SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory…
…The long-awaited court decision stemmed from San Francisco’s highly publicized same-sex weddings, which in 2004 helped spur a conservative backlash in a presidential election year and a national dialogue over gay rights.
It is the only correct legal position to take. However, marriage in the eyes of the state remains to be a civil contract between two people and nothing more. There is no legal reason why it must be defined as a union between a man and a woman. None of the arguments to the contrary are at all convincing. Thus the fall back is to define the civil law in terms of the desires of religious groups who forbid marriage to be defined any other way than between a man and a woman.
If there is a secular legal reason why marriage cannot be defined as a gender free statute, I have never heard one. Religions can maintain their doctrinal stance regardless of what the state confers in its marriage licenses. But the idea that a gender-free definition of marriage will destroy a foundation of our society is not only a ridiculous conclusion, but the current data on marriage does not support this notion since half lead to divorce anyway. Arguing on these grounds is about as rational as arguing that a black person is 2/3 of a person and therefore they cannot vote! Or the argument that women have a naturally weaker physical and psychological makeup that prevents them from voting or serving in the military. Not to see the clear lines of similarity between these equally absurd assumptions about the constitution of human beings is to remain mired in absurdity and a retarded sense of equal regard under the law for everyone regarding with whom they wish to spend their lives in a civil union with all rights and responsibilities thereto.
Beacon Broadside has a nice piece to discuss some of the conclusions and speculations that are false if we assume a data driven posture. See what Massachusetts has learned.
Other comments on the California decision can be found here, here, and here.
Update: Julie continues with a discussion of the overturning of inter-racial marriage as a precedent used in the case. Americans United for Separation of Church and State also weighs in.
Update II: A really nice article on Get Religion asks some important questions in the debate this issue raises with choice and religion among others.
1Looney
on May 18, 2008 at 11:29 pm:
Well, if communist had come up with gay marriage in some place like China, I might agree with you. I still feel that gay marriage can only be dreamed up by theologians with a Christian education, but who have rejected Christianity.
2Drew
on May 19, 2008 at 3:35 pm:
The question is one of equal regard under the law. The inclusion of any religious reasoning strategy is precisely the problem. Theologians and communists have nothing to do with the argument.
3Looney
on May 20, 2008 at 10:21 am:
The Economist had a good article on this. In California, we have a symmetric Domestic Partnership system which is parallel to Marriage, but identical with respect to the law. The Economist is rather liberal, but they noted that this symmetry before the law precludes an honest argument that this was about equality before the law. The decision was exclusively intended to make a religious statement, as well as to provide cover to other courts around the US who want to make a religious statement on behalf of God.