George Rebane
[This is a transcript of my bi-weekly KVMR-FM commentary broadcast on 5 November 2010.]
Two years ago California voters approved Proposition 8 that made marriage, as a union between a man and a woman, a part of the state’s constitution. According to the people, the debate about ‘marriage’ was over. But this was not to be. This August in US District Court, Judge Vaughn R Walker, who is a homosexual, held that this new clause in the state’s constitution violated the US Constitution 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses. And marriage became a relationship whose modern meaning was once more set adrift. (more here and here)
Under Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Walker’s ruling will be appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals where you can bet the farm that it will be upheld, and then further appealed to the Supreme Court. Most likely, the Supremes will vote 5 to 4 to uphold Judge Walker and declare Prop8 null and void. And why will we have gone through all that?
The homosexual community freely admits that the whole purpose of the exercise is what they call “access to the language”. They are already guaranteed the benefits of marriage which made up their last series of victories on their march toward ‘normalcy’. Homosexual couples today have access to survivor pension benefits, access to family insurance plans, and rights to inheritance just like heterosexual married couples. But what they didn’t have is the ability to pass themselves off as just another married couple introducing each other as their ‘husband’ or ‘wife’. (Now this is where I began to have a problem following their argument – who is which?)
From his proceedings, part of Judge Walker’s collected testimony included that it was awkward for a gay couple to go into a bank and say, “My partner and I want to open a joint account.” I suppose the less awkward alternative they sought was for a couple of guys to walk up to the teller and be able to say, “My wife and I want to open a joint account.” Modern times.
The fundamental ruling from Walker was that “gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.” Under the judge’s ‘rational-basis review’ of the matter, a state law need only be “rationally related” to a “legitimate government interest”, and the long-acknowledged legitimate government interest of preserving public morals no longer held. It isn’t clear now how state laws prohibiting gambling, nudity, polygamy, prostitution, and public drunkenness will be interpreted.
Traditional public interpretations of a practice being immoral will no longer be accepted as reason for prohibiting a behavior. The basis for this was actually established in 2003 by the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, which asked the states to reexamine traditional ideas about marriage and strike down laws based on outdated moral codes.
Walker’s line of reasoning now leaves us open to consider the many other possibilities for ‘marriage’. These include hetero- and homosexual polygamy, and a father marrying his daughter for openers. Other more bizarre combinations may also qualify, all under Justice Anthony Kennedy’s dictum that everyone can define their own concepts “of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” According to Lawrence, the Bible can no longer be used to support statute, so father and daughter may decide that their lives can only be fulfilled within a conjugal marriage to each other.
That may be all well and good, but let us no longer confuse the gay lobby as being merely the proponent of toleration. They have made it clear that their aim is to have modern society accept homosexuality as being equivalent to heterosexuality. And Judge Walker’s ruling makes it clear that it is irrational to think that sex per se is in some way related to marriage.
As one of a more conservative bent, I feel that a sacrosanct word and its referent institution are being taken away from me. I very much continue to believe that sex is related to marriage. And since I am grateful and equally proud of my gender-orientation, must I now respond that ‘Yes, I am married – to a woman.’?
If homosexual couples co-opt ‘marriage’ to define their relationship, what new word can the rest of us find to speak of a relationship that is not a union of fungible units?
I am George Rebane and I also expand on these and other themes in my Union columns, on NCTV, and on georgerebane.com where this transcript appears. These opinions are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
rebanesruminations.com 
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