"Mormons have ten wives--why can't I have one?"
--Sign held by female protester outside Los Angeles LDS temple during Prop 8 protest.
"Hi, we're from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We're here to take away your rights."
--LDS missionaries to lesbian couple as portrayed in the anti-Prop 8 movie Home Invasion.
All right, ladies and gentlemen. I used to favor gay marriage. Then I came to law school and I was on the fence. I was content to just sit back, hold my tongue except for personal conversations in my own living room and engage in reasoned, open-minded discussion. Maybe gay marriage was all right, I mean, just another societal shift that wouldn't affect me that much. I was willing to accept and deal with this for a while, no matter my moral stance on the issue.
Now Prop 8 has passed, effectively banning gay marriage in California. And the rainbow crowd and the intellectual liberals have trained their sights on the LDS church for actively campaigning for the proposition (as is their Constitutional right to do--see: U.S. Constitution, 1st Amendment). Confrontational protests outside the L.A. temple. Another one planned in Salt Lake for tonight. But why us? Last I checked, the Catholics and the Evangelicals were in on this too. And if this past election has shown us anything, it's the surprising power of Evangelicals voting in blocks (see: Hucakbee, Mike).
Why are my people made out to be the lone bad guy, the target of such acrimony and revulsion? The anti-Prop 8 crowd has built their campaign on freedom of action and the right to exercise Constitutional privileges. How terribly hypocritical it is, then, for a group of supposed "progressives" and "intellectuals" to engage in a wholesale abandon of those bedrock principles to sanctimoniously attack my people for doing precisely that--using their Constitutional privilege to fight for that which they believe to be right!
I'm done being nice. I've had it with pantywaist pundits and ignorant lay people bandying about the Constitution as some sort of trump card, a shield that magically validates their every whim. I'm sick of the blind bigotry displayed by progressives who accuse their conservative brethren (often rightly) of the same. You have navigated a sea of pop culture and waves of twisted logic to become what you profess to hate, and I mock you for it. Let it be known that I am now firmly and avowedly anti-gay marriage, not just morally, but socially, politically, intellectually, and legally. Not because I'm morally opposed to it (I always was); not because it's as legally defensible as it is indefensible (which I'm finding out); but because you have made me this way. Your raving, your hatred, your bigotry, your indescribable hypocrisy is the straw that broke this camel's back. You've attacked my people out of your blind hatred, and your huffing and puffing has blown me off of the fence on to the other side.
To the lady with the sign I mentioned at the outset: Climb out from under that pretentious little rock you apparently live under and get your facts straight. There is not a single Mormon man who has more than one wife, and it has been that way for almost 150 years now. Those who engage in bigamy are summarily excommunicated. We have tried for decades to make this clear, sending this message across the globe through every available medium. You apparently did not get this message for all your supposed "open-mindedness." So allow me to tell you myself: Mormons do not engage in, nor condone, polygamous marriage. End of story. Nothing makes you look more ignorant than using falsehoods as a logical pretense upon which to build your protest. Your argument is fatally flawed and I mock it. You're an unmitigated embarrassment to your cause.
To the writers, producers, directors, and associates of Home Invasion: You assail to protect the fundamental rights of a minority from bigotry and ignorance. Yet, never in my life have I seen such blatantly false, hateful, pretentious, regressive campaigning for a cause in my life. What you have done borders on the hate speech typical of Hitler's rhetoric and Stalin's rule. You have willingly spread slanderous lies and planted seeds of misinformation and ignorance in the minds of those who may otherwise come to know the truth for themselves, only to be blinded by your unabashed lust to satisfy your political appetite. You have slashed and razed the innocent minds of those you have encountered, leaving a black, desolate, smoldering landscape of lies and ignorance in your wake, while that which is most dear to me (my religion) hangs from a tree, choked by your hypocrisy and mutilated by your bloody hands. I sincerely hope you pay for setting my people (a religious minority, might I add) back in this manner.
Finally, to all those who would point their dirty fingers at my church and say our actions have unfairly deprived a minority of a fundamental right; to all those who say the Mormon church is an old, stodgy bully that just doesn't get it; to all those who say we do not know whereof we speak: Need I remind you all that this nation's government undertook to regulate the way in which a religious minority married over a century ago when it threatened to breach the bounds of the church-state relationship and end my people if they continued polygamous marriage? Did we fight? No, we could not. Did we protest? No, we obeyed and submitted under commandment from God to the dictates of the government, believing it to be for the greater good. And why was our right to practice our religion as we saw fit (a clear, fundamental First Amendment right) so egregiously infringed upon? Not on legal grounds, and certainly not on Constitutional grounds, but solely because our practice was seen as morally reprehensible, incompatible with the mores upon which American society was based. Yet we carried on, indeed we thrived.
