Mar 25

The trials of marriage

Culture, Law, Media, Politics, Society No Comments »

The US Supreme Court hears opening arguments on same-sex marriage law Tuesday. It’s been on trial for years.

But it’s ramped up lately as never before. In January, the French held a massive rally in Paris that stunned parts of the world unaware of the sentiment there for natural marriage and family values. Especially since they saw it coming in the last election.

Extending the right to marry and adopt to same-sex couples was one of President Francois Hollande’s electoral pledges in campaigning last year.

However, once he tried it…

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Paris on Sunday decrying the French president’s plan to legalize same-sex marriage and adoptions.

They converged near the Eiffel Tower, chanting and waving flags, posters and balloons.

“I do not personally agree with gay marriage as I am a Christian and believe what the Bible says about marriage being between one woman and one man for a life time,” said CNN iReporter Oluwasegun Olowu-Davies, who shot video of the march with his phone.

“If your lifestyle doesn’t allow you to conceive, there is a reason,” he said…

Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, the archbishop of Paris, voiced his opposition at a meeting of French bishops in Lourdes last year.

Opening up marriage to same-sex couples “would be a transformation of marriage that would affect everyone,” he said.

At the same time, failing to recognize gender difference within marriage and the family would be a “deceit” that would rock the foundations of society and lead to discrimination between children, he said.

Other religious groups in France, including Muslims, Jews and Buddhists, have also expressed their concern over the draft bill, and more than 100 lawmakers are against the legislation, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV.

Hundreds of mayors around the country have also voiced their opposition, which has won wide backing from gay rights advocates.

But it passed anyway, at least the lower house of Parliament. Now it has to pass the Senate, and activists have turned out again.

Hundreds of thousands of French citizens rallied in Paris on Sunday, March 24, to protest a government plan for recognition of same-sex marriage.

Legislation allowing for homosexual unions passed easily in the lower house of parliament, supporters of the measure are confident of approval in the Senate, and the bill has strong support from President Francois Hollande. But defenders of traditional marriage, hoping to generate strong public resistance, organized the second massive demonstration for their cause.

Police estimated the crowd in Paris at 300,000. Organizers dismissed that estimate as wildly inaccurate, saying that well over 1 million people had participated.

The demonstration was peaceful until some participants tried to turn onto the Champs Elysée to approach the presidential palace, and clashed with police blocking that route. The police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, prompting protests from many bystanders who had not been involved in the confrontation with police, but were affected by the tear gas. Thousands of families, many including young children, had been involved in the rally.

This is remarkable.

The movement against gay marriage has given France a new celebrity in the form of its public face, Virginie Tellenne, a Parisian socialite who goes by the name of Frigide Barjot.

“We want the president to deal with the economy and leave the family alone,” Tellenne said Sunday.

There’s a small handful of fair and accurate reports on this in the press. Most major media were transparently tendentious.

Der Spiegel at least got the caption right that hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest government action to legalize gay marriage. But their headline, ‘Anti-Gay Activists Clash With Police’ needs a little scrutiny. First of all, why are they labeled “anti-gay activists”? Easy answer is because anyone who opposes an agenda of abortion or same-sex marriage or other social policy that uproots a civilizational ethic is labeled as “anti” something, to help shape public opinion against them. And second, why the clash with police? Who started that? Headline doesn’t say. But it was tear gas, fired at the crowd by police when the peaceful demonstration turned onto the Champs Elysee.

This report said

Protesters hoisted signs reading “Don’t touch marriage, take care of unemployment!” and “Everyone is born from a man and a woman”.

That’s the case the March for Marriage organizers plan to make on their first ever US rally on the Mall of Washington Tuesday, similar to the annual March for Life in January each year on the anniverseary of the Roe v. Wade legalization of abortion across the states.

The Court will consider two cases.

The justices are first hearing a constitutional challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage. A second day is devoted to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples married in the nine states where such unions are legal.

