Marriage Is a Constitutional Right
New York Times
August 4, 2010Until Wednesday, the thousands of same-sex couples who have married did so because a state judge or Legislature allowed them to. The nation’s most fundamental guarantees of freedom, set out in the Constitution, were not part of the equation. That has changed with the historic decision by a federal judge in California, Vaughn Walker, that said his state’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the 14th Amendment’s rights to equal protection and due process of law. The decision, though an instant landmark in American legal history, is more than that. It also is a stirring and eloquently reasoned denunciation of all forms of irrational discrimination, the latest link in a chain of pathbreaking decisions that permitted interracial marriages and decriminalized gay sex between consenting adults…
The judge easily dismissed the idea that discrimination is permissible if a majority of voters approve it; the referendum’s outcome was “irrelevant,” he said, quoting a 1943 case, because “fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote.” He then dismantled, brick by crumbling brick, the weak case made by supporters of Proposition 8 and laid out the facts presented in testimony. The two witnesses called by the supporters (the state having bowed out of the case) had no credibility, he said, and presented no evidence that same-sex marriage harmed society or the institution of marriage…
The real reason for Proposition 8, he wrote, is a moral view “that there is something wrong with same-sex couples,” and that is not a permissible reason for legislation. “Moral disapproval alone,” he wrote, in words that could someday help change history, “is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and women”…
Just as they did for racial equality in previous decades, the moment has arrived for the federal courts to bestow full equality to millions of gay men and lesbians.
But for this first decade, we’ve been bludgeoned by a specific religious view that is unacceptable in this country. We were founded on the premise that we are all equal, "endowed by our Creator" as equal. But for this painful era, that was challenged in almost every election. To listen to the campaign ads, this country was only about Gay Marriage, Abortion, and Stem Cell research. Our "Creator" had been declared a bigot.
I don’t know much about Anne Rice except that she wrote a book about vampires. She made news in 2006 when she “found” religion and wrote about it. Now she’s made news again by “leaving religion” but now her faith, she says.
“Today I quit being a Christian … It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.â€
She added that she refuses to be “anti-gay,†“anti-feminist,” “anti-science†and “anti-Democrat.â€
That should have been “but not her faith.”