The Supreme Court will soon be deciding on whether or not to overturn the Defense Of Marriage Act, thus paving the way for the legalisation of marriage between couples of the same gender. In an effort to support that, many people have turned their profile picture into the Equality Symbol. Since I do support the State-Sanctioned marriages to be available to any two people regardless of gender or relationship* I truly considered using a nice Purple and lavender version.
Then I got to thinking about it.
This is Holy Week for Christians–today is Maundy Thursday, the day that marks the Last Passover Of The Christ and his Trial in Gethsemene. Tomorrow is Good Friday, the day that marks the crucifixion. Sunday will be Easter and Christians around the nation will celebrate the resurrection. The last enemy to be vanquished is death, and Sunday marks the day we all remember that Christ’s sacrifice vanquished that enemy for all time.
For every body. Every person.
As I Christian I believe that God loved the world so much that he humbled himself to become a man, lower than the angels, and submit to a painful, torturous death in order to bring the gift of Grace that bridges the divide between humanity and God. Jesus did this for every person, because God loves every person equally.
When He was on earth, Jesus told us that the greatest Commandment was to love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves, and to treat everyone with the same kindness that we would like to be treated. This is the fundamental tenet of Christianity because God is love and by showing love to others we are showing the face of God.
My profile picture is a detail of Grunewald’s Crucifixion from the Isenheim Altarpiece. It is a closeup of the nail piercing the feet of Jesus and affixing them to the cross. This is the exact view I would have as I humble myself before the Cross in supplication. It is the view that reminds me that this horrible thing was done out of love for ALL people.
I cannot believe that to be true–that Christ died for everyone–and then insist that some people are not equal to others.
For that reason I think that the State Marriage and attendant benefits should be available to any two people who consent to the binding contractual relationship. I don’t think that it’s right for a government to discriminate against a portion of its people for any reason.
Now, I know a lot of people, especially some very dear friends of mine, aren’t Christians. I don’t expect everyone to become a Christian. I know that other faith traditions–and many of those who abjure all faiths–hold others in esteem just as Christians are taught to do. My goal here is not to belittle or reduce those other points of view at all. My goal here is to state that since these are my beliefs I believe that I must maintain an internal consistency with the teachings of my beliefs.
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*I think that the ultimate good of a State Marriage should be offered to any two people who want to be in a Domestic Partnership for the tax and insurance benefits. There are many folks who are not pairbonded with someone but who share a household with another person. Some common examples include widowed sisters, two platonic friends, a child caring for an elderly parent.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Could I have used the word “belief” or its derivatives any more times in that last paragraph?
I don’t believe so.
Regarding the tax benefits for married couples, we could even the playing field by revising the tax code and moving to a flat tax on purchases. And I wonder if there are other ways we could even the playing field, i.e. in ways that would not set the legal precedent that it’s okay and “constitutional” to overturn a popular vote because a minority group doesn’t like how the vote ended up. That’s my whole problem with this. Do the ends really justify the means? I don’t think so. California could put up a re-vote in 5 years, and the result would shift on its own without undermining democracy. The up and coming generations would pass gay marriage without batting an eye. Sometimes it pays to be patient rather than forcing the issue with a strong arm that only serves to further alienate nonsupporters.
I hear this a lot from people who are all for using the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare.
I am someone who wants the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare, just to clarify.
The reason we have the three-powers checks and balances that we do is precisely because no one way is deemed superior to another. Sometimes Democracy isn’t the right way to handle an issue.
Kosh III mentions the Jim Crow thing as one example. Interracial Marriage is another example. Slavery is yet another.
Besides all of this, we don’t have a pure Democracy as is. We have a Federal Republic that unites 50 states which operate as representational democracies.
Yep (Republic), but the California vote was a democratic vote. The supreme court can kiss my bum. I shouldn’t be talking about anything related to government because it’s too close to home at the moment and I have plenty of baggage ready to vent. It’s best I just shut-it and default to this: Whatever will be will be. I don’t have any control over any of it anyway…thank God it’s God’s job and not mine…
Neither California, nor any other state, nor even the nation as a whole can repeal the 14th Amendment with a simple majority vote.
But it IS ok and constitutional to overturn a popular vote if that popular vote passes unconstitutional legislation. The only way to legally pass unconstitutional legislation is through the constitutional amendment process (by which the legislation would cease to be unconstitutional).
Nobody should ever give up their rights as an American citizen so as not to “alienate nonsupporters.”
Oops. I thought we were trying to build bridges and unite.
No unity is worth having that requires somebody to give up their constitutional rights.
Jessica
Not every matter should be dependent upon the whim of a majority vote. If a referendum on eliminating Jim Crow laws had been held in 1964 Jim Crow would still be in effect.
You counsel patience; that’s what they told Dr King. How long must people wait to become a first-class citizen. I have been with my partner for 34 years, but in this state we are only 3/5 of a citizen, we’re approaching retirement, he can’t access my Social Security, my spousal work insurance, nor inherit intestate.
Equal means equal,
Equating gay marriage to the civil rights movement does not fly with me. The two are not equal. Yes, waiting 5 more years (for instance) sucks, but sometimes there are higher issues like preserving the Republic for our children, along with their freedom. Bypassing the majority is great when it’s in your best interest. What about when it’s not?
It doesn’t have to fly with you. Marriage is a civil right (one of the “fundamental” ones according to the Supreme Court).
