their own drinking fountains, but being separate from the whites in that practice. Civil union does not give the same sentiment or implication as marriage and therefore it serves only as legal jargon to overcomplicate what could be a simple matter of marriage equality for both straight and gay couples. One could distinguish in a nuanced sense between categories of marriage, but not so simply between marriage and civil unions. Secular/civil marriage is that officiated and legalized by the state, while religious marriage is established and made sacred by religious doctrine and communities, but does not automatically hold sway in secular society. Civil unions might have a purpose for other partnerships, but not for something that has cultural significance for reasons that go back thousands of years. Family is one part of it, but so are fidelity, monogamy, commitment and many others. Gay people can have families, they can be faithful to one another and they can represent love in its many forms to a country that should not judge them because they love differently, but only accept their sincere love as deserving of the same title of opposite sex couples that love in the same way.

Preventing gays from getting married isn’t justified for the reasons we prevent adults from marrying children or biological siblings from marrying each other. The government has a vested interest in protecting children either from being violated by sexual predators or being born with preventable congenital birth defects, but not in denying the rights and title of marriage to people that fit the standard of marriage as a whole: two committed adults in a relationship willing to pledge their lives to each other in front of a community and remain so through their lives. The equality of marriage should exist with regard to gays and straights, because at its core, marriage is the same for both of them. It makes little sense for states to refuse a gay marriage performed in another state merely because they think there is protection in the constitution for discrimination, which isn’t always the case. You can’t just deny people equal protection for a fundamental right like marriage without having a fair minded reason. And being in love and willing to commit to the relationship through the bonds of marriage is enough by any legal precedent. Gays not being able to naturally have children of their own is not reason enough either, even if marriage is laterally connected to family as a method to generate it. Opposite sex couples that are infertile or elderly couples recently married for various reasons, such as one of them previously losing their spouse, cannot naturally have children, and barring scientific intervention or unexpected biological occurrences, cannot. They are still considered married by any “traditional” definition, yet if we consider the raising of children as integral to marriage, then even these male/female couplings are insufficient and worth only as much as a male/male or female/female coupling, since they cannot have shared biological children. While family and childrearing are both important to marriage, they should not be considered so essential as to disqualify or otherwise make couples feel like they are not worthy to be called married. And strict gender roles are not absolutely important in raising a child either. If a child understands that there is variation within male and females in terms of behavior that is considered masculine or feminine, then that should be enough. Children raised without fathers or mothers respectively or without either are not more prone to negative behavior solely or primarily because of the lack of those parents, but likely because of other contributing factors, such as societal concern for them to begin with. How often do people talk about single parent households or orphaned children? Not enough to reflect a genuine concern for them alongside children who have “normal” families. Far as I’m concerned, there is no “normal” family. Every relationship, every group of people sharing kinship has their own issues to work out, even if they have a mother and father. Having two mothers or two fathers doesn’t dispose you to be less important to society, and anyone suggesting it is missing the point of what family is at its core: love and compassion, regardless of blood relation.

One can be straight and fully support the right of gay people to get married, even if you’re not married yourself or don’t even want to get married at all. Your friend and their partner don’t make you and your significant other/wife or husband love each other less. If they do, you’re taking marriage way too much at face value instead of the lifetime it takes to make it work together. And arguing that the children need a mother and father is bollocks on its face, since there’s little causative evidence to suggest that a child without a mother or father respectively performs worse in society at large, let alone a child who isn’t raised by any sort of normal binary parental structure. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc: these are all family and they can raise a child just as well if they are willing to commit to nurturing and encouraging them in their pursuits. Gender roles aren’t absolutely required to come from parents, though they are one of the most common ways. One can see a grandparent, an uncle, an older brother or others as good male role models and vice versa for female family members, etc. If it’s proper support of a child’s growth, then you don’t need to focus on gender so much as more instinctive factors, such as love and support from people that care about you not because they’re obligated to, but because they regard you as someone close to them that deserves your love because of innate compassion for one reason or another. That’s what family is, and when you reduce that to a pairing of two people, you get marriage at its core, history or otherwise. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Gay Marriage Does Not Screw Up Marriage

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/02/22/3-reasons-the-9th-circuit-screwed-up-on-prop-8/