The two cases fall into the category of the truly momentous. So much so that Supreme Court advocate Tom Goldstein literally pounded the table when speaking to law students last month. “This is special,” he declared, observing that there were no cases like it when he was in law school.” This will be a “foundational decision” that “is going to be decided for centuries.”

On one side of the argument in these cases is the idea of equality. On the other, traditional notions of how society has ordered itself.

That’s a bit disingenuous, but clever. The movement to redefine marriage has been very successful in marketing their ideas as civil rights, human rights, matters of equality. Americans are sensitive to recognizing equality and conferring it, though the matter of abortion and its denial of human rights is another issue for another day.

This isn’t about equality in terms of human rights. Loyola Marymount Philosophy Professor Christopher Kaczor points out in his book The Seven Big Myths About the Catholic Church the flaws in that argument.  Here’s just one snip:

Same-sex marriage advocates will object that even though homosexuals can and do currently get marriied, they cannot marry in accordance with their sexual orientation–for example, a gay man cannot marry a man. Same-sex marriage secures the right of people to marry in accordance with their sexual orientation.

However, if there is a right to marry in accordance with sexual orientation, then a bisexual should be allowed to marry both a man and a woman at the same time. Thus, bigamy would have to be acceptable.

He’s right. In other words, moving the goal posts and changing the rules makes future changes unstoppable, as unthinkable as they are at this time. And they aren’t unthinkable by some groups watching all this to see what might be possible for them in the future.

The politician who masterminded the gay marriage campaign in Holland says that “group marriage” is now being discussed in the country.

Boris Dittrich, a former Dutch politician, gave a video interview about how he successfully introduced gay marriage. He said, “There is now a discussion in the Netherlands that sometimes people want to marry with three people and maybe even more.

“But that’s the beginning of something completely new and that will take a lot of years I guess.”

How recently were societies saying the same thing about where we are now?

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Sep 06

Defending the right to defend marriage

Law, Society No Comments »

The latest twist came today in the legal and verbal gynmastics over California’s Proposition 8. But for a change, it wasn’t about the merits of the law.

It was about whether the legal team representing Prop 8 supporters had any ‘standing‘ in court to defend this particular voter initiative.

This issue is significant for several reasons. First, the State of CA has the responsibility of defending its laws in court. That’s right: Proposition 8 is a duly enacted law of the State of CA. The people passed this initiative in a highly visible election that was not even a close call, 51% to 49%, approximately the same percentage of the vote that elected Barack Obama President of the United States.

Second, the elected officials charged with this duty, the Attorney General and the Governor, have consistently refused to perform their constitutional duty…

Third, given the above, the proponents of the ballot initiative, that is, the committee of people who legally filed the paperwork to get it on the ballot, have asked to have standing to defend Prop 8 against the absurd and frivolous legal attacks mounted on it. If the Proponents do not have standing to defend Prop 8, then no one does.

Fourth, if no one has standing to defend Prop 8, then this is, for all practical purposes, the end of the initiative process in CA.

And far beyond, says the Alliance Defense Fund, part of the team defending their standing. There’s a lot at stake here.

• The hearing concerns whether the people of California who voted for Proposition 8 will be defended at all.

• A federal court decision overturning Proposition 8 would bring additional years of chaos and confusion in the legal battle to preserve marriage.

• Such a decision could impact marriage laws in up to 44 other states—including the 29 other states where voters overwhelmingly adopted state constitutional amendments—along with eliminating the right of Californians to reaffirm marriage in their state constitution.

So what happened in that hearing? Here’s Jennifer Roback-Morse’s take:

The justices seemed to be concerned about over-reaching on both sides. On one side, they asked, suppose we adopt your theory, Mr. Olsen, and rule that the Prop 8 proponents do not have standing  to defend the measure?  What will be left of the initiative process?

