Gay Marriage in California
Today I read in the paper about the first gay marriages to take place today after the California Supreme Court ruling making it legal in the state. The San Francisco Chronicle has had a series of articles on the history of the gay marriage debate, on the work of attorneys willing to fight for the right and on priests willing to perform the marriage services, and on the change in attitudes of the institution of marriage among the gay and lesbian community. I think the San Francisco Chronicle has done a great job of educating the public on the history of the gay marriage debate, showing both sides of the issue and giving a good reason as to why it is so important for the gay and lesbian community.
Wyatt Buchanan wrote an article showing the developing attitudes among gays and lesbians on the institution of marriage. For much of the 4 decade history of the gay rights movement, marriage was viewed by many activists as an outdated institution to be dismantled and not to be pursued. They initially agreed with the social and economic critiques of marriage of the 1970s feminist thinking: they saw marriage as an institution that subjugated women and children under men. This attitude changed during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. As gays died of AIDS, their partners often found themselves barred from their partner’s funerals and with no rights to their belongings. The LGBT community began to appreciate the traditions of marriage as their loved ones died and wanted to have equal participation in a right that heterosexual couples enjoyed.
Matthai Kuruvila wrote of the roles of Bay Area clergy in blessing same sex marriages over the past 3 decades. These were often clandestine ceremonies, to shield both the priests and the marriage couple from the disapproval of both the church hierarchy and the congregation. Craig Wiesner and Derrick Kikuchi were married in 1990 at the First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto, California, and it changed the minds of many of the congregation to be more supportive of gay rights. While Catholic, Evangelical, and the more conservative Christian churches in the San Francisco area have led efforts to ban gay marriages, some liberal Christian churches have taken steps to incorporate same sex marriages. The United Church of Christ ordains gay clergy and marries homosexual couples with the same rite used for heterosexual couples. The Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Churches both have gay clergy and bless same sex unions, although they use differents rites for gay couples than they use for heterosexual couples. Some local churches supportive of gay and lesbian rights may find it difficult being part of a national or international denomination that has more conservative doctrines on sexuality and marriage.
Bob Egelko focuses his Chronicle article on Therese Stewart and Shannon Minter, the two leading attorneys in the lawsuits that toppled the California ban on same sex marriages. Stewart is a San Francisco chief deputy city attorney who has worked on many social issues on behalf of the city. Minter is a lawyer from Texas who has devoted his career to defending the rights of gays and lesbians, and to transgender people in particular. Minter is a transgender himself, while Steward hopes to marry her partner during the Fall in a government sanctioned wedding. Both have earned the respect of their opposition lawyer, Robert Tyler, who praised them for their legal skills and their ability to stay civil.
The judge who made the deciding vote for lifting the ban is California Chief Justice Ronald George, a moderate Republican appointed by Pete Wilson in 1991. He has likened this ruling to the 1948 state ruling striking down a California law banning interracial marriage. George felt that anti-gay bias laws are akin to race or sex discrimination and that will have wide repurcussions to court cases in other states. George wrote the marriage opinion because he felt that the chief justice’s job is to take the heat for controversial rulings. He expects to be a target the next time he stands for election to the court in 2010.
I personally am gratified to see this court ruling. Two friends of mine, Connie and D.J. took part in the San Francisco weddings in 2004 that Mayor Newsom opened up briefly. And one of my closest friends, Eric, has been involved with gay and lesbian issues as a member of GLAAD. When he came out of the closet, he’s done his best to educate his friends on the issues that the LGBT community has faced.
My wife subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle early this year. It’s a wonderful paper. I’ve heard that newspapers are struggling with circulation as more people are turning to the internet for news. I think we’d lose a lot if our newspapers and magazines disappeared and a great tradition of journalism were no longer around to prod our politicians and business leaders. The Chronicle will be covering the same sex weddings this week on sfgate.com/samesexmarriage.
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Praise God!
People who want to commit to each other in a loving life long commitment can not get married in our nation's most populous state. Praise God. It was very touching to see the lesbian couple in their 80s finally able to declare their commitment to each other. I say Praise God that we are finally starting to honor our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.
Also, rumor has it heterosexuals are still able to get married in California! The threat to the institution of marriage that we have heard from the Religious Right appears to have not panned out. I currently live in the other state that allows gay marriage. I can vouch for heterosexual marriage is alive and well in Massachusetts. My civil service to Julissa went on without a hitch! Gays and lesbians getting married had absolutely no affect on my own marriage, except that we now live in a happier place where people aren't oppressed because of their sexual orientation.
Since you brought it up
Angelo,
You said, "I personally am gratified to see this court ruling." Did you know that in every state that has had a same sex marriage initiative on the ballot for the people to vote on, it has been defeated? It seems to me that this is a law that is against the wishes of the majority of the people in this country. I know that may change in the next 10 to 20 years, but judicial activism is not the the answer to making laws. How can we as a republic allow this to occur? Would you be as gratified to see a court overturn Roe v. Wade making abortion illegal for all again? Or would you say that it is a right wing court making laws for the majority even though the majority wants to have abortion accessible on demand?