Many would claim that the recent ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California on Proposition 8’s constitutionality has set a precedent that will doom marriage by accepting same sex couples. This is not only untrue, but sensationalizing an issue that should not have been this contentious. If the federal government declares through an amendment in the future that, like bans in interracial marriage, amendments in the state constitutions that say marriage is only between a man and a woman are discriminatory and unconstitutional, this only makes gay couples equal in the eyes of civil law. Religions can still claim that those marriages are not ordained by God and refuse to officiate those ceremonies; their first amendment rights are protected even under such a declaration by the secular authorities. By no means would either secular or sacred marriage be destroyed or denigrated by the acceptance of gay marriage by society at large, except those who would prefer to stay in a previous generation, which is their right as long as they do not infringe upon those of others, such as the GLBT community when concerned with the supposed sanctity of marriage, which disappeared in cultural eyes when no fault divorce laws were passed. That sort of lazy approach to annulling marriages did more damage than gay marriage would ever do if passed across the country. Just because a religious definition of marriage is opposed by a secular law’s adjustment and allowance of gay people does not undermine or negate that definition in culture and society. It can remain, but by legal precedent, gays would be afforded the same title and rights, not merely the rights without the title, which is not solely the property of religion.

To begin with, gays are a suspect class by California law, so Prop 8 is explicitly conflicting with the Equal Protection Clause as it applies to state laws. It isn’t a stretch to claim that gay people are a suspect class on par with others that exist, such as race, ethnicity, religion, etc. Religion is not immutable except in terms of traditions it may hold canonically. People are not bound to their religion, but they are bound to race or ethnicity and by extension, since there is no evidence to suggest you are free to change sexual orientation or even alter it by force or so called “therapy”, it falls under one of the important qualifications of a suspect class in law, that it possesses an unchangeable characteristic. Other qualities include being persecuted and being unable to combat discrimination effectively by the legal process. For decades gays have been treated unequally in being denied the state of marriage while being given a compromise that is akin to saying one can have the duties of a soldier in the army, but not the title. One might say this is fair, but this would only be so if marriage was something that only had a religious implication. But the very association we have with marriage that entails property sharing, visitation rights, etc, makes it just as secular, if not more so, than the sanctity and holiness many believe it to possess. I believe it is very important, as close to sacred as one who doesn’t believe in the reality of the supernatural or transcendent could hold something in regard. But in order for marriage to be a fair practice, gays must be allowed to marry, and churches should be allowed to reject it, but not to legislate their religious perspective as law, since that more explicitly violates part of the constitution many people focus on only when it benefits them and not when it contrasts with what they take for granted, the free exchange of ideas which we may find offensive, but nonetheless tolerate the existence of.

Marriage does not have to mean the same thing to religious institutions as it does to the secular civil law, since they are not by necessity always in alignment with religious values, many of which can be antiquated and outdated. As noted before, there has always been, even back in the days before democratic republics with remote separation of church and state, an idea of marriage that connects the practice to property ownership, even if it was technically the woman that became the property of the man instead of sharing the property with her husband. Considering we can even think of a nuance between marriage of the state and marriage of the church, even if they also overlap in a sense, should be evidence enough that marriage is not something strictly for religion to define or legislate through the process of the courts. And arguments based on historical precedent only presume marriage will always be the same way it has been for thousands of years on the same faulty premise that the family will always remain as it was back in the old days, which is very much not the case. It used to be that your extended family shared a home with you, but we’ve progressively separated from that practice in the U.S., not to mention you can have families that are across countries through the use of technology, sharing their moments together without being physically with each other, not that it isn’t done with nuclear families in relation to immediate family if they are especially distant from each other. But the family can be a group of people completely unrelated to each other. Foster parents, adoptive parents, etc, all of which emphasize that family is not about blood relation, as defenders of so called “family values” and “traditional marriage” that “protects children” claim, but is about the sentiment behind the group or pairing in the cases of family and marriage respectively. The love is what makes a family or a marriage, not whether you are biologically connected or whether you can biologically have children together. This is irrelevant, even if it is a common occurrence in both cases. The most basic and essential part of both of these is love and for people to judge otherwise is to nitpick beyond even the biggest comic book nerd and forget the spirit of the institution for the body of the institution as it was in idealized history.