On the other side, they asked Chuck Cooper, suppose we adopt your theory that the Proponents do have standing? Do the Proponents act as agents of the state, in place of the Attorney General?  How far does that ability to represent the state’s interest extend? Cooper made it clear that he thought it was possible and proper, for the Proponents’ right to speak for the state should be limited to the specific ballot issue, and nothing  more.

Ted Olsen, on the other hand, seemed to be completely uninterested in the question of the long-range consequences of his legal theory on the future of the initiative process.

The justices have 90 days to deliberate competing claims. Stay tuned…

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Aug 17

Gay marriage on hold…again…for now

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After declaring a California voter initiative wrongly passed because he disagreed with the citizens’ conclusion, Judge Vaughn Walker took it upon himself to declare anyone who disagreed with him ineligible to appeal to a higher court. Case closed, he thought. He was wrong.

In yet another odd twist to this saga, it’s the notorious Ninth Circuit that has made wisdom prevail, for now anyway, as this process moves forward in the appeals phase. Couples

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals put gay marriage on hold indefinitely, but agreed to expedite the case, scheduling arguments on Dec. 6…

California’s county clerks were preparing to issue same-sex marriage licenses beginning tomorrow. But they’ll now have to wait until at least the 9th Circuit’s ruling.

The case is expected to wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court eventually.

Media analysts are trying to figure out what might happen when the 9th hears the case in December and rules sometime after the first of the year….and what may come after that. One thing they’re pretty unanimous on is the certainty of an ongoing battle.

Some legal experts say if the appeals court eventually rules Proposition 8 backers cannot bring their petition for relief, the Supreme Court may not seek to intervene further, giving no clear guidance on the larger question of the constitutionality of same-sex marriage nationwide.

And some are certainly hoping that’s the case.

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Aug 12

Unhappy in California

Society No Comments »

No matter which way it goes with Proposition 8, in elections and court rulings, some group is going to be very upset. But after the latest decision Thursday, nobody’s happy. What’s going on in California?

Tension was high Thursday morning on the courthouse steps as everyone, on both sides of the gay marriage battle, waited for Judge Vaughn Walker to decide whether he would continue the stay on his controversial ruling or not, while it goes through the appeals process. He decided not.

US District Judge Vaughn Walker refused Thursday to extend a stay – placed on his ruling that declared California’s gay-marriage ban unconstitutional – beyond next week.

The decision clears the way for same-sex marriages to begin again in California on Aug. 18, barring intervention from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Everyone is on edge because this is a decisive social, legal and cultural turning point.

The high-profile case is being watched closely by supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage, as many say it is likely to make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. If it does, the case could result in a landmark decision on whether people in the United States are allowed to marry others of the same sex.

This is surreal. Some things aren’t relative to cultural lurches like this.

Cardinal Francis George, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, decried the August 4 decision of a federal judge to overturn California voters’ 2008  initiative that protected marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

“Marriage between a man and a woman is the bedrock of any society. The misuse of law to change the nature of marriage undermines the common good,” Cardinal George said. “It is tragic that a federal judge would overturn the clear and expressed will of the people in their support for the institution of marriage. No court of civil law has the authority to reach into areas of human experience that nature itself has defined.”

Joining Cardinal George in his criticism of the court decision was Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage. Archbishop Kurtz noted that “Citizens of this nation have uniformly voted to uphold the understanding of marriage as a union of one man and one woman in every jurisdiction where the issue has been on the ballot.  This understanding is neither irrational nor unlawful,” he said. “Marriage is more fundamental and essential to the well being of society than perhaps any other institution. It is simply unimaginable that the court could now claim a conflict between marriage and the Constitution.”

And equally unimaginable that bishops of the Church are at the point where they have to appeal to reason with comments like ‘the understanding of marriage as a union of one man and one woman’ “is neither irrational nor unlawful.” That’s no longer given. It’s under urgent appeal.

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Aug 12

Persons and acts and marriage

Society No Comments »

At the absolute core of arguments over abortion and same-sex marriage, at the heart of the matter before other points of contention are made one way or the other…..is the presumption that we either have person/body dualism or we do not. Philosophers and scholars and other intellectuals have been debating that point for a very long time. But with laws changing the way they are, it’s time to move it front and center.

