Posted on 12/01/2009 11:42:08 AM PST by BuckeyeTexan
A tussle over same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia reveals how high the stakes of the debate have risen. Proponents of redefining marriage frequently assert that this would be only a minor adjustment, expanding the institution slightly to accommodate the two to three percent of the population that self-identifies as lesbian or gay. The appeal is for "tolerance" to allow people to form sexual relationships as they please. But now it becomes clear that same-sex advocates want much more than tolerance.
D.C. council member David Catania filed a same-sex marriage bill in October. With support from the mayor and 11 of 13 council members, it seems virtually assured of passage when the council votes December 1. A referendum that could have stopped the bill was ruled out of order by the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics. The board reasoned, curiously, that invalidating a law not yet adopted would somewhat deprive same-sex couples of rights they already enjoy. At this point the only (slim) chance of blocking D.C. same-sex marriage lies in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress.
In the absence of drama about the bill's ultimate fate, public debate has centered on whether religious individuals and institutions should be forced to treat same-sex couples as married. Should the law compel a photographer to provide his services for a same-sex wedding? Should a marriage counselor be required to help same-sex couples strengthen their relationships? Should a Christian adoption agency be obliged to place children for adoption with same-sex couples? Would a church-based soup kitchen have to extend spousal benefits to same-sex partners of employees?
The D.C. Council could have side-stepped such conflicts. Council member Yvette Alexander proposed an amendment that would have granted individuals and institutions the right to distinguish between same-sex relationships and man-woman marriage, based on religious convictions. The amendment was rejected.
So the D.C. same-sex marriage law looks likely to become an instrument of leverage to pry people loose from traditional views on marriage. Churches and clergy would not be forced to conduct same-sex weddings. But in every other respect religious persons and institutions would be pressed to act as if there were nothing special about the lifelong, one-flesh union of the two complementary sexes. Those most vulnerable to such pressure would be persons and institutions financially beholden to the D.C. government.
Foremost among those are Catholic Charities of D.C., the largest city-contracted provider of social services. Its roughly $20 million in annual city contracts provide services such as homeless shelters, medical clinics, and tutoring programs to 68,000 city residents. When the Catholic archdiocese warned that it might lose those contracts if it could not comply with a same-sex marriage mandate, council members reacted harshly-against the archdiocese.
Council member Mary Cheh called the archdiocese "somewhat childish." Catania suggested that Catholic Charities were not "an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure." He complained, "It's a shame they don't extend the same efforts to issues that really matter, like health care and homelessness."
It is odd that Catania, having devoted so much effort to redefining marriage, should now classify it as an issue that did not really matter. And that he should presume to instruct a religious body about which issues should really matter to it.
All this rage suggests that perhaps forcing private individuals and institutions to approve same-sex relationships is not an unintended side effect of the same-sex marriage movement. Perhaps such coercion is the whole point.
"Marriage equality" in D.C. would bring few tangible gains for gays and lesbians. Under a domestic partnership law in effect since 2002, D.C. same-sex couples already have access to almost all the available benefits of marriage. Nor are there many couples lining up for these benefits. A 2008 study reported only 802 registered D.C. domestic partnerships, in a city with 250,000 households and 3,500 same-sex couples.
Ultimately, what is driving the same-sex marriage campaign seems to be the desire for a visible expression of society's blessing. Lesbians and gays want to hear society affirm that their relationships are morally acceptable. Gay writer Andrew Sullivan has remarked, "Including homosexuals within marriage would be a means of conveying the highest form of social approval imaginable."
But this is precisely the approval that many other Americans, including religious traditionalists, do not wish to grant. Same-sex marriage laws, in abolishing all distinctions between same-sex relationships and man-woman matrimony, turn supporters of such distinctions into enemies of state policy. Because "marriage equality" is claimed as a "civil right," akin to racial equality, those who would deny it become the equivalent of racist bigots in the eyes of the law. And they would be treated as racist bigots have been (properly) treated: shamed and shunned, targeted for lawsuits and driven out of public life.
This is what is beginning to happen in D.C. and elsewhere. Will it be tolerance or tyranny that wins the day?
Alan Wisdom is Vice President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of the recent monograph, "Is Marriage Worth Defending?"
© Copyright 2009, The Weekly Standard, LLC, All Rights Reserved.
Well, I guess if you consider quotes by Lewis and Goldwater as hostile toward you even participating in public life, then I guess you’re right. Sorry, too bad they aren’t around, you could tell them your self.