The state does not have a legitimate or compelling interest for denying the right to marriage in a civil context to people that, as noted above, are both a minority and being persecuted for something they cannot change without severe psychological repercussions. Denying marriage to people who are biologically related or to entities which cannot consent, such as children and pets, is a compelling interest because of either risks to the children or violation of children and pet liberties in contrast to denying marriage to a couple that can consent and poses no risks to their children. Any alleged studies about children raised by gay parents being likely to be gay does not show causation necessarily, but only a correlation that might coincidentally exist. Gay marriage is not something that has any explicit danger and so called predictions of disaster in two generations for any country that has seem to want to focus on the moralizing objections they have instead of whether a country is mismanaged apart from its acceptance of homosexuality, which certain groups find abhorrent, but nonetheless have not brought forth evidence that gay parents or couples adopting and getting married are any problem for the world at large. Without this, your opposition is religious in nature and trying to legalize it based on that violates the establishment clause on its face by American standards and a general idea of church/state separation across the world in one form or another.

It’s not that you can’t oppose gay marriage. No one’s stopping religious people from finding it objectionable. They just can’t use the law to try to make their discrimination legal in any sense. Like bans on interracial marriage, there are no grounds for banning gay marriage except that it makes people uncomfortable or morally indignant, which is not any rational reason to criminalize or prevent something from being protected by law, such as abortion, alcohol or cigarettes, all of which have opponents, but nonetheless have become commonplace and legally protected, though not considered moral by all people. This sort of distinction between legality as moral permissibility and legal as morally objectionable might have the potential for hypocrisy or abuses by humanity, but the intent behind them is not so sinister as abortion opponents try to spin the issue of what they mistakenly calling murder. Like gay marriage, abortion might have morally problematic qualities, but it is not something that poses a threat on the level of rape, murder or other such things that are illegal by their very nature. Same sex couples getting both the rights and title of marriage will not ruin your marriage and will not corrupt the youth into all becoming gay, since, as science is slowly showing, we are not able to change our sexual orientation or attraction so simply as we can change our beliefs concerning the supernatural, for example. So why should we discriminate based on the former and protect the latter under constitutional principles? We shouldn’t, and I don’t think even the founding fathers would have wanted the government to stay silent on this. Like the issue decades ago with bans on people of different races marrying each other, the government should step in so as to protect this fundamental right that, while not explicit in the Constitution, is clearly integral to our society. Opening it to one group of people with a compelling reason and no imminent danger to others or themselves will not lead to legalizing other marriages so easily. This fear based rhetoric is keeping us behind other countries making leaps and bounds of progress on many social issues. Shouldn’t we focus on love, especially if it is conducive to other values we tend to hold in common, such as responsibility and fidelity? Until next time Namaste and aloha.

Right to Religion and Right to Marriage

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/02/02/same-sex-marriage-and-the-sacred-right-to-refuse-service/

With Proposition 8 ruled as unconstitutional by California’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently, it’s as relevant a time as any to talk about one of the biggest issues people bring up in terms of legalizing gay marriage, especially by judicial or federal force as was done in 1967 on the issue of states rejecting interracial marriage. Is the first amendment’s explicit protection of free religious exercise greater than the implicit right to marriage considered to exist under the fourteenth amendment’s right to privacy? Does a person have a right to refuse service based on religious convictions and/or discrimination towards a person’s sexual orientation that results from it? While sexual orientation is not technically protected under the Civil Rights Act which, as of 1988, protects from discrimination based on sex, gender, religion, race, ethnicity, disability or having children, it is not unreasonable to be considered a class of people protected from discrimination based on a simple legal definition of what it consists in: the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. This also includes behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. Another definition would be formulating opinions about others and associated treatment of them not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics, as was put forward by the Denzel Washington’s character in Philadelphia. People, for whatever reason, think that gay people are not deserving of equal treatment and think they can get away with it because there isn’t a law against it. Refusal of service is certainly something that is permitted even by public accommodations, places of business that are privately funded at least in part, but also take in money from the public, such as restaurants, hotels and wedding vendors. But this right, as with many others we take for granted, have limits established by the law in order to protect the rights of others in that same capacity. This includes one’s right to refuse service and the right of free religious exercise, both of which are intrinsically connected to future legalization of marriage in this country, state by state or on a federal level by constitutional amendment or other similar binding authority.