In particular on the gay marriage issue, I personally think the Bible defines homosexuality as a sin. But it also defines pre-marital sex as a s sin, obesity as a sin, pride as a sin, etc etc, and I do not see anyone pushing for laws banning pride. I do not think a Bible teaching church should sanction homosexual marriages. However, our government is not a Bible teaching church. So if the people of the country want our government to sanction homosexual marriages, then it should be legal. But activist judges is not the way to get it done. Let's vote on it or have our elected lawmakers pass a law making it legal. The sitting judges in most cases have no direct accountability to the people. It is their job to ensure that the laws the legislatures make are in compliance with the Constitution. They are not to make laws.
I seem to recall that CA has an same sex marriage issue on the ballot coming up in November (I could be wrong on that). I do not know the particulars of the CA case, and maybe someone could give a synopsis, but it does not seem prudent for activist judges to make laws that have been voted down by the citizens. And I believe you would say the same if the law was an issue in which you disagreed with.
Am I wrong on this?
Ben
Thank you Benj for writing a post if you disagree with me
Thanks Benj for writing this post. If you disagree with me on anything, feel free to state your case. I think one of the points of Crossleft is for us to feel free to discuss and debate on points of Christianity and politics. We should feel free to discuss things like gay marriage and reincarnation as long as they are tied to Christianity or politics and we should feel free to debate those things if we disagree. We shouldn't be afraid to post about these subjects.
You are right that an initiative will be coming up this November on whether voters want to make same sex marriage illegal. The judges who ruled in favor of gay marriages knew that this initiative was going to be on the ballot knew that as well. The judges ruled that under the present California Constitution, there was nothing in it that allowed the banning of gay marriages. They ruled that discrimination against gays is no different than discrimination based on race or sex, and this was something more sweeping than previous rulings on the issue.
You wrote that it is the courts job to ensure that laws that legislatures make are in compliance with the Constitution. I have no argument with that general statement, only I think that can be interpreted in various ways. James Madison in the Federalist Papers saw a checks and balances between the branches of government and the makers of the Constitution, fearful of mob rule, wanted majority rule tempered by the protection of minority rights. The struggle of the courts has been the struggle to define the balance of majority rule and the protection of minority rights and I think that has defined the struggle in California of gay marriage.
A few years ago Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill in the California legislature to legalize gay marriage because California voters in 2000 voted for an initiative in favor of defining marriage as only being between a man and a woman. Scharzenegger was personally in favor of gay marriages, but he didn't feel that he or the legislature had the right to go against a popular inititiative and felt that only the courts had the right to do that. The chief judge who ruled in favor of gay marriage did not feel that he was circumventing popular opinion: he felt that Californians still had a chance to reverse the court's ruling through the initiative process this Fall, and the voters will be given a chance vote him out of the courts in the 2010 elections. I don't know how the court system is in your area, but in California, these judges are accountable through the popular vote. So I think it was courageous for these judges to make this ruling.
You're right that the Supreme Court should not overreach and that it has at times made horrendous decisions that have severely affected people. There's the Plessy versus Ferguson case in the 1890s that made segregation in the South legal, the Dredd Scott versus Stanford decision in the 1850s, which stated that African Americans were not citizens and could not sue in court and stated that Congress did not have the right to create free territories from slavery. Along with this though, were momentous decisions, like Brown versus the Board of Education, which declared that segregation of children based on race in public schools was unconstitutional. That case circumvented popular opinion in the South and Southern legislation because the popular will of the South was discriminatory against the rights of a minority, African Americans. You're right that every state that has had a same sex marriage initiative on the ballot for the people to vote on, it has been defeated. I would argue that the ban on gay marriages would be another case where the majority was discriminating against the rights of a minority, in this case, gays and lesbians.
You asked me if you were wrong about your opinions. I can't really answer that because I don't think it really matters. This is just a difference of opinion and I respect your right to disagree with me. I believe I'm right. You believe you're right. I've gone through enough of these arguments to know that I probably won't change your mind and you won't change mine. But these debates have their worth. I think it does well to hear from people we disagree with, to test the mettle of our opinions and see the merits of counterarguments. The bad thing would be to close off discussion, to quiet the voices that we think of as kooky or dangerous. I really disagreed with you when you tried to silence Nancy for posting on reincarnation and the galactic family. I feel strongly about this based on my own experience in an evangelical church a few years ago. I used to freely talk about my opinions before going to that church, but after a while I became quiet about talking freely and I knew several liberal and moderate voices who were afraid to speak up because we were afraid of the more conservative evangelicals. I learned a lesson from that. We should not be afraid of people we disagree with, so long as we can debate and discuss things in a spirit of respect and civility. We shouldn't be afraid of stating our opinions and we shouldn't be trying to silence or marginalize voices of people we disagree with. We should have enough confidence to argue our positions and listen to arguments without feeling contaminated. This is not directed at you specifically, Benj, but at those evangelicals that you mentioned in your previous post who would not read Crossleft because of kooky posts like Nancy's.
Thanks Angelo
Most of what you have written have been informative, instructional, and reminding me to continue to keep my mind open and curious. Thanks a lot. I too celebrate the weddings of our gay and lesbian citizens. I'm so glad to have interesting things to read regarding how Christianity and Christians survive in the World.