Being the Change I Wish to See

If Rick Warren had let this go, I think this controversy would have died down by the end of this week and we’d all be getting over the fact that this snake oil salesman will be preaching at PE Obama’s inauguration. But he couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie, and the press has this nasty, annoying habit of following up on stories.

Here’s the pertinent Rachel Maddow Show segment about what Mr. Warren had to say a couple of days ago:

Here’s the full-length video from Rick Warren to his members on his blog so you can listen to the entire 22 minute message. It gets more hypocritical as it goes on, so put on your waders.

Dec. 21, 2008 Member Video, Rick Warren

Pastor Warren walks all over civil rights in the name of free speech. He lies about what he has said in the past on video tape. He blames the press for creating conflict where he says it doesn’t exist. He says he is for the separation of church and state, but wants marriage defined by his religious definition. He calls those who don’t agree with him and his views “Christ-ophobes”. His members will gloss over the anti-gay rhetoric. Oy!

I think he is mistaken. We are just opposed to Rick Warren’s definition of who we should be and that his flavor of Christianity is the only flavor that is right. I am a Christian, but not according to his definition. I’m a traditional Christian from a long-lived denomination, United Methodist. I was Baptized as an infant and I don’t believe that I need to be Baptized again to be saved. I don’t practice the religion I grew up with (Methodist) because there is no gay-accepting Methodist church in town. I attend either the Metropolitan Community Church (non-denominational) or the Unitarian Church, where a lot more people than Christians attend. These churches are welcoming to gays and don’t preach to us that we are sinners for being who we are, and they have programs just for our group within these churches.

I do think reaching out to the middle is an idea worth exploring, but we have to be extremely careful about making sure we are staunchly who we are and unrepentant about it. We have nothing to repent. We also have to make it clear that our protests are civil, not religious. We want civil rights, not other people’s religious acceptance.

Rick Warren has twisted our protests against his beliefs that he brought out of his church and into civic life on Prop 8 into hate speech. We are spewing hate when we protest against his ideas? No, we are demonstrating that we don’t agree with him and he believes we hate him because of it. This guy is slippery.

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As I wrote in my last post, the Obama Presidential victory is bitter-sweet for many Americans. As we rose to new heights in racial justice we nose-dived on LGBT civil rights, particularly the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry legally in California, Arizona, and Florida.

Arkansas passed a related measure effectively denying the right of gay and lesbian couples to adopt children. Their new law requires that adoptive parents be legally married. Same-gender couples cannot legally marry in Arkansas, therefore they cannot adopt children in that state. Single people of any orientation cannot adopt children either which violates their civil rights as well. There are plenty of single parents who had children of their own or adopted while they were married and are now divorced. How does Arkansas plan to reconcile that dilemma? No one knows, least of all the lawmakers who thought up that legislation.

Segregation in Gay and Lesbian Unions

Over the last couple of decades, a few forms of legally recognized unions have been created in some states to provide some of the rights of marriage to gay and lesbian couples. They are civil unions and domestic partnerships. These unions are not federally recognized and don’t have to be recognized by other states or territories within the U.S. A lot of other countries also do not recognize these unions as marriages. By creating civil unions and domestic partnerships we have effectively created a segregated “marriage” system for same-gender couples that is clearly not equal to the marriage rights of opposite-gender couples.

The segregated marriage institutions of civil unions and domestic partnerships should be abolished and full, legal marriage rights must be extended to gay and lesbian couples.

We all have a very clear understanding that separate is never equal. It wasn’t equal in education, on buses, in restaurants, at water fountains, in bathrooms, at voting booths, or in marriages between a man and a woman of different races. Equality came when segregation was abolished legally. Social acceptance came slower, but it was fueled by existing legal rights for interracial couples.

We feel so strongly about equal rights between races that we boycotted and embargoed South Africa for decades because of apartheid. Yet here we are in America in 2008, denying equal rights to a minority group by putting their rights up for popular vote.

Racial segregation is wrong and a popular vote concerning any civil right associated with race is not acceptable. So why is a popular vote acceptable against gay marriage? It’s not acceptable. It’s a huge travesty of justice against about 10% of the American population.

The Case for Legal Marriage for Gay and Lesbian Couples

If you want to protect an institution, you do not dilute it with other similar, but unequal, institutions that take people away from the one institution you want to protect. If you want to protect marriage, make marriage the only institution available to all couples.