Both the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 have had their constitutionality challenged multiple times, and President Obama and the Department of Justice have refused to defend the DOMA in the future, which is now being defended by the House of Representatives. Proposition 8 has had multiple appeals trying to overturn it on the basis of its unconstitutionality and it was  rendered temporarily invalid to be enforced in California and with the ruling the 9th Circuit Appeals Court ruling, it is likely to be taken to the Supreme Court. Any marriages that were done before Prop 8 were not invalidated by the ruling due to it being a prior law that did not explicitly contradict Prop 8, since gay men and lesbians are considered a suspect class, which I’ll discuss soon, for the Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment. This is the silver lining of sorts, but the future possibility of gay couples getting married in California is still up in the air because of possible rulings.

If there is a right to marriage in the Constitution, even implicitly, why does it not also involve same sex couples? This isn’t even an issue of polygamy’s legality, but whether a coupling that is only superficially different from the common form should be considered any different under the law, irrespective of traditional influence of the latter. Advocates of maintaining traditional marriage say that there is no right to “gay” marriage but then neglect to explain how this is so considering the right to marriage is very much implicit under the right to privacy. If the right to have homosexual relations in the privacy of one’s own house, like heterosexual relations, is protected implicitly by the constitution, then is same sex marriage not also protected as opposite sex marriage is? It’s one thing to oppose same sex marriage on personal grounds, but legally, there is no reasonable standard or justification for the discrimination that over half of the country advocates either through law or state constitution.

Homosexuality does not prevent people from contributing to society in a meaningful way, they have been persecuted as long or longer than many other classes that are treated far better in the 21st century, including blacks and Catholics, they have had little success in protecting themselves from discrimination through political process and have an immutable trait, contrary to people’s insistence that they can change. The traits just listed are a start to consider homosexuals a suspect class, or in more accessible terms a protected class, just as much as heterosexuals or bisexuals, or even asexuals. If we’re going to protect sexual orientation, we should be fair and treat everyone the same in this regard. As unlikely as it might be for a business to do what many have done across the country for one reason or another, refusing service to people because they were gay, we shouldn’t assume that heterosexuality could be discriminated against like homosexuality is today in isolated instances.

No one is forcing churches or private organizations to officiate wedding ceremonies or accept them into their ranks. A public accommodation, such as a wedding cake vendor, is not subject to the protection we grant churches in terms of refusing service. You can personally disagree with such a thing, but when you put yourself in a position where gay people are likely to be involved, such as wedding cakes, adoption agencies or the like, you aren’t making it easier on yourself when you come up against something objectionable to your religious sensibilities, which was bound to happen at some point or another in such a diverse society as the United States. Expecting the country to respect religion and religious support for discrimination against gay people on an issue that is not strictly the realm of religion, but also secular society, is asinine and irresponsible. Not to mention it smacks of favoritism of the worst kind, based in tradition. If we had respected tradition instead of the law, we’d still have bans against interracial marriages. The next thing to eliminate is the prohibition against granting the rights and the title of marriage to same sex couples, treating them as if they need to be kept in a cage to protect opposite sex couples. Gay marriages certainly don’t threaten most people’s marriages or even the validity of them under law or tradition.

It’s a cliché, but love is love and to sanction this sort of behavior against a certain group of people in love and wanting to commit under this title is unnecessary, but also un-American. I don’t use that term lightly. If America is a place that welcomes those willing to make certain sacrifices, then America as a whole should be willing to make a sacrifice of their own to progress into the 21st century: give up your antiquated ideas of what an ideal family should be and that people should meet up to that. Family is not based on biology, it is based on environment and nurturing from that environment. If I’m raised by my relatives because my birth parents die, they are my parents. If I’m raised by adoptive parents because I was given up by my immediate family, then they are my family. Family is something conservatives value, as is marriage. As I spoke about in “A Conservative Approach To GayMarriage,” it is incumbent upon conservatives to appeal to their values instead of their wallets. And to follow those values consistently is to allow gay marriage, even if you personally disagree with homosexuality as a matter of religious values. Politically and legally, gay people do not deserve this treatment. Compared to pedophiles, accused of corrupting children, denied adoption because of that unfounded assumption that they cannot be parents. If you are for following the Constitution, then it is even more imperative that you allow this as a conservative. You are not violating religious freedom when you force the state to recognize a partnership that is not solely the realm of religion. And you are not being constitutional in denying the right to marriage when same sex marriage poses no demonstrable threat to the state’s interests. The right to marry is considered fundamental, so protect is as you also protect religious freedom. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Conservative Versus Classical Christianity

