Over a Cup of Coffee

NY Times March 14,2005: Judge strikes down California gay marriage ban

[Judge Richard A. Kramer of San Francisco Superior Court held, in an opinion that will surely be appealed, that "no rational (emphasis mine) purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners."]

Where is the wisdom of Solomon when we need it? Had these liberal activist judges been faced by those two women in the Bible who contested baby #1, how would they have ruled? I am going to wager they would first request a huge budget from the people's money and Solomon would have to raise more taxes from the people to fund their research and these judges would still have the baby end up with the wrong mother.

There are several common sense arguments which I believe are both above the law as well as foundational to law as to why gay marriage should be banned. It is quite unfortunate that these current breed of liberal activist judges would rather baseline on written "black-and-white" law from the books and find a technicality that would prevent the ban and NOT USE COMMON SENSE AT ALL. King Solomon, in that famous case, simply appealed to common sense.

First is the argument of rights, in this case, civil rights. Look, any gay or lesbian has the same right as anyone to marry into the opposite sex. That is guaranteed in any state either by law or by tradition. Hence, their request to marry INTO THE SAME SEX, is a "special" right, and NOT a civil right by any objective comparison. This argument is just plain common sense: gays and lesbians have EXACTLY the same rights on marriage as heterosexuals; both are permitted AND encourage to marry into the opposite sex. So the gay marriage lobby is not a question of civil rights but an issue of public sanction of a selfish passions or convenience.

Look at polygamy as an analogous example. Polygamists involve consentual relationships. Why then can't we legalize this as a "civil" right?

Even adultery is involve mutual consent, why then can't it be legalized and given "civil right" status? It is obvious at this point then that homsexual rights are special rights and NOT or NEVER civil rights for as long as the gay movement cannot offer a significant difference from the other aberrant behaviors.

The second argument is that of biology. Can homosexuals NATURALLY procreate? Societies have always encouraged the expansion of families, tribes and races. Anthropologically, marriage is a particular society's sanction on a specific pair of man and woman (in polygamous countries, it is still man and women). It has been the proclamation of a claim of a man on a woman or vice versa, in order to publicly acknowledge that cohabitation between the two are acceptable. In most civilized societies, this also means that no external party has the right to get inside that specific marriage to cohabit with any of the two. Furthermore, despite the technological breakthroughs on trans-gender operations, male transexuals still cannot carry a viable fetus to term like a natural mother. Hence, approving such a right is not consistent even with scientific and technological breakthroughs.

The third argument is tradition and traditional law. Tradition has not only looked down on gay cohabitation, but also on polygamy, incest, adultery, pedophiles, bestiality, etc. The point here is that most civilized societies have "naturally" classified homosexuality, or the practice thereof with the rest of these obscene activities. At the very least, therefore, the sanctioning of gay marriage should be a result of public sanction from elected officials or a referendum from the electorate and not from the courts.

It is very important that in the reversal of tradition for the sake of the minority, the rights and beliefs of the majority are not trampled upon. Take the example of slavery. Tradition previously sanctioned slavery, but the reversal of such tradition was consistent with the feelings of the majority (the Union, many Confederate non-plantation owners, the slaves themselves). In the homosexual case, homosexuals don't even hit 10% of the population, and even if you classify the "homophobes (loosely, let's call this one who won't concurrently share the same toilet with a homosexual)" as one sector, they would still comprise over 50% of the population. If ever the majority sentiment changes, I am willing to concede, but that won't happen in my generation.

The fourth argument is that of the implications of rebelling against a divine order which would cause chaos in society's order. The higher law argument was used successfully in the Nuremberg trials. Although there have been modern civilized societies that have accepted polygamy based on religion, there is no civilized religion that has sanctioned the other offensive activities listed in the tradition argument. There seems to be a common "higher law" that defines via human conscience and therefore, societies majority, what is acceptable and what is not. Even during the Roman Empire days when homosexuality was prevalent and even the ceasars were guilty of it, it was never looked upon as a model (let's not even mention "model for family" here).

The fifth argument has to do with genetics. Is homosexuality something one is born with? Are there any parallels in life that justifies this? Homosexuality, until the latter part of the 20th century has always been classified as "aberrant" behavior, i.e., behavior that is not expected of a normal, socially, emotionally, intellectually and psychologically healthy individual.

Following this traditional line of thought, I propose that homosexuality because of its intrinsically sexual nature is psychologically, emotionally, socially and psychologically similar to adultery or pedophilia. It is in fact a significantly worse category compared to polygamy (although genetics may not be involved here but you get the point), and yet there are many societies (including Mormons) that accept polygamy.

I would venture to guess that adulterers and pedophiles will eventually be found to have some genetic influences if studied as deeply as homosexuality with the same technologies and yardsticks. These are people who would claim that they cannot help thinking the way they do (which REALLY is the strongest argument so far in favor of homosexuality).

Genetics, however, should not be an excuse in the same way that insanity is not really a good plea for a mother killing all her five young children (but then our courts and judges have lost their screws a long time ago. There was a time that the only basis for "putting away" people was whether or not they were a menace to society, so that normal people can live and go about their day to day affairs without fear of danger or harrasment from the aberrants!).

Repercussions: Let's paint a picture or some scenarios of the future SHOULD gay marriage become a legitimized lifestyle.
1. Should we now have restrooms that say "Gays" or "Lesbians" (God knows what the universal symbol for either would be), or just combine them into one restroom and say Homosexual. Let's stretch this farther, since gender is becoming vague, can we just have a Homosexual Toilet and a Homophobe toilet (that would seem to be more well-defined in such a scenario, since Male and Female are no longer clear terms).
2. What would be the toilet symbols? One would have 2 icons in sodomy, the other would also have the same but superimposed by a red circle with a slash. (A day will come when terms and symbols will have to be WELL-DEFINED). Of course, it could also be mis-interpreted as "Sodomy Allowed Room" and "No Sodomy Allowed Room", but at that point, who cares?
3. Adopted children will have a warped concept of Father and/or Mother in a family. One's mother will have a penis, and the other's father will have a vagina.
4. Concepts or right and wrong (even from the viewpoint of the majority of society) will further erode. We shall now have the polygamy lobby, adulterers lobby, legal prostitution lobby, yes, even bestiallity lobby (on the grounds that it is consentual), all asking for "civil rights".
5. If a man gets caught peeing in the LADIES room, he may just act gay and claim his (or her? or his? now, i am confused) civil rights, how about that?

See the following link for an interesting discussion thread on this originally posted March 15
http://over-a-cup-of-coffee.blogspot.com/2005/03/over-cup-of-coffee.html

posted by The Sola Scriptura Theologian @ 4:50 PM