Before reading, hopefully you already know what you're getting into by reading this post, just from the title. And that's your only warning...
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I think the problem with the gay
marriage debate is that it is entirely missing the mark.
First of all, I feel it’s important to
say:
I’m married. And my wife and I do not
feel that allowing homosexuals to marry will somehow cheapen, belittle, or
“ruin the sanctity” of marriage. The reason for this is remarkably simple: it
is because our marriage is not based on other peoples’ beliefs, nor on other peoples’
marriages. In fact, our marriage is not even based on what governments and
churches and religions and people consider “marriage” to be or to mean or to
look like.
Instead, our marriage is based on what
my wife and I think marriage should be.
And that’s it.
Other peoples’ marriages have no bearing
on ours, because our marriage has nothing to do with them. If it did, this
would be allowing a lot of people into our marriage that don’t belong there.
The sanctity of my wife and my marriage
depends solely on the two of us. It is how we treat each other, how we speak to
each other and about each other; it is how we handle each other when one of us
is having a bad day; it is how we make it a point to always put the other
first; it is how we are sure to not withhold love or joy from each other for
any reason; it is the things we do and learn and experience together.
Our marriage is sanctified because we
sanctify it. Governments and religion have nothing to do with this.
That said: Whoever else is married does not concern me.
Whoever else can get married, however, concerns me quite a bit.
It concerns me because who we allow to
get married says something about our country, about the state of the government
and the heart of the people.
And when people oppose gay marriage, it
tells me that people are willing to violate the United States Constitution to
support their own ideas of how the country should be.
To be clear, what I’m saying is: Any way
you look at it, to oppose gay marriage is to oppose the United States
Constitution.
That this is not being discussed more
often is remarkable to me; this fact seems quite self-evident to me. But here
we are.
Many people in favor of gay marriage
argue that it’s a violation of homosexuals’ equal rights. That may or may not
be the case, but that’s actually not the main violation against the
Constitution that I see or that I’m interested in discussing right now.
Rather, what I’m more interested in is
the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Mostly, for our current purposes, I’m
thinking of the first bit before the semi-colon: “Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof…”
Very often, people simply phrase this as
“Freedom of religion.” So this is what the First Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution guarantees us, all the citizens of the United States: Freedom of
religion.
And, of course, freedom of religion also means freedom from religion.
What this simply, literally means is
that the government cannot make any law which is based on the teachings of any
one religion, nor can it hold any persons accountable to the teachings of any
specific religion. The government cannot favor one religion over another, nor
can it favor religion over atheism or non-religion.
Again: simply, literally, this means
that if a law is made based on a Christian belief, then everyone who is not a
Christian loses a piece of their freedom of religion.
That said, my impression of Christians’
opposition to gay marriage stems from their beliefs, from what it is they
understand their scriptures to mean, what it is that they believe their God
wants and expects from them. This is fine; I’ve no interest in debating whether
or not homosexuality or homosexual marriage is “sinful,” nor “what the Bible
actually says about it,” at least not in this piece.
What interests me, however, is that
there is not a single argument against gay marriage that is not, ultimately,
based on religion.
To reiterate: I’ve never once come
across any meaningful, relevant, logical argument against gay marriage that
does not, at its core, stem from religion.
If such an argument is out there, I
haven’t heard it, and I have yet to imagine it on my own.
So it is that when people use their religion
to argue against gay marriage—which, again, is the only basis for arguing against gay marriage—what is happening is
that they are indicating that their beliefs
should overrule the law. They are asking the political leaders to make and
enact laws based on their religion. They are pushing the government to favor
their religion over any other.
In short, they are asking the government
to take away the freedom of religion from everyone else.
To say that your religion’s beliefs on gay marriage should dictate the laws of the land is to say that people outside of your religion do not qualify for freedom of religion—or at least, they do not qualify for it as much as the people inside of your religion.
Any way you look at it, this is a
violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Any. Way. You. Look. At. It.
If your religion says gay marriage is
not okay, but my religion—or my lack of religion—says that it is okay, you
cannot require or expect me to abide by your religion over mine. The United
States Constitution does not allow for this sort of requirement or expectation
or, especially, for this sort of law.
Again, whether or not homosexuality is
“sinful,” “natural,” or even “okay” doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is
that the United States Constitution is being violated, because:
Based
on our Constitution, gay marriage should be a self-evident, freely-granted
right, which neither religion, nor even one political party or another, has the
ability or the right to take away from the people.
You do not have to believe that gay
marriage is “okay.” I am not asking you to believe or to think or to feel this
way. You are absolutely entitled to your thoughts and beliefs on the subject—in
fact, that’s the beauty and the importance of the First Amendment.
However, whether or not you agree that
gay marriage is “okay,” this does not give you the right or the privilege to
override or violate the United States Constitution—at least, not without
undermining the core of our country’s very definition, intention, and spirit.