This premise, may I point out, is your argument. Moral repudiation is no excuse for infringing on the rights of a minority to marry as they see fit, you say. Nobody has a right to tell another how to marry or who they can marry. You trumpet this banner about proudly on your high horses while approving of other laws and practices based upon the same premises. Where are your protests about bigamy laws, marital licensing laws, bestiality laws? You cannot simultaneously applaud gay marriage and condemn polygamy (or polyandry, for that matter). It is logically and legally impossible. Your ignorance is mind-blowing; words have not been written that would adequately describe the breadth and width of your intolerance. Are we intolerant for denying gay marriage? Perhaps in a way we are. But you are equally so, you see. Get off your high horse and don't you dare thumb your noses at us, you hypocrites.
Furthermore, you rail against my people, saying they have denied a minority the right of freedom of expression. Yet you rail against them because they exercise this same right. We are a church, a society based upon a moral code that we enforce upon none outside of our faith. We have just as much a right to speak up, campaign, and persuade as you do. You would force us, however, to change our ways, to abrogate our moral basis to accommodate your desires. We have forced nothing on you, yet you seek to destroy the very basis upon which we are built because a compromise (civil union) is not enough for you. We merely voice our opinions. You would annihilate our beliefs to conform to your personal moral code. Who is really being attacked?
You say Prop 8 violates the separation of church and state. Yet marriage was a religious institution long before a civil one. In fact, the Constitution does not mention marriage at all! If anything violates the separation of church and state, it's your attempt to use the legal system to override and dictate our religious beliefs. If the concept of the separation of church and state is valid, the corollary separating religion and popular opinion must be equally valid if the First Amendment is to have any meaning at all.
And finally, may a lay out a legal principle, although I imagine it will not register with the more bigoted among you: gay marriage is not a fundamental Constitutional right. Loving v. Virginia is celebrated for recognizing a fundamental right to marry, not a right to marry whoever you want. This right, moreover, is not found in any text of the Constitution, but in the minds of Supreme Court justices who looked at the penumbra of individual rights to confer legal legitimacy upon a mainstay institution of society. Loving attached legal significance to what had existed since before the birth of this nation. It did not give you a means to change it to fit your desires.
You lost Prop 8. Get over it and leave us in peace.
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7 comments:
Bravo!
Although the right to marry whoever you want may not be a federally recognized right, it was a recognized right in California. The California Constitutions’ due process clause established the civil right to marry for all individuals and couples, without regard to their sexual orientation. Prop 8 takes that previously established right away for God-knows-how-many CA couples. It hurts my heart. Also, I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of passing a constitutional amendment that carves out a group of people from protection under the due process clause.
And the reason people are so upset with the Mormon Church is because the Church and its members contributed 77% of the money used to fund the “YES on 8” campaign. And it is an easy campaign to dislike. The proposition’s passing has less to do with the actual will of the California people, and more to with out-of-state money funding a campaign based on fear. The supporter's biggest argument was that if 8 did not pass, your children, (yes! Your children!) would be forced to learn about gay marriage when kids learn about marriage in school. This is just not true- kids don’t learn about marriage in school except in sex ed, which is entirely voluntary and dependent on parental permission. If you want to teach your kids about sex and relationships and their changing bodies yourself, the state gives you the right to do so. Also, blocking gay marriage does not keep gay people from being a part of mainstream California, or from your kids becoming aware of their existence. Saying that this constitutional amendment banning gay marriage will in some way help your kids’ education is just a cheap way to scare people into voting for something that never had anything to do with education in the first place. If people are actually concerned about what their kids are learning about in school, then why not legislate that? As a California voter, I feel cheated.
What needs to be said, but seldom is, has to do with the homosexual sex act itself. It's perverted. It is an abomination, but few are ready to acknowledge it.
This is the real reason why the LDS Christians oppose SSM, and why non-LDS Christians oppose it, or should oppose it. God has forbidden man to lie with man, because it perverts the purpose of sex and marriage.
When Mormons teach their children about marriage, it's in the context of a bond and relationship that will never end, passing through death, standing before the judgment seat of God, rising in the resurrection, and dwelling with the billions of families that will inhabit the earth for a thousand years, preparing for its coming transformation into a celestial abode, when the old earth and the old heavens shall pass away, as a new earth and a new heavens replace them.
In that day, the former earth and the former heavens will not be remembered, or come to mind. However, this great hope and glorious vision of the future is forever lost to those who, for whatever reason, reject the path that leads to their part in it.
