Right Versus Popular, Part II

This is the second in a two-part argument in support of same-sex marriage.

How is it that in the face of such progress there can remain so much bigotry?

The same day that we elected our first non-white president, signaling another milestone in the fight for racial equality that is as old as the country itself, we send a loud and clear message to another group of disenfranchised citizens that they do not deserve the same rights that the rest of the country’s citizen’s enjoy with abandon.

And yes, marriage is a right, not a privilege. A privilege is something enjoyed by a few above and beyond the rights of the majority, and it's also usually something that can be taken away. When was the last time a heterosexual person lost their right to marry? Anything that the vast majority of people are allowed to do without question or censure is a right. It doesn’t have to be specifically spelled out in the constitution to be considered something every citizen is entitled to.

A marriage is a union, a joining together of two parties. And it’s supposed to be something sacred, something held to the highest standard, and something that is supposedly so integral to our country’s welfare that if compromised by being extended to same-sex couples, it will rent the fabric of our very nation in two. I know this has been said ad nauseum, but it really does bear repeating: We allow just about ANY male and female couple get married, whether they are from two different religions, states, occupations, generations, races, social class, etc. A man and woman who’ve known each other for five minutes can get married. Two teen-agers can get married. People who have more marriages than toes can enter into that “sacred” institution time and time again. People who’ve committed adultery, rape, or even murder can get married. Yet somehow, the marriage of two men or two women is so threatening, so wrong, so damaging that people will dedicate months and even years of their lives trying to prevent it from happening.

Reasons abound – most of them religious – on why there is such vehement and sometimes violent opposition to same-sex marriage, but most of the justification is rooted in nothing more than personal aversion. There is only one, true reason people oppose same-sex marriage, and it’s the same reason people opposed women’s suffrage, integration, and abolition: It challenges their fundamental understanding of what they believe to be right. Americans have never before had to question their understanding of what constitutes a marriage or family, just as late-19^th-century men never had to question women’s role in politics. Women petitioning for the right to vote at the turn of the 20th century were spat on, taunted, called horrible names, hit, jeered, beaten, and even arrested. The anti-suffrage movement was every bit vocal and active as the so-called family values organizers are today. The only difference is the issue they oppose. Today’s protesters also refuse to see their opinions in the proper historical context, namely that they are just one more group of bigots trying to deny a marginalized group that which they are entitled to.

People can hide behind religious excuses until the end of time, but those reasons become less plausible as other biblical edicts go ignored. As a college student, I pointed out that people who break the Ten Commandments are not held to the same level of criticism and discrimination as gays and lesbians, and that other teaching of the Bible have been long overlooked because they have no place in the 21^st century. Rules about stoning virgins and female adulterers, rules about prohibiting divorce and remarriage, rules allowing polygamy and prostitution, rules about the treatment of slaves, rules against seeing one’s parents naked or allowing interracial marriage are outdated and irrelevant, so they are no longer enforced or even addressed. And the list goes on. This point has been belabored for years, but to no avail, because religion is only a smoke screen, and those who hide behind it aren’t interested in logic; they are only concerned with opposing homosexuality on any argument they can – plausible or not, consistent or not. Again, it’s that personal aversion to homosexuality, that challenge to one’s insistence on a "proper" – and narrow – order of things that is being hidden behind religious orthodoxy, and the result is some of the worst misuse of religion in American history.

If opposition to gay marriage is weak from a moral or religious standpoint, it’s blatantly unconscionable from a legal one. There is no legal or Constitutional justification for a nation that was founded on the individual pursuit of happiness to deny a segment of its population the right to enter into legal unions with the consenting adult of their choice. It is no different that telling black citizens that they can’t swim in the city pool or telling woman they can’t serve on juries or open up a line of credit in their own name. We live in a country that prides itself on freedom of expression and choice. To deny citizens their right to choose their spouse because others don’t agree with their choice is nothing less than discriminatory micromanaging of people’s lives. It’s the ultimate breech of authority, the likes of which we haven seen in decades. While some may find gay marriage morally questionable, personally repulsive, or even unnatural, the governing bodies that are sworn to uphold the rights of all citizens need to do what they’ve done in the past and legislate according to the precepts of the this country’s mission, not by the misplaced fear of a new generation of bigots.