Prop 8 Supporters: Smoking Crack, or What?

I’m not total­ly unsym­pa­thet­ic to the pro­po­nents of Propo­si­tion 8, the bal­lot ini­tia­tive that would rewrite the Cal­i­for­nia State Con­sti­tu­tion to ban same-sex mar­riage. I under­stand that my posi­tion (which amounts to a «why the hell should I care if gay peo­ple want to get mar­ried» atti­tude) is not the only legit­i­mate opin­ion. Some folks just don’t think that’s the way it ought­ta be, and they are enti­tled to their opin­ion. I prob­a­bly should have just left it at that, because after read­ing up on Prop 8, I still don’t get it and I don’t even think I’ve been offered any reasons.

Seri­ous­ly, I don’t under­stand why it’s any of my busi­ness and I don’t real­ly get why it’s any big deal to those that oppose same-sex mar­riage. I have friends in same-sex part­ner­ships, and I can see why it’s a big deal to them, so look­ing at the ques­tion, I’m inclined to vote to let my friends do what they want to do so long as it does­n’t hurt me or any­one else. This might sound like I’m just anoth­er San Fran­cis­co lib­er­al, but from my point of view, this is a con­ser­v­a­tive point of view. I’d like to keep the gov­ern­ment out of the busi­ness of telling con­sent­ing adults what they can­not do.

I went look­ing at some of the web­sites sup­port­ing Prop 8 to get some idea what the argu­ments for it are. What I found are slick­ly-pro­duced web­sites and videos full of cheer­ful col­ors, logos, and pic­tures of smil­ing fam­i­lies. We’re talk­ing about mil­lions of dol­lars that went into this pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign (and they’re ask­ing for more donations).

What are they say­ing? Noth­ing spe­cif­ic, but the tone is grim. We’re sup­posed to take very seri­ous­ly the fact that there are «pro­found con­se­quences» and that Amer­i­ca’s chil­dren are now at risk.

The video inter­view with Robb and Robin Wirth­lin starts out with Robb Wirth­lin explain­ing that the Mass­a­chu­setts State Supreme Court deci­sion in 2003 caused con­cerns that peo­ple’s rights would be infringed. What rights? It’s not clear, but he claims that it would infringe on the rights of those who dis­agree with gay marriage.

This makes me won­der: what rights are we talk­ing about? Will same-sex mar­riage kill? Pre­vent het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples from mar­ry­ing? Will gays mar­ry­ing inter­fere with my right to bear arms, prac­tice a reli­gion of my choos­ing, assem­ble freely, vio­late my pri­va­cy or quar­ter troops in my home? I can see that no one’s right to free speech is being vio­lat­ed: these peo­ple have a web­site much more com­pli­cat­ed and media-rich than my own. Putting up with lis­ten­ing to them may seem like cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, but I chose to click on the link, which makes it self-inflicted.

The ques­tion of what rights are infringed by gay mar­riage has­n’t been resolved for me. The Wirth­lins’ sto­ry is about their sec­ond-grad­er com­ing home hav­ing had a sto­ry­book read to him where­in a prince mar­ried anoth­er prince and became «King and King.» Their con­cern seems to be that their child was some­how dam­aged by expo­sure to what he could have seen on the street.

This book, accord­ing to Robb Wirth­lin, was not a part of the cur­ricu­lum, but it was some­thing that the school «had to do.» I don’t know what that means. They took their com­plaint to court and lost. Robb Wirth­lin says, «it’s no longer okay to dis­agree.» His own sto­ry sug­gests to me that it absolute­ly is okay to dis­agree. He con­tin­ues, «if you dis­agree with a par­tic­u­lar lifestyle, you are now wrong, you are now bigoted.»

Does this make sense to any­one else? The argu­ment against gay mar­riage is that if you say that it’s okay, that the peo­ple who say it’s not okay are being told that they are wrong? Are we wor­ried about hurt­ing some­one’s feel­ings because the gov­ern­ment might not agree with them? More­over, this is entire­ly cir­cu­lar log­ic: the Wirth­lins oppose gay mar­riage and the court dis­agrees with them, so I should oppose it too because… wait, I haven’t heard an actu­al rea­son here. It’s just about oppos­ing gay mar­riage because they oppose gay marriage.

Robin Wirth­lin con­tin­ues on with a claim that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty will be «pro­mot­ed» in all areas of their son’s cur­ricu­lum: in math, and in spelling. I’m actu­al­ly inter­est­ed to see how it will fit in to math. Are they going to remove the word «mul­ti­ply?» I wonder.

The words come across the screen: «pro­tect your chil­dren.» Robin Wirth­lin says she want­ed to keep adult issues away from her child. Maybe sec­ond-grade is too ear­ly to have a dis­cus­sion of same-sex mar­riage and maybe it’s not, but I won­der whether Robin Wirth­lin thinks sec­ond grade is too ear­ly to men­tion that mom­mies and dad­dies are (fre­quent­ly any­how) mar­ried? And I have to won­der how she pro­pos­es to «pro­tect» her child from learn­ing that one of his class­mates has two mom­mies or two dad­dies. Oh right, by keep­ing them from get­ting mar­ried in the first place.

Sor­ry, this seems like the weak­est pos­si­ble argu­ment. Even if every­thing the Wirth­lins say is true, even if their free­dom of expres­sion has been squelched, is the solu­tion real­ly to change the thing that they were try­ing to talk about, rather than address whether they had a venue in which to express them­selves? Hing­ing the ques­tion of whether same-sex cou­ples should be allowed to legal­ly mar­ry on whether chil­dren might find out about it is pos­i­tive­ly absurd.

I con­tin­ue to look for any hint of a rea­son why any­one should vote for Propo­si­tion 8. The protectmarriage.com web­site says that gays do not have the right to «change the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage for every­one else.» I’m going to have to start ask­ing my straight mar­ried friends and rel­a­tives if the court rul­ings about this have stopped them from lov­ing their spous­es or feel­ing that their mar­riage is special.

From my point of view, legal same-sex mar­riage makes it more like­ly that I will have a legal het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riage at some point. The one time I seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered mar­riage, I was trou­bled by the fact that I would be tak­ing advan­tage of legal rights and priv­i­leges that my gay neigh­bors could not. Instead, we went to City Hall and got a legal het­ero­sex­u­al domes­tic part­ner­ship. We talked about con­tin­u­ing on and get­ting mar­ried, but that did­n’t pan out. The point is just this: gay mar­riage deval­ues mar­riage only to those who don’t val­ue an egal­i­tar­i­an soci­ety. It enval­ues the idea of mar­riage for those of us who are com­mit­ted to liv­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty which guar­an­tees rights and pro­tec­tions with­out regard to what peo­ple do in their bed­rooms and with whom.

As a side note, one of the rea­sons the Yes on 8 peo­ple give is because the judges in Cal­i­for­nia «ignored the will of the peo­ple» when over­turn­ing Propo­si­tion 22. Isn’t that their job? Whether you agree or dis­agree with this deci­sion, if we believed in pure moment-by-moment democ­ra­cy, nei­ther the states nor the Nation would have a Con­sti­tu­tion or courts whose job it is to decide on cas­es in light of the rights guar­an­teed by the U.S. and State Con­sti­tu­tions. Seems like a weak argu­ment, and does­n’t add any­thing to the dis­cus­sion of whether it was the right decision.