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/21/my-take-bible-condemns-a-lot-so-why-focus-on-homosexuality/

There’s always a chance in the news to criticize Christianity on its generally conservative political positions on GLBT issues, but this time, we have a criticism from a recent graduate of Yale Divinity School who observes that the modern church has shifted away from what could be said to be the more classical Christianity of its early history. This runs the gamut from the primacy of marriage in theological terms to issues of when conception begins.

There’s little doubt that the authors of the Bible found homosexual relations immoral, probably most commonly manifest in ritual practices of other deities or the practice of rape in ancient times to demean the enemy. But even the consensual form that manifest in pederasty from ancient Greek times and into Roman times was condemned as unnatural by the apostle Paul. It’s difficult to contest this even by the language, but people will. If we assume it was considered unnatural, though, it’s also pertinent to consider that Paul said that nature implied that men having long hair was degrading, while women having long hair was a blessing. So I guess my female friends who have short hair are degrading themselves? To be fair, Paul was a product of his times and probably also a staunch conservative, moreso than many conservatives of this age in comparison, but that goes without saying with a gap of over a thousand years.

But there are other issues many Christians are not as opposed to or are opposed to on grounds not agreed upon until later in history. The most interesting one is that of marriage being superior to celibacy. Many Christians historically argued that marriage was inferior to celibacy, probably going along with Paul himself who also voiced this opinion, saying that if you had self control, it was better to be married to God than to be married to a human, pulling your attention away from God by association. But Paul did say that marriage was good for those without such restraint upon their pleasure seeking. So it’s ambivalent in the sense of a complete condemnation of either, but celibacy was preferred on the grounds that you are focused on God and not on humanity. But marriage is definitely emphasized as a sacrament in the church or at least ordained by God in creation; there’s no doubt God blessed marriage in the Christian context, what with Adam and Eve’s pairing. And there’s the whole procreation aspect, but I won’t get into the whole anti gay marriage issue that I talked about in “Gay Marriage Does Not Equal Anarchy” Overall, the notion of family’s importance in modern times with conservatives could be said to have overshadowed the historical tendency in early Christianity to value the individual before God and focus on the interpersonal relationship that is blessed by God, but is also understood to not be for everyone.

On the issue of abortion, it’s always said by so many Christians that it is tradition that life begins at conception, but many Christians, including Augustine and Aquinas, thought that life, or ensoulment for a more particular term, began at quickening, which was around 20 weeks or so, more generally around the 5th month of pregnancy, which, ironically lines up with more scientific consensus on the nature of viability of the embryo/fetus, which indeed starts around that time, though medical technology is still in the early stages for enabling such premature births to survive. In this sense, the Christian attempt to use a minority scientific and gynecological perspective to justify illegalizing abortion is actually not backed up by early Christian thought, especially since they were considering ensoulment as opposed to when life began strictly speaking. The notion that a clump of DNA has a soul in any significant way hardly makes sense even in a Christian perspective, since a soul makes sense only for something conscious, so it would only be at the point of sentience where an embryo could even be argued to have a soul in that sense of personhood and humanity as a creation of God instead of mere potentiality in the form of a multiplying blastocyst or a zygote attached to the uterine wall. In this way, Christians seem to focus too much on the issue of life as opposed to when we gain a soul and use that to illegalize abortion entirely.

