This morning is cloudy as I write, and how appropriate it is that the sun is not shining. Yesterday a very dark thing happened in California. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker from (surprise surprise) San Francisco overturned Proposition 8.

Prop 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license…Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.

Didn’t We Vote For This… TWICE?

In 2000 I had just turned 18 and in my first election I proudly (and biblically) voted yes for this short sentence to be added to the Family Code: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Proposition 22 only stated as law what the vast majority of Americans have held to be true in the past, marriage is a union between two things, and those things are a man and a woman. That was overturned, despite the will of the voters. For 8 years we enjoyed a statute which defined marriage biologically and biblically.

When  the courts overturned Prop 22 California voted for an amendment to the California Constitution to the same effect. I know we aren’t supposed to quote Wikipedia, but this is a safe one:

Proposition 8 was a California ballot proposition that sought to change the California Constitution to add a new section (7.5) to Article I, that would read: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

This time it was more than a statute, it was an amendment to the very constitution which was used to overturn Prop 22. A statute can be overturned if it is found to be inconsistent with the state constitution. This point is good, by the way. As a Christian and as an American I want my laws to be consistent with one another. Laws can not be enforced fairly if they contradict one another. With Prop 8 now adding a familiar phrase to the California Constitution the voters had spoken again. They told us that a biblical/common sense definition of marriage was unconstitutional, so we changed the constitution.

You’ll forgive me for not reading Judge Walker’s 136 page ruling. I’m not clear on this yet, so I may eat these words later, but now that we have changed the California Constitution (the document by which new statutes can be struck down if they are found to be inconsistent with it) wouldn’t that be definitional to state law now? In other words, I am asking how can a part of the state constitution be found unjust? By what higher law are we judging the constitution by? Do we need to go and vote on that a 3rd time and make it clear that the State of California does not want homosexual marriages?

I proudly voted for Prop 22 and Prop 8. California is telling me that my vote means nothing to them, and neither does yours. What good is a vote that passes the same law twice (first as a statute, then as a constitutional amendment) when some liberal judges (who aren’t unanimous) or a single judge can alter the outcome of an election? If I sound upset it is because I am. And you should be too. This has implications not only for marriage but for voting and elections as well. Think about it.

The REAL Issue: Re-defining ‘Marriage’

I mentioned above that the vast majority of Americans have held as a truth that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. Let’s unpack that for a bit. The issue here is not equality or discrimination. Gays can marry, lesbians can marry. This has always been the case in California and in every other state of the Union. The question is “What, then, is marriage?” Marriage is a relationship. Like other relationships, there are things within the relationship of marriage which relate to one another in a unique way. A man and a woman can relate to one another in marriage, in friendship, as enemies, as co-workers, as slave-master, as brother-sister, as neighbors, etc. There is a wide range of logically possible relationships that a man and a woman can share (hopefully not the slave-master one!).

Take, for instance, a man and a dog. We have two distinct things here, this is necessary for a relationship of any kind. A man and a dog can relate as master-owner, right? I might even go for friendship with the “man’s best friend” thing. Is it discrimination for California to not recognize my brother’s dachshund as his son?

Take a woman and a car. Again, we have two objects, how can they relate? She can own the car. She can steal the car? She can (God forbid) be run over by the car. Lets say she owns the car and drives it everywhere for work. She spends so much time with the car that she wants to upgrade from owner-ship to marriage. Is it discrimination for California to not issue a marriage license to one of many citizens who “love” their car?

Online poll from OC Register, 8/5/2010 - Illustrating misuse of the term "marriage"

No, my friends, neither of those cases is discrimination. And neither was Prop 22. And neither is Prop 8. The issues is, and has always been over the definition of marriage. The question that we are trying to answer is “What type of relationship is marriage?” In our postmodern society, where feelings and emotions determine what is just and true, we see a few homosexual men suing the state because they want a special definition of marriage to legitimize their relationship.

I said earlier that they have the right to marry. Each of those men have always had the right to marry any woman who was unmarried and willing. Since marriage is, by definition a union between a man and a woman, no one has denied them this right. Their strongest appeal is not to an agenda to re-define the word ‘marriage’, they realize this. That is why the vast majority of Prop 22/Prop 8 opponents twist the issue with emotional words, saying that we “hate” them (after all, hate rhymes with eight). Discrimination is a buzz word, so they’ll use that too. If you want to, like me, uphold the normal definition of marriage that we have always used then you will be called a bigot by those who want to silence you with an emotional smokescreen covering a bad argument.

Gender Roles

The Orange County Register (print edition) cites Judge Walker’s 136 page ruling on the issue of marriage facilitation procreation:

The evidence did not show any historical purpose for excluding same-sex couples from marriage, as states have never required spouses to have an ability or willingness to procreate in order to marry. Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed.

Might I suggest that Judge Walker has it backwards. Leftists with an agenda to flatten gender roles have pushed for legislation (using bad arguments and emotional pleas) that have changed the way that everyday men and women perceive their respective roles.

Might I also suggest that it is absurd to base this ruling, in part, on the argument that states have not required spouses to be willing to procreate. Can you imagine the outrage such a requirement would hear? Is it really necessary that such an absurd thing be a precedent in order uphold this part of our state constitution? The answer is clearly no.

And think back to biology. Without being too explicit here, men and women have different re-productive organs. Functionally they compliment one another in procreation. Since we have distinct gender roles biologically, why is it so difficult to accept the fact that men and women might just have different gender roles in the social realm? Of course that is not to say that one gender is superior to the other, only that our societal functions are different.

All of this is to say, I am saddened by my state. I am a citizen and am being told (not in so many words) that my vote does not matter. I believe in marriage’s historical, traditional, biological, common sense definition and am being told by my state government, even though we passed a statute and a constitutional amendment on this issue, that none of that matters. The emotional, accusatory plea from the agenda driven left can sway a liberal judge in San Francisco, and that is all that apparently matters.