The Argument Against CA Prop 8

vote-no-8.jpgI could vote NO on Proposition 8 because I have gay friends and relatives who would want me to. I could vote NO on Proposition 8 because I don’t care that much if gay people get married because it doesn’t really affect me directly. But those reasons are the weak side of the argument.

Most of the Prop 8 supporters that I know want to see gay marriage overturned because they are opposed on religious grounds. Gay marriage makes them uncomfortable. According to the Bible, they say, it’s wrong. One friend actually whipped out the “next they’ll be marrying horses and dogs” argument. She’s intelligent. I was pretty shocked.

According to the Examiner:

The NO on Prop 8 campaign today announced that the secret $1 million donor to Prop 8 has been revealed: Alan Ashton, of Lindon, Utah. According to the Deseret News, Ashton is a Mormon and grandson of David O. McKay, President of the Mormon Church from 1951-1970. Ashton made his fortune in software.

The major force behind the proposition is church groups. No real surprise there except that our state, our country, has as a fundamental tenet: freedoms shall not be limited by a tyranny of the majority. John Stuart Mills famous essay, “On Liberty,” argues that:

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.

In fewer words, it’s wrong to allow the majority to dictate their morality onto others when the majority suffers no injury from the minority. Don’t take away liberty just to assuage your own discomfort with people who are different from you!

The line between church and state is functional and appropriately drawn in this argument. If your church chooses NOT to sanctify gay marriage, great. That’s a religious choice. But if the state discriminates against gay marriage on religious grounds, something’s gone very wrong. The California Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage for the right reasons. The law recognizes the needs and fundamental LEGAL rights of these individuals to enter into a binding contract known as “marriage.” For financial reasons. To own joint property. For medical benefits, and death benefits, and parental rights, and for all the reasons that straight people get legally married.

If your only argument against gay marriage is religious, it’s time to admit you’re making a mistake. On election day, do the right thing for other human beings who deserve the same legal rights as you. Vote NO on Prop 8.

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October 31, 2008 | Filed Under Election '08 

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