The most contentious issue, however, is the seeming hypocrisy of Christians who speak against homosexuality and their getting the right to marry, yet they also permit divorce against the general tone of disapproval of divorce in the bible with a minor exception for unfaithfulness. Apparently, Christians are more than willing to permit divorce due to problems besides adultery, which seems to suggest a flexibility they don’t have about homosexual behavior being immoral, since it could be said to be moral in a monogamous relationship, even if it’s not procreative. Some Christians are stricter about it, but the majority of Christians are oddly silent about it, speaking about it as if it’s just an unpleasant but acceptable part of life, like cancer. The only problem is that it doesn’t really seem to sync up with what the Bible teaches about it, particularly Jesus himself. He noted, to paraphrase, that a man and woman become one flesh and no one should separate them.

In general, it appears that conformity to the Bible is a matter of convenience more than actual conviction to the message. When it comes to the explicit evidence about some issues, people can still ignore it on ethical grounds, particularly homosexuality. Abortion and divorce could also be said to have changed in terms of the focus on ethical priorities. However, this seems inconsistent; if you’re for marriage, why wouldn’t you be against divorce for convenience when you’re more likely to oppose abortion for convenience? And on homosexuality, it seems like you’re more insecure about equality of sexual preferences between committed adults than actually concerned about whether it’s morally permissible to have a particular kind of sex at all. With these issues, the change of culture seems to be where the change in opinion results from, not to mention the prominence of individualism from Protestantism where people are their own priests of sorts, Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the median to God, not another human. When people cease to follow actual tradition or defenses from the bible as a whole, they can cherry pick it and follow general norms of the age, which goes against Christianity’s claim to follow an eternal law. It’s one thing to say you’re conservative, but to say you’re Christian along with that and ignore the contrasting history seems disingenuous. Being consistent on culture and convictions is something we ought to strive for, instead of conforming to culture to create our convictions. Yes, I like alliterations, did you notice? Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

A Conservative Approach to Gay Marriage

http://www.newsweek.com/id/229957/page/1

I started my blog too late to lament the issues regarding the passing of Prop 8 in California in opposition to the legalization of gay marriage in that same state, but with a 3 month old article from Newsweek, I rediscovered what I thought was a well written and thorough argument for justifying the acceptance of gay marriage in a conservative political worldview. Of course, many conservatives would denounce the writer and have done so based on their own way of thinking that promotes what I view as less than fair minded and reasoned consideration of the Other in relation to what is allegedly a Judeo Christian mindset, where as I recall the Other is not to be excluded or marginalized, but welcomed and cared for to the benefit of a larger community. Admittedly this call is not always viewed in the same way, but when you start denying a certain minority group the same rights that you give the majority, it becomes alienating to those same people and they feel they must distinguish themselves in progressively more extreme ways.

The first point the writer puts forth is probably one many conservatives may not consider at first. If marriage is indeed a conservative value and supplants what is commonly a larger value of family and community, then the fact that gay and lesbian individuals want to get the status and appellation of marriage to their relationship would seem to suggest that conservative values are still demonstrably popular in this country. There are those that denounce the institution of marriage, but even in relation to my last post on how the institution of marriage has aged awkwardly, I would agree it has value as a form of social cohesion and uniting people to be concerned about things apart from a narrow group interest. No institution is perfect, and there will always be some room for improvement in order to make the principle of equality actualized in the practice of the institution itself.

In marriage’s case, one step towards further affirming what is in the Declaration of Independence, that all men [and humans by association] are created equal, would be to extend the institution of marriage to those that happen to be gay and lesbian. To try to argue otherwise about equality strikes me as what I observed with Mike Huckabee. Just because gays are not in the American “ideal” of families having kids, raising them to be straight and perpetuate the meme of marriage implying a connection to childrearing (when it doesn’t) does not mean they should be treated as less and given discriminatory terms to describe what their relationship is. Marriage in terms of etymology doesn’t even imply that it is strictly a male/female coupling, though it does seem to suggest that originally it was little more than an exchange of property and a giving of something to another. Equality doesn’t imply one has to agree with the practice of homosexuality or condone it or even see it as morally permissible according to alleged divine laws, but it does suggest that you should treat those people with the same respect you give to those within your own group. Even though they are strangers in your land, I recall in the Biblical narrative that the ancient Israelites were strangers in Egypt and then were made strangers in their promised land of Canaan. Therefore, the admonition to treat strangers with hospitality rings very true in regards to the alleged Judeo Christian origins of marriage (even though they may be much older than that). To ascribe less than equal treatment in relation to marriage seems to me unfair and to any fair analysis of the Constitution as against its principles of a group of otherwise different people uniting together for the purpose of creating a free and equal society where people are not treating unjustly because of things that are beyond their control or are intrinsically part of their identity in most cases (religion and sexual orientation both involving some amount of choice, though both can be a matter of compulsion as much as volition).

