Debunking Arguments for the Hate Amendment, Part Four

I've been neglecting my occasional series on Wisconsin's anti-gay-marriage amendment while building up a folder full of bookmarked pro-hate arguments. I'm going to try this week to get out from under the backlog. Today's contestant is a repeat customer, Lucas from the right-Cheddarsphere blog Wild Wisconsin. You may remember Lucas from our debut installment of this series, when I considered his first four reasons for favoring an amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions in this state:

1. God said that homosexuality is wrong.
   
2. Homosexual marriage will destroy traditional marriage.
   
3. It's all about the Children.
   
4. It reduces marriage to attraction.

Each of those reasons is full of holes and, singly or collectively, cannot justify writing discrimination into our state constitution. Not to be outdone, though, Lucas offered four more reasons in a recent post:

1. Laws are Not Enough
   
2. An Amendment is Not a Duplication
   
3. Marriage Merits Protection in the Constitution
   
4. The Supreme Court is Ready

Again, none of these is persuasive: These mostly end up being duplicative of the kinds of arguments advanced by the policticians, folks like Scott Fitzgerald who cannot come right and say, "God says!" and get away with it. Of course, Fitzgerald himself has been the subject of this series, where he was taken to task on arguments much like Lucas's new reasons #1, 2, and 4, so I won't bore you by repeating myself. Lucas's #3, though, deserves notice here. He writes,

I think we should be able to drive 75mph on the interstates. Does that mean I want a constitutional amendment to ensure that I can? No. Such an issue does not rise to the level of a fundamental right or liberty and should be left to the legislature to decide by law. But certain foundations of civil society that should never change and are not dependent upon the circumstance or age we live in are to be rooted in the Constitution. Marriage rises to that level. The mini societal unit of the family upon which all other parts and forms of government are built is at stake. There is no reason why this would change; family and marriage have always been, always will be, and will always be a positive influence on society. An amendment is appropriate.

Lucas does three things here: One, he avers that marriage is a basic civil right, agreeing with the majority opinion in the landmark US Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which finally invalidated anti-miscegenation laws in--and it still boggles my mind that it was this recently--1967. Two, he declares that marriage "should never change," implying, of course, that marriage never has changed. And three, he declares that "all other parts and forms of government" are based on marriage. To Lucas, these three things add up to enough reason to pass the amendment. But Lucas is either wrong in his assertions, or undone by their actual implications. In reverse order (there's a reason):

I do not know where Lucas learned his history and civics, but our governments--local, state, federal--are not "built" on marriage. It is good to have stable populations and strong families, but the founding documents of the country, in particular, make no mention of marriage, family, children, and so on. In fact, from the first century or so of this country's existence, you wouldn't know that women even existed, let alone were necessary and critical as half of that "mini societal unit" that was so fundamental to our government it is never discussed.

Marriage "defenders" often rely on the argument that marriage is some kind of fixed star, that it has always been as it is now, and should never change. Yet even the most elementary investigation of history or anthropology shows that this is not true; back when our forms of government were being built upon marriage (in Lucas's mind), women were chattel in this country, essentially owned and dominated by men and passed between men to cement property deals or strengthen aristocratic blood ties. There is a snide comment in there about how fundamentalists wish we could go back to that, but I don't think that's what Lucas wants. But he should read up on the history and varied definitions of marriage, including centuries of change just in this country.

Finally, if indeed marriage is, as Lucas puts it, "a fundamental right or liberty" (and I concur that it is), then the government cannot deny access to that liberty to anyone, particularly through targeting a class of citizens to deny the right to. The fourteenth amendment is clear in that it offers equal protection to everyone: No state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This amendment is diammetrically opposed to the language and the spirit of that amendment. To deny the right of marriage to gay men and lesbians is to create a "special right" for straight couples--an argument Lucas made pretty explicitly in that post of his debunked here last month.

But Lucas returns to this same argument in another recent post:

Why Homosexual Marriage Destroys Your Marriage
It always comes back. I can never write enough it seems about how allowing homosexual marriages will destroy the rights of those who are already married. It really surprises me because it seems like such a universal concept in understanding constitutional rights and responsibilities: when you allow those who have a fundamental and destructive difference to enjoy the rights that another group enjoys, the first group's rights will be destroyed. This isn't just about homosexual marriages.

Let me try and give some examples. As I said in a comment, if we gave frogs the right of citizenship--even one frog the right of citizenship--we would strike a blow against the citizenship of every other American. Froggy would now be able to vote (diluting the effect of your vote), have a right to life (your two-year-old could be convicted for killing a frog), be free from unreasonable search (DNR couldn't look inside his home), etc. I know this all sounds crazy but is the point coming thru? Letting froggy attain the rights of citizenship even tho he is fundamentally and destructively different destroys the rights of all the rest of American citizens.

Take another example. Harvard gives out degrees to those who graduate from Harvard or to those it deems worthy of them. Now Harvard is perfectly free to start handing out degrees to anyone who graduates from highschool, but by doing so Havard would expect to hear an outcry from its alumni because their degree would be worth much less. Their "right" to the benefits of a Harvard degree was destroyed when others were freely tossed degrees.

Back again to the issue at hand. If I were given a marriage license because I love my computer (which I'm not sure I do at this moment seeing my keyboard just quit on me) I hope we can all agreethat traditional marriage would be destroyed. The issue then, is not if allowing a new group (homosexuals) to enjoy a right can destroy the rights of those who already hold that right (married couples), but if there are fundamental and destructive differences inherent in homosexual marriages that will destroy traditional marriage.

I believe there is, and that is what the debate should be about.

I copied the whole of that post because, well, I wanted you to see that this is where it goes, eventually: Gay people are like . . . frogs. I mean, I just don't know what to say to this; even if you buy his "diluted" special right argument, there is still no clear description of how that dilution comes anywhere near to "destruction." I cannot see how my marriage will be different or affected in any way at all by allowing gay marriage.

In this post, Lucas never describes what the "fundamental and destructive differences" are between homosexual and heterosexual couples--maybe he belives the two previously discussed posts cover that--but it is hard not to hear in his words the words of trial judge in the case that led to the Loving decision:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Destructive differences, indeed.