How else to answer pointed and increasingly challenging questions about why, say, two people of the same gender who truly love each other can’t enjoy the same recognition of their relationship as a man and a woman? Especially the trump card….that some heterosexual couples cannot conceive children, either?

News stories abounded on the recent ruling overturning the ban on gay marriage by San Francisco based U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, but they rehashed the basics. While dropping crumb trails of claims and ideas that provoked questions. At least for anyone seriously interested in engaging this debate fairly and justly.

Let’s take one. This one from Politico, for instance.

So, as we know…

a federal judge ruled [recently] that California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage violates the U.S. Constitution.

The voters voted and they voted wrong, ruled this judge.

Walker’s ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by two gay couples who claimed the law violated their civil rights.

One of the organizers of that suit, Chad Griffin, held a press conference after the judge handed down this victory to his cause.

The ruling by Walker, he said, speaks to “fundamental American values of freedom and fairness. It affirms that under the Constitution, the government of the people, by the people and for the people can not discriminate against the people.”

But the government of the people, exercised by the people and for the people in the electoral process when they voted on this issue, has been overturned by this unelected judge. So that’s just rhetoric that makes it all sound good.

Back to what the judge said:

In his ruling, Walker repeatedly argued in his decision that banning same-sex marriage amounted to sex discrimination because some individuals are denied the right to marry others based solely on their gender.

That’s a stretch. But it got more unreasoned.

…excluding same-sex couples from marriage is simply not rationally related to a legitimate state interest,” Walker wrote in his 136-page decision.

Not true.

The most common state interest discussed in same-sex marriage case law relates to procreation, either the interest in encouraging procreation for the sake of ensuring the continuation of society or the interest in responsible procreation. In one of the earliest opinions, arising from a challenge to Washington’s marriage law, the court asserted, “The fact remains that marriage exists as a protected legal institution primarily because of societal values associated with the propagation of the human race.” The court also said that the state’s failure to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples “is based upon the state’s recognition that our society as a whole views marriage as the appropriate and desirable forum for procreation and the rearing of children.” The court rejected the contention that the fact that some married couples do not have children defeats this interest, noting that “[t]hese . . . are exceptional situations.”

This is only one of many available accounts of court cases citing state interest in marriage.

Similarly, the Ninth Circuit noted that “homosexual marriages never produce offspring.” In a dissent to the Supreme Court of Hawaii’s decision that marriage is a form of sex discrimination, Judge Heen stated his belief that the purpose of the marriage law is “to promote and protect propagation.” In the Vermont same-sex marriage case, the state argued that its marriage law protected the state’s interest in “furthering the link between procreation and child rearing.” By “promoting a permanent commitment between couples who have children to ensure that their offspring are considered legitimate and receive
ongoing parental support” and counteracting a message that fathers and mothers “are mere surplusage to the functions of procreation and child rearing,” the state can “send a public message that procreation and child rearing are intertwined.”  The court dismissed this interest by saying that some opposite-sex couples do not have children and some same-sex couples do, so there is “no logical connection” between the marriage law and “the stated governmental goal.” The court also asserted that the availability of assisted reproductive technology breaks the link between procreation and child rearing.

Now that’s going out on an activist limb.

Back to the body/person dualism at top. Here’s a snip to explain the existential question…

…dualism — the idea that a person is a mind or a consciousness that has a body, rather than being a bodily entity — is both widespread and mistaken.

…liberal positions on abortion, euthanasia, marriage, and sex, are often implicitly based on the false idea that human beings are essentially non-bodily persons who inhabit and use non-personal bodies. People who embrace this view typically regard the body as a mere extrinsic tool that we may legitimately use to obtain desirable effects on our consciousness. (The consciousness is regarded by people who accept dualism as the “true” person who inhabits, or is somehow “associated with” the body.)

