Without Hyperbole, The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time: Marriage Equality

As the highest authority in the land to preside over any and all laws, constitutional or otherwise, the Court is finally seeing this fairly silly restriction brought before it and has begun to address it in the most cowardly way conceivable: by dodge. The Court may be avoiding the topic entirely by asserting that the phenomenon is entirely too new to convene on and, as Justice Scalia stated, that there is sociological debate on the issue. He further went to assert that there is no scientific evidence suggesting one way or the other what the impact of such single-sex marriages would have on the children in that family. This, to me, seems to be entirely and utterly ridiculous. I wonder, then, what the scientific evidence is behind any maladapted, mentally ill, or criminal person’s rearing? Perhaps the Supreme Court, being Supreme as it is, is privy to information the clearly defines the source—without qualification—of all of society’s misfits, outliers, and malcontents.

Suggesting that the phenomenon requires further study is cowardice pure and simple as homosexuality has been common place for the entirety of human civilization and has been placed in far less scandalous prisms in the past, despite what Justice Roberts illustrates as a short history for homosexual matrimony. In Greece and Rome it was common to engage in homosexual acts without preclusion of heterosexuality, and that fraternal love of this sort was in many ways above what would now be called “traditional marriage”—mind you these are the societies to whom the United States owes much of its symbolism and the pillars beneath its foundation. Today’s taboo towards it, in America at least, in rooted no doubt in our oddly fashioned puritan origins and our masochistic “look but don’t touch” approach to sex and sexuality in general. To minimalize the impact of this moment by leaving it to further study denotes a personal disapproval for homosexuality and lack of impartiality on the part of the Justice(s) to look at the consider as they should—blindly. To invoke scientific understanding as the cause to wait on full judgment is a red herring.

Decent within the Court is clear from Justice Kagan’s comment to cut through the bull when presented with the argument that the function of marriage is to produce children. Justice Kagan responded, once it was clear that the restriction upon infertile individuals was an infraction on rights “I can just assure you, if both the woman and the man are over the age of 55, there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage.” While Justice Sotomayor opined about the opening of polygamy as a possibility publicly before the hearing, should gay marriage be confirmed legal. The overriding concern is that one thing will lead to another—that gay rights are a gateway drug to other freedoms not deeply rooted in the conformist Judeo-Christian morality that have no further bearing on nation whose ultimate secularism lies in the promise of a separation between church and state (though polygamy is condoned by the bible). Engaging in false arguments such as the slippery slope of polygamy, the appeal to tradition of the bible, and by the post hoc ergo propter hoc that children will somehow become demented and deranged, or homosexuals in same-sex households (while simultaneously and inconsistently upholding same-sex couple adoption laws) and where the demented, deranged, depraved, and indeed homosexuals already exist by no cause of gay marriage tarnish our reputation as both the home of the free and the land of the brave for freedom is limited and the bravery of our courts is stunted.

In reality, undercutting the rights of law-abiding homosexuals to their pursuit of happiness, and equal protection under the law would be the failing of fifty years of progressive Civil Rights movement in the United States. For it to happen under the Administration of the first President to claim an African heritage, with an unprecedented number of minorities and women in the Congress and Supreme Court would be a tragedy—a crime even—and to do so under the banner of a tradition based on the theology of some would be antithetical to the American Experiment. The argument that supporting gay marriage somehow undercuts support for “traditional” marriage is like arguing that bottling Pepsi is somehow going to stop  Coke-a-Cola from fizzing when poured—or worse yet from being produced. In the success of that argument we should never again invoke the phrase “all men created equal”—as it will be legally clear that they are not—along with “pursuit of happiness” as for some, the pursuit would have no end goal. The argument that the Bible defines the participants in a marriage requires that we re-imagine the stars and rebuild elementary school solar system models to match the geocentric theory; wipe all information concerning other galaxies and star systems from the record–because that is not how the Bible defines the Universe. In the event that marriage equality is not upheld, pork should be banned, the mixing of meat and dairy should be outlawed, and the practice of tattooing should be abolished  because the bible doesn’t condone any of it—in that case we should never claim a separation of church and state again, as it will become clear that we are living in an unyielding theocracy.

So, while we are trigger happy to call events and happenings the “something” of our time, this is undoubtedly, and without hyperbole the Civil Rights battle of our generation. It is here that Americans will find out where their law is derived from—the creed of the Founding Father’s words of equality and freedom or the weaponized dogma of the religion our country was founded, in-part, to remove from civil law.