It is difficult to offer an original comment or provide new insight in regard to the much talked about same sex marriage debate. Just last week the strongest legal minds in our country parsed the subject over a two-day period. The first day, in Hollingsworth vs. Perry, the court heard a case related to California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot provision which provided that only a marriage between a man and a woman be recognized in the state. The second day the court heard United States vs. Windsor, the challenge to the constitutionally of the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal marriage benefits to gay couples and allows the United States to only recognize marriages across state lines of opposite-sex marriages.
The justices prodded each side with equal amounts of satisfaction and pique. And it was questioned ad nauseam whether the court even had standing to hear the cases. In the end we await the courts decision, left scratching our heads, lost in a miasma of legalize disbelief.
I find that when this topic is discussed amongst friends it is all too easy to fall into a discussion where deep seeded values are cast as obvious rationales and visceral inclinations trump sound thinking. That’s why I find it so important to loosen our grip on long held beliefs and allow ourselves to extend the same presumption of good faith to others as we expect in return when making our own judgments.
When legislating it is imperative to craft laws that are amenable to reason. That is, a law must be equally applicable to all people—not simply to the bible-thumpers on one side or the atheists on the other. Its unfair and unjust to bound non-believers by biblical law, but equally wrong to subject the faithful to complete secularity. As such, a common ground, somewhere lurking in humanitarianism, is, in my opinion, the only safe place to tread.
Humanitarianism is a belief in the ethic of kindness, which is extended to all human beings. There is no judgment passed based on the color of one’s skin, one’s gender, sexual orientation, or religion. Simply, it’s the acceptance of one human being as every other human being.
As such, there are certain truths that must be agreed upon. The first is that all women and all men are extended the same and equal rights as every other woman and man in this country. This is set forth in the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. The second is that two women or two men have the capacity to love each other as passionately and as equally as any man and women. This is evidenced by the countless men and women, friends of mine and surely friends of yours if you’ve found your way to this page, that have committed themselves to each other.
With this we come to the definition of a marriage, which is technically defined as a union between a man and a women. But what really is a marriage? Is it nothing more than a legal exercise, where the parties wish to gain the benefits of the institution of marriage? Is it a commitment to another person solely for the purpose of procreating and forming a family? Or is it a commitment to another person, an enduring proclamation of love? Under all these circumstances it’d be, by definition, bigoted to deny one person the right to marry while allowing someone else.
This is why I cannot arrive at any other conclusion than to believe same-sex marriage is not only constitutional, but, to borrow a biblical phrase, completely right and just.
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