As Prof. Robert George explains in his book The Clash of Orthodoxies, the belief in dualism necessary for advocacy of abortion and same-sex marriage “presupposes a dualism of ‘person’ (as conscious and desiring self), on the one hand, and ‘body’ )as instrument of the conscious and desiring self) on the other. People who believe in dualism, George explains, see the “sexual organs as ‘equipment.” Or ‘plumbing’, to put it even more bluntly.

This may be casting the hook far too deep, but there’s a reason the Apostles were fishermen. We are fully-integrated human persons, or should strive to be.

The Church rejects materialism and self-body dualism. The human being is neither a mere material reality nor a soul or consciousness possessing or inhabiting a body. As Aristotle recognized, and as many Christians and others have understood for centuries, the human being is a rational animal — an integrated unity of body and soul.

Pope John Paul II’s dissertation was a work called Person and Act, though wrongly translated in the West as The Acting Person. Explained here for anyone with time and interest…

In shorter, more concise form…the Manhattan Declaration.

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships… We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to “a more excellent way.” As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.

These Christians propose ‘a more excellent way’ to a goal we have forgotten: a full human integration.

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

We are in for a long and protracted battle.

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Jun 16

Marriage on trial

Abortion, Culture, Law, Society No Comments »

Sometimes, the Proposition 8 battle seems surreal. But then, so do other serious, emotional and intense conflicts playing out in the nation’s courts and city halls and classrooms and media, over what we knew not long ago as core Judeo-Christian traditional values.

The closing argument by Prop 8 backers is that the marriage of a man and a woman has been the institution at the center of civilization.

Winding up a historic trial over same-sex marriage in California, the lawyer for Proposition 8′s sponsors told a federal judge Wednesday that allowing only men and women to wed promotes responsible sex and child-rearing, and ultimately ensures the future of humanity.

During more than two hours of intense and sometimes skeptical questioning by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, attorney Charles Cooper maintained that society is entitled to reserve its approval of marriage for those who can naturally conceive children.

“The marital relationship is fundamental to the existence and survival of the race,” Cooper said in closing arguments before a packed San Francisco courtroom. The reason the state regulates marriage, he said, is to steer “procreative sexual relationships” into a stable family environment so that children can be raised by their biological parents.

Other federal courts have relied on that argument to uphold measures such as Prop. 8, a November 2008 initiative that prohibited same-sex marriages in California less than six months after the state Supreme Court had legalized them.

The judge was skeptical.

But Walker, who presided over the nation’s first federal trial on the issue, sounded dubious. He note[d] that the state allows couples unable or unwilling to have children to marry, suggesting that the institution has a broader purpose that same-sex partners might equally fulfill.

“Marriage is a right which extends fundamentally to all persons, whether they’re capable of producing children, incarcerated or behind in their child-support…”

So is life. In fact, it’s the first fundamental right defined in the Declaration of Independence. Which is why abortion backers had to resort to the tortured logic of non-existent privacy rights somehow covering the freedom to tend the life of pre-born life….which they conveniently redefined as non-persons until some arbitrary point.

But back to Prop 8…

If a judge or a court rules that “marriage is a right which extends fundamentally to all persons” regardless of their circumstances, they’d better be prepared for what will necessarily follow once that precedent is set. Because nothing will stop all sorts of (what we believe are) unimaginable scenarios of pairings or groupings challening why they can be denied the same rights that have now been thrown open “to all”.

Furthermore, the citizens of California voted against same-sex marriage repeatedly.

Cooper said the male-female definition of marriage has been accepted “across cultures, across time,” and that the plaintiffs’ claim that Prop. 8 was rooted in prejudice is “a slur on 7 million Californians” who voted for the measure. 

Any way you look at it, this case and the question at the core of it is headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Which is only one reason Court watchers are scrutinizing the writings and socio-political ideology of Elena Kagan, on matters that once were settled law.

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