By creating civil unions and domestic partnerships, gay and lesbian couples gained some rights, but opposite-sex couples also chose these lesser arrangements instead of marriage. This diluted the institution of marriage and continues to do so today. We created a slippery slope that is leading our nation away from marriage and setting up a whole new bureaucracy in the states in which these institutions exist. Each time another state adopts domestic partnership or civil union laws, marriage is diluted again because opposite-sex couples use them instead of marriage.

Lesbian and gay couples legally marrying does not dilute or damage marriage any more than interracial couples marrying diluted or damaged marriage before 1967. Many who are against gay marriage use the dilution argument but cannot explain how it would dilute marriage. They cannot explain it because there is no valid reason, just as there was no valid argument when interracial couples were denied the right to marry. It is clear, however, that denying marriage rights and creating separate, lesser unions dilutes and damages the institution of marriage.

Opponents of gay marriage bring up ridiculous examples that if two men or two women can marry, then next people will be able to marry their pets. These arguments are so ridiculous I can’t believe supposedly rational people use them. But they are using them as fear tactics to propagate bigotry and injustice against gay and lesbian couples, and it is working.

Polls show in California that 7 in 10 African Americans who voted for Obama/Biden voted yes on Proposition 8. This voting trend shows that the LGBT community has not successfully connected the dots between racial bigotry and denial of civil rights, and sexual orientation bigotry and denial of civil rights. African Americans are doing to LGBT couples exactly what was done to them before the civil rights movement. It is no less serious a travesty of justice now than it was before 1964 and the Civil Rights Act or before 1967 when it became legal for interracial couples to marry.

Some gay marriage opponents use the argument that gay-parent homes harm children or cause them to become gay or lesbian. They do no such things. Psychologists, psychiatrists and pediatricians have done extensive studies that demonstrate again and again that children brought up in committed same-sex couple homes thrive just as well as children brought up in opposite-sex couple homes. These professional groups have found that a loving, stable home is what is most important to children, not the genders of the adults within it. Children of same-sex couple homes do not become gay or lesbian at a higher rate than children from opposite-sex couple homes. Being gay isn’t contagious.

At a time of fiscal crisis in this country, all the extra bureaucracy caused by segregated, lesser unions cost states money they could stop spending if every state legalized marriage for all couples. The state bureaucracy for marriage is well established and smoothly run. The only changes would have to be some minor wording alterations on the marriage application form and the marriage license to say “spouse” where it now says “husband” and “wife”. Since these documents are created, edited and stored electronically, changes would be a minor, 10-minute clerical job. The fiscal argument for marriage rights is far stronger than a minor clerical change argument against them.

How Can We Get Our Equal Right to Marry?

The LGBT and supporting community has gone about obtaining civil rights the wrong way. We worked toward social tolerance and acceptance to gain popular votes in Constitutionally illegal elections instead of through the court system to demand equal rights, have them granted by the Supreme Court and imposed on all states and U.S. territories. African Americans obtained their civil rights and then worked and are still working to have them accepted socially. We failed to learn that we cannot rely on popular opinion when it comes to civil rights, and it is time to start fighting for them legally like we should have been doing all along. We should still work toward social tolerance and acceptance, but we cannot and should not rely on it to obtain the civil right to marriage equality we deserve as minority Americans.

Under the equal protections guaranteed by the Constitution, our right to marry is already protected. In 1967 in Loving v Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned anti-miscegenation laws that made interracial marriages illegal.

The Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, made same-sex marriages illegal. The law is unconstitutional and must either be repealed or overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.

We must stop fooling around and start exercising our right to legally marry by attempting to obtain a marriage license when we decide we want to marry our same-gender partners. If and/or when we are denied the right to get a marriage license we must involve the ACLU and other LGBT civil rights organizations to legally protest and sue on the grounds that our civil rights are being violated and that the law upholding that violation is unconstitutional.

Our softball strategy has not worked, so it’s time to play hardball and legally demand the equal rights we should already have until we get them and prevent them from being pawns in various elections. We as a country would not tolerate the same discriminatory practices to be brought up to deny African Americans or persons of any other race or ethnicity some civil right. We can no longer tolerate discrimination based on sexual orientation and we must fight for our rights in court.

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