Why are Bush and Frist wasting our time?

Marriage in the United States shall consist solely of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any state, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

—S.J.RES.1

Thoughts from a Christian Republican

Monday, President Bush gave a major speech whining about "activist judges" and supporting a proposed constitutional amendment which would restrict judges from interpreting both the national Constitution or any state constitution as requiring "marriage" to be anything other than the union of one man to one woman. The Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, Senator Bill Frist, M.D., has been urging the President to do this for some time, he ramrodded the proposed amendment through Senate committees last May 16, and now he has brought the matter to the floor this week for a full Senate debate.

When there are so many other pressing, urgent, and important issues facing the nation, I fail to see why the President and Senate are wasting so much time trying to take away the civil rights of a 5-10% minority of the population other than to pander to the Religious Right in an attempt to bolster their sagging public opinion polls.

High gas prices. The war in Iraq. The national debt. Health care. Senior citizens. Education. Crime. Trade policy. Corruption in the House. Stem cell research. Do any of these things matter?

The consensus of non-biased scientists (which means excluding both the gays trying to prove their side and the evangelical doctors trying to support their religious beliefs) is that neither homosexuality nor heterosexuality is a choice; while we do not yet know if it is genetic, the result of maternal hormones in the womb, or learned somehow in infancy, these scientists accept as fact that sexual orientation is established by the time children are toddlers and certainly before they head off to pre-school or kindergarten. Is it, therefore, fair to condemn all homosexuals to lives of celibacy?

Marriage originated as a means of subjugating women and publically declaring that the "property right" of ownership had passed from father to husband. Poor people didn't get married—it was just for royalty, the nobility, and eventually the wealthy merchant class. Marriage wasn't even encouraged by the Church until the ninth century, and it wasn't until after the Renaissance that marriage became common (though not universal) amongst the peasant class. Only in the 20th century did American and European society begin to allow young couples to meet their own prospective mates and marry for love; before that, marriage was arranged by parents or family for any number of property, social, and political reasons, with many couples not even meeting until just before the wedding. Until the late 1970s, even church wedding rituals joined a couple to become "man and wife," reinforcing the biblical concept that women should be subservient to their husbands.

It seems to me that women should be very interested in getting rid of such an archaic tradition. After all, it's not like half of American marriages don't end in divorce, with Christians having a higher divorce rate than the general population.

The Republican Party is supposed to stand for the concept of small government with minimal intrusion into citizen's private lives; we are not the Evangelical Christian Party (and I say this as a devout, non-Evangelical Christian) with a mission to make all citizens and residents of the country bow to the Evangelical's interpretation of the Bible and Christianity. Even as a Christian, I have to insist upon my rights to freedom of religion and I must resist the Evangelical branch's attempts to force their religion on my family and me.

I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state. Our founding fathers were escaping religious oppression in Europe where they were being told by their government what they would believe and how they should worship. Catholics and Protestants were killing one another over religion. Even Protestant Anglicans were killing Protestant "Non-conformists" (such as the Anabaptists and Puritans) and "reformers" were killing high church Anglicans. Those today who are trying to play "Christian Taliban" and impose their evangelical tradition on the country would do well to read and learn the lessons of history.

"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision."

—Lynn Lavner

I submit that state-sanctioned marriage is condoning and endorsing the religious sacrament of marriage, and that is unconstitutional.

In Europe, people go to the government office for their license and civil marriage and then, if they choose, to a church, temple or mosque for a religious ceremony. Americans are allowed to do their religious ceremony first, and then report that to the government. Now, if the governments in America want to allow for registrations of domestic partnerships or civil unions without regard to the genders of the two partners, that would be acceptable; registering religious ceremonies, however, is not.

With this new registration system, whoever wants the "legal benefits" of marriage would be able to have them and the churches that wish to define marriage in their own way would be perfectly free to do so (some churches already "marry" gay couples and other mainstream churches are considering it). Further, conservative churches wouldn't have to be troubled about non-believers who go to a judge for a "civil marriage" and then don't follow the church's view of how they (even though the people aren't members of the church) should behave. A couple who is in a domestic partnership will simply follow the government's rules and those domestic partners who are religious would be free to go to their religious institution for a marriage and then follow their religion's view on marital behavior.

On an aside, churches and ministers have often inserted themselves in the government recognition of marriage, but why is it that no church is willing to hear petitions for divorce from its members who were married in that church? Even the Catholics, who make a big deal about denying communion to divorcees, have a token process where marriages can be "annulled" for any number of both serious and silly reasons, but they don't "divorce" their member when the "standard" for annulment has been met; historically, though, in Renaissance English, the word "annulment" was synonymous with the modern definition of "divorce."

Meanwhile, the American Bar Association opposes the proposed anti-gay marriage amendment, asserting that it attempts to use the Constitution to impose a particular moral viewpoint on the states and tramples on traditional authority of the states to decide its own laws governing civil marriage. Senate Minority Leader Henry Reid says, "Senator Frist has chosen to put the politics of division ahead of real progress by pushing for a debate on a divisive amendment that will write discrimination into the Constitution."

A constitutional amendment will not "protect marriage" as a social or religious act. The Religious Right can't even protect marriage within their own flocks. Eventually these restrictions will fall as did prohibition and slavery, both of which also had vast popular support, once more people take the time to examine the credible medical and scientific data proving that homosexuality is not a "curable," "moral choice."