Yet, that is their business, and they have the God-given right to choose what they will believe, or will not believe.
Nevertheless, it would be foolish to think that the Mormons don't understand how their children will have to withstand the persuasion of those who will come among them saying, "Believe it not!"
They will be cajoled, prodded, brow beaten, scorned and even persecuted for their faith in the sanctity of marriage. They will be urged to reject it as folly, to look upon it narrowly and consider it as a foolish and a vain hope, in a thousand subtle, and some not so subtle, ways, and, alas, many will surely succumb, choosing to believe it not.
Does anyone think, then, that the Mormons don't have the right, indeed the duty, to defend their position, for their children’s sake? Should they not be expected to seek to firmly establish the holiness of marriage in the minds of the people, striving to circumscribe and minimize, in every legal and ethical manner possible, the power and influence of those whose persuasion in the schools, in the media, and in the halls of the state, is, and ever will be, exerted to deny it, to the utmost of their ability?
Institutionalizing perversion, officially calling good evil and evil good, allows it to be taught in public schools, written into public laws, accepted as the community standard, and treated as a publicly sanctified norm, to which no opposition can be brooked.
Clearly, we must oppose such a move, and resist those who seek to establish it, for whatever reason, or face the consequences, when we are fully ripened in our iniquity, like the cities of the plain.
look I just want to be clear about something. I don't begrudge anybody their opinion, I really don't. What angers me is the blind hatred I've seen in the wake of all this that causes people to act like hypocrites. Whether you're pro-gay marriage or not, you have to admit it's extremely hypocritical (to say nothing of counterproductive) of someone to campaign for something to be recognized as a right under the Constitution, yet revile another group for exercising a concrete right guaranteed under the same Constitution.
As for the teaching kids argument, I'll admit it's a pretty weak one, but I never said I accepted it. There are better logical arguments to make, but that's just the one that ignites the most public sentiment, and that's the name of the game when campaigning to the masses. Both sides play up their own brands of ethos.
By the way, I've enabled anonymous commenting on this blog because it gets more comments, but if you know me and want to post anonymously, I would encourage you to let me know who you are in some other way. I don't want any of my friends to think they can't express their opinion to me or that I'll think less of them for it. Thanks a lot.
I think the argument that the Church is responsible for Prop 8's passing is wrong. First, when the first person posting writes that "the Church and its members" contributed 77% of the campaign's funding, I think it needs to be amended to just members -- I do not believe that the Church donated any money to the campaign, but that it only encouraged its members to support it. As the Church noted, it left it to the members to decide their own level of involvement in the campaign and acknowledged that some members would not support it. And besides, level of funding does not determine the results of an election. People vote their conscience. Both the Yes and No campaigns were well-financed, but it was the voters, not the donors, who determined the outcome.
I also think that just because the Church supported Prop 8, does not mean that it necessarily endorsed everything put out by the Yes on 8 campaign. I would hope not, as I am dubious as to the truthfulness of some of the campaign's rhetoric.
Finally, I am in favor of separation of church and state. This is not a case about separation of church and state. Church/state separation is about not posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings or having prayers at school assemblies. What happened here is that people on both sides of the issue voted according to their values, including religious faith, and one side prevailed.
Finally I would note the limited scope of the Church's position. It is opposed to the redefinition of marriage, but not to hospital visitation or other rights, or to hate crimes laws protecting homosexuals, or even necessarily to civil unions. The Church does not teach hatred, and any Mormon who professes hatred for gays or anyone else does not understand his own faith.
This is a tough issue for many in the Church, including me. I was uncomfortable with some of the scare tactics used by the Yes campaign which seemed, to me, to obfuscate the real issue(s). And to say there is a right to marry, but not to marry whom you wish, is a bit meaningless and, if you left it at that, could be used to justify bans on interracial marriage, interfaith marriage etc. I support the position of my Church, but clearly this is not the end of the legal or public debate.
Excellent comments, you've hit the nail squarely on the head.
I'm not as eloquent as some people, but here are my two biggest problems with voting no on prop 8. 1. a union between a man and man or woman and woman is not marriage. It's a union, partnership, contract...call it whatever you like but don't call it marriage. 2. If prop 8 was defeated, then those religious people who want to choose who they can 'join in marriage' will be told by the state who they can marry. Basically no on prop 8 would pave the way for gays to sue the mormons (and probably others) for not allowing them to 'marry'. This is a church and state issue if I've ever seen one.
Also, even though prop 8 passed, it would be foolish to think this fight is anywhere near over. In fact, I think it's just the beginning...
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