The government has already done that to most of the western States, land that properly should be returned. But my interest is that this is the capital of the United States. It should not look like Mogadishu, with drug gangs, scum like Marion Berry running the place, and a general disdain for the rest of the country in looking like crap.
Turning D.C. into a federal reserve will do nothing to reform the government. Federalism would do a lot for that. But a lot of self respect comes from being clean, tidying your room, and acting like a civilized person. Something our capital needs to do to.
It must have been a huge talking point this year, because a lib-in-law tried to inject it into conversation wherever she could.
That push has been pushed for a long time now, ever since "The Kinsey Report" came out. They were using this number over 20 years ago, and its just as bogus then, as it is now...
the infowarrior
The D.C. Council could have side-stepped such conflicts. Council member Yvette Alexander proposed an amendment that would have granted individuals and institutions the right to distinguish between same-sex relationships and man-woman marriage, based on religious convictions. The amendment was rejected.
And this
"Marriage equality" in D.C. would bring few tangible gains for gays and lesbians. Under a domestic partnership law in effect since 2002, D.C. same-sex couples already have access to almost all the available benefits of marriage. Nor are there many couples lining up for these benefits. A 2008 study reported only 802 registered D.C. domestic partnerships, in a city with 250,000 households and 3,500 same-sex couples,
are clear indications of what is really going on here. It is nothing less than a ham-fisted assault on traditional religious belief, and no honest, rational person can conclude otherwise...
the infowarrior
I think the 10% figure goes back to some mendacious number-crunching by Kinsey, who had an agenda.
It was basically BS, i know.
Let's examine this, shall we?
As I said, "imposing their will on others" is a hoary old codephrase for "daring to express an opinion." This codephrase is employed even if people of faith or their allies ( like this guy) use arguments that have absolutely nothing to do with religion to speak on issues that are not religious in nature.
So let's look at the circumstances under which a vaunted statesman like Goldwater might use such a phrase. Can you even tell me what specific issues Goldwater was commenting on when he said that? Because unless he was talking about a Catholic-sponsored law to make everyone eat fish on Fridays or a Jewish-sponsored law to shut down public transport on the Sabbath or something in that vein, he was doing exactly what I said: Falsely accusing citizens because they didn't agree with him. Maybe he should have just called them "bitter clingers" to boot.
BTW, according to one website I found the quote on, Goldwater gave the speech it comes from on 15 September, 1981. A big issue that year, as you may recall, was the confirmation of Sandra Day O'Connor, and Goldwater was ticked that the Moral Majority had dared...dared!...to oppose a nominee who had pro-abortion votes on her record. Despite the fact that abortion is not a religious rite, no religious belief is necessary to despise it and governments of every stripe from theocratic to atheist had banned it, Goldwater asserted that this was a case of a "religious faction" "imposing it's will" on others. In other words, he made a false accusation, and made it to shut people up who had every right to speak.
Don't get me wrong, he wasn't all bad. He hated the UN and helped create the Air Force Academy, among other good things. But in his later years, like our current crop of congressiweasels, he was willing to paint the free speech of honest, loyal Americans as an exercise in tyrannny and extortion.
So...either you really think that it's OK to do that sort of thing, that it's even conservative, or you don't. If you don't, take the quote off your page so no one mistakes it for your opinion. If you do, don't whine when you're called on it.
Yeah, Kinsey’s counts of homosexuals and other sexual deviants in the population were greatly inflated because his survey pool was almost exclusively drifters and inmates.
Don’t know why that text in my post is showing up red.
Actually, I included it on my page because I liked how it sounded. I did not research it like you did. Thanks for the interest in my page. I enjoy whine...and cheeses.
ok
So, does that mean that all the times you heard some leftist loser say conservatives were "trying to impose their religion on others," when they objected to something like cutting little kids up and throwing them in the trash, you didn't have enough discernment to realize it was pure horse hockey? Were you nodding your head in agreement? What other leftist talking points do you like the sound of?
In that speech, Goldwater said that allowing organizations like the Moral Majority to have any say was sure to lead to the country become a state like Iran or have bombs going off like Northern Ireland. Makes Ted Kennedy's stuff about Bob Bork seem almost tame.
If you have no problem with groups of religious believers lobbying their government like any other citizens, you should take it and that hatemongering horse hockey from Lewis down. If you do, leave it up.
No, it doesn’t mean that.
You seem to be on a roll, so I think I’ll leave my page as is so you can think of more stuff to say about me.
Merry Christmas
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