Thirty-two states have voted for constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Unprecedented efforts by Catholic bishops and other religious leaders have sparked a national conversation on the importance of marriage and why it’s worth saving. The indefatigable National Organization for Marriage has done amazing work as well.
But after all this effort, I’m wondering if the Supreme Court might just “Roe” us on gay marriage? With two recent court rulings going against the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, it’s growing increasingly likely that the Supreme Court will take this issue on.
Justice Ruth Vader Ginsburg recently said she thought the court would consider same-sex marriage this term.
And that should concern us. In one ruling, nine justice in robes could overrule the will of thirty two states, never mind thousands of years of culture
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October 24, 2012 at 5:29 pm
Sing together:
Roe, Roe, Roe. We vote!
Family rights we scream!
Equally, equally, equally, equally,
Civil marriage our dream!
Dear Catholics,
Less than one third of Americans are Catholic. We do not share your beliefs about abortion or same-sex marriage, and we don't want your beliefs in our laws. Don't like abortion-don't have one!
Don't like marrying someone of the same sex-Please don't!!! But don't keep us from our American civil rights, please, please, please.
Thanks,
Kate O'Hanlan, MD
October 24, 2012 at 7:33 pm
Dr. O'Hanlan:
Why not get the government out of marriage and have civil partnerships instead, which need not be defined by a sexual relationship?
October 24, 2012 at 11:42 pm
@Dr. O'Hanlan: Did you think you were making a point in your side's favor with this puerility? Also with your invocation of Know-Nothing anti-Catholic Natalism.
I will concede that you make—notice I do not say "state"—a powerful argument against the concept of universal human worth that underpin our opposition to abortion.
@Unknown: Christianity has, since the days of Rome, regarded "civil partnerships" as marriages. What Roman law regarded as civil-union-but-not-marriage, canon law always regarded as marriage. "Civil unions but not marriages" is a distinction without a difference, designed to endow "gay marriage" in legal fact without the heavy lifting of endowing it by name.
October 25, 2012 at 1:02 am
Sophia's Favorite:
What I am proposing is something of a restoration, and different from a civil union. I have known siblings, widowed parents and a particular child, business partners, and close friends who would have benefited from having something like a civil union. As the State no longer is interested in the traditional purposes of marriage (not since the relaxation of divorce laws), I submit that it should no longer be in the marriage business, and that civil partnerships would be the way to recognize two individuals who wish to be associated with each other, whatever the circumstances of the association may be (relationship, family, business). It may not be a perfect solution, but I think it the best one, given the times
October 25, 2012 at 1:25 am
Or, and here's a crazy idea, just fix the divorce laws so the state once again acknowledges the true function of marriage.
They changed it arbitrarily; why can't we change it back? "Given the times", slavery could never have been abolished—yet it was. An institution a hell of a lot older and more entrenched than our stupid sex-ideas was dismantled, solely to conform to an ideal.
Never permit the opposition to define the debate.
October 25, 2012 at 8:52 pm
Dear Kate,
You poor thing. In spite of your educational and medical/technical accomplishments, you seem to be suffering from arrested social and psychological development. I'm embarrassed for you. I will pray that you find a better use for your free time than making a fool of yourself on Catholic blogs.
October 26, 2012 at 5:01 am
A number of states used to have laws supporting something called "slavery," too – and it didn't even take nine justices to end that, just one man in a top hat. I suspect the "creative minority" back then would have been against abolishing slavery – after all, the Bible is fine with slavery – so I'm just going to take a moment to be grateful that there are people out there who are more concerned with human rights and human dignity than in dated interpretations of the word of God.
October 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Michael, no, the Catholic church was against slavery, going back to the 1500s. So be as suspicious as you want, but understand that you are being basically irrational and, in a technical sense, ignorant.
October 28, 2012 at 4:24 am
Kate O'Hanlan:
Don't like slavery? Don't own one.
October 28, 2012 at 3:36 pm
@Michael: It is interesting that you bring up slavery, for two reasons. First is that no Catholic society had chattel-slavery since the seventh century. Actually no society informed by Christianity or Judaism did, except for the Protestant ones. Slavery of any kind completely ceased to exist among the medieval Westerners—serfs were not slaves, but literally "second-class citizens"—and while Jews, Byzantines, and Renaissance Westerners did have forced labor, those laborers did have legal rights. The only Judeo-Christian culture that didn't, for instance, recognize slaves' marriages, was the English colonies in the New World.
The second reason that it is interesting that you bring up slavery is the fact that what makes chattel-slavery wrong is that it treats as property beings that are, in fact, not, namely human persons. As Confucius said, to restore right names to things is the correct path of governance; to treat as spouses two people who can never be spouses (because they can never have sex, masturbation into the digestive tract is not the same thing) is just as egregious a violation of that principle as slavery is. And as Voltaire said, if you can believe absurdities, you can commit atrocities.
Speaking of Confucius, how about this, from his commentaries on the Canon of Changes: "One yin and one yang, this is called the Way." Did you really think Catholics get their morals from the Bible—a book none of them would ever have accepted except on the authority of the Church? We get our morals from reason—the same reason, by the way, that also led Socrates to declare homosexuality immoral, to be "the poisonous bite of the tarantula"; somehow one doubts he was influenced by "dated interpretations of the word of God". Perhaps you ought to try that some time.