With marriage being both a civil bond on the one hand of secular considerations and a sacred unity on the other hand in religious considerations, this does create something of a difficulty. But this only comes about if you make the argument that all religious rites and services must be equally recognized in a civil or state context. No one recognizes a priest as a priest in regards to the state; they are only officiated and made so by the religious organizations themselves. And even if one chooses to have a marriage ceremony in your church, this should be no reason for the church in question to hold the final authority for what marriage is considered or whether the marriage itself is legal and binding under the civil and secular law, in principle considered apart from religious advocacy. Marriage’s traditional association with religious sacrament does not imply it should only be considered in that context. On the contrary, it should be considered as an all encompassing institution that crosses barriers that exist between people: religion, race, ethnicity, and even sexual orientation. It doesn’t affect my desire to get married if two gay men or women want to get married. Heck, it wouldn’t affect me if one man and 3 women wanted to get married. The principle I desire is equality and moderation of such a widespread institution, not whether it is convenient for the majority that doesn’t want a minority infringing on their supposed rights to solidarity in their age old tradition of man/woman only marriage.

The arguments against gay marriage are noted by the author to be quite mistaken. The argument from tradition doesn’t work by the same reason that the argument from authority doesn’t work. Just because it is a longstanding tradition to lynch African Americans, Jews, homosexuals and the like does not make it right or even justified to keep around. Tradition is a persistence of a cultural practice and only exists as long as there is a majority that agrees it is correct. In short, it is contingent upon popularity and when its popularity fades, so does its applicability. Not that popular opinion is universally applied except in a moderated fashion within the representative democracy system we use in voting. The majority does not get unquestioned dominance over the minority it was victorious over. In fact, in a sporting fashion, the victor is gracious and does not oppress the loser in any sense, and in fact congratulates them for their strong effort in competition.
The other two arguments can be lumped together under the suggestion that if gays get married it will negatively affect straight marriage and the associated values it has, such as family and procreation. Even from my own opinion alone, I see no reason to imply people are so superficial that they will stop getting married or be less motivated to have children just because two people of the same sex get together in the state of marriage (which I must emphasize does NOT imply having children or even having sex for that matter). I know I’d still love my future partner even if I knew gays and lesbians would also have the right to love their partners and share property along with the other associations that come with marriage as an act of sacrifice and unity in the same instance. Just because other people can own a car doesn’t reduce the value you place on your own, does it? Nor does other people being free and able to get the same job as you with the right credentials and experience reduce your enjoyment and merit you find in that same job. We’re told to share things as equally as possible as children and then when we grow up we start becoming attached to such abstract concepts as “traditional marriage” and the “sanctity of family” that we forget that marriage and family are evolving “traditions”. Do people really and sincerely think that a family has to be just a mommy and daddy and associated children? It can be two women or men that are sisters/brothers or lifelong friends, it can be grandparents, it can be uncles or aunts, and it can be the state foster child system even. With the idea of family being so diverse in even its very essence, let alone the accidental manifestations that can occur with tragic events like losing your parents in a plane crash or parents being incapable of raising you, it’s hard to suggest two males or females that love each other and want to raise a child cannot be considered a family just because they happen to have sex a different way or may very well not feel the need to have sex in some cases (as mentioned before). Not to mention I see no reason why I would be deterred from wanting children just because two people that cannot procreate happen to be married. Maybe it’s just the reasonable part of me realizing that marriage is a primarily unifying event and institution, not a free sex and/or children card. Sex can be done responsibly by cohabitating mature adults and children can be raised by otherwise unheard of people. Either of these instances does not reduce the importance of sex as a procreative act or a unifying act between people committed in marriage nor does it suggest children should not be adopted by couples that are either unwilling to have children or unable to in some cases. Differences do not make things incorrect; it is willful misuse to the detriment of others that creates things that are wrong and otherwise evil. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.