I don’t find adherence to the Constitution of the United States a danger to “preserving the Republic for our children.” On the contrary, I find NOT adhering to the Constitution to be the path we’d want to avoid.
Katherine
I don’t have that either.
Many gay people and their supporters don’t adhere to Christianity, in large part because they have encountered such hate from avowed “Christians.” (but not us awful liberal/progressive Christians 🙂 )
The funny thing is that I don’t consider myself a progressive Christian, because I’m pretty conservative on things like the Bible being the inerrant word of God. But for some reason other Christians look at my “Christ told us to love everyone” take on things as being liberal. This confuses me. Maybe I am more liberal than I think.
The sad thing is that in someone else’s Facebook discussion about this issue on Tuesday I watched another Christian acquaintance turn the entire debate into “this is why anal sex is so disgusting”. I thought “why are we trying to make this into ‘these people have cooties’? And also, who calls another person disgusting and then claims the cross of Christ? It just really upset me. In fact, I’m still upset about it.
Jessica, they are exactly the same issue. Rights. Equal rights. Constitutional Rights. Ask any gay black person who lived thru both eras. I can remember “colored” water fountains do you?
Why must I sacrifice my liberty so that some mythical “children” don’t have some pretend suffering?
The denial of rights destroys our society, not preserves it.
Why does the government have to be over-involved in micromanaging all this cr@p in the first place. That’s the real issue. (Spoken by one who is currently being micromanaged by the government for 40 hours a week…or make the 32 with the ‘furlough’.)
OK, that’s as good a reason as any I can think of to get rid of DOMA.
Nix it all.
All of it, equally, I should add.
Jessica, as a libertarian I agree with you.
But the answer to the question is that the Government is involved because Christians asked them to. Once upon a time it was thought that it would be a good idea for the government to encourage the positive behaviour of marriage through tax breaks. Our government has a long history of using taxes to direct behaviour. It incentivizes what it views as “good” behavior like marriage and home ownership while penalising things thought to be “bad” behaviour like smoking and drinking. (Excise taxes exist for that reason.)
For too many generations we Christians involved the government in our faith. Now that’s not working out too well for us. I’m all for keeping things seperate because I don’t want to see the day when a Sharia Law or Mormon-run government says my husband has to take a second wife because I didn’t bear him children.
I don’t know about Mormon teachings, but Sharia says that your husband may take another wife in certain circumstances, not that he must. Just saying.
We can talk theory about abolishing civil marriage and other dreams, or we can see the reality which is that we do have government which DOES give benefits to some marriages and not to others.
It’s delusional to think that the people who refuse to give equal rights to gay citizens will suddenly decide that marriage does not deserve government support and subsidy.
Eaual means equal.
If I were gay, I’d still lean libertarian. And I’d also mistrust the idea of legislating from the bench. Just saying. I’d be the minority in the minority. And I never said my opinion was more important, I merely stated it freely as an equal participant in the World Wide Web. If you’d caught me on a less grumpy day, I probably wouldn’t have posted a comment at all because I’ve generally found it healthier to avoid online debates.
Katherine, sorry to hijack the thread but I’m sick of folks who think THEIR opinion is more important than civil rights.
Happy Easter.
Happy Easter to you too, even though I’m trying to get that song (“Happy Easter”) out of my head. 🙂
I don’t see this as a hijack of the thread. It’s discussing equality. I’m interested in people’s opinions of what equal is.
So far as the original post goes, I don’t think that adopting all FB memes is or ought to feel mandatory. But I don’t think that most people who see your profile picture are going to understand what it means in the “current FB meme” context. I don’t know whether having your picture widely understood (among your FB acquaintance) particularly matters to you. But if it does, you might want to link it in some unmissable way to this post, which does clarify it.
BTW, Facebook is telling me to stop commenting so much. Sorry.
And of course it’s WordPress telling me that, so I shall comment once more to correct myself.
WordPress can shove it. I declare. What a busybody that mindless computer is.
Anyway, if everybody doesn’t get it, fine with me. I’m on record twice. There are just some trend things that don’t really appeal to me and identifying myself through pictographs is one of them. It feels too bandwagon for me. My opinions are usually too nuanced to be summed up with an image. Although I suppose it’s a good thing for our relations with China that people are learning to use pictographic communication.
This brings to mind a lovely story connected with China, communication, and not getting huffy about things. You know that some of my cousins are deaf? Well, one of them was part of a group meeting with a bunch of deaf people from China. And it came up in the course of conversation that the CSL sign for “American” was making a circle near the head with the right hand. And the deaf USians were kind of taken aback and pointed out that in the US that’s the common (not ASL) sign for saying that someone is crazy. And the Chinese said it derived from the CSL sign for “beautiful” which IIRC is stroking the head or something similar — because in one spoken Chinese language, “America” sounds like “beautiful” so America is the “beautiful country.” But they didn’t want to offend the Americans, so they were going to discuss introducing a new sign for “American,” at least in formal signing.
Myself, I try to resist memes. Unless I happen to love them, in which case I embrace them. So….
Agreed on not adopting FB memes. I posted the equal sign as a wall post, but I have not, nor do I plan to start to change my profile picture for a meme (not that I think others shouldn’t, I just choose not to). My profile picture is supposed to be how people recognize who I am, if it looks just like a million other folks’ it defeats the purpose for me.
I don’t think you’d like it if your idea was put into practice. It would need a LOT more government, not less. Take these guys:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/nyregion/four-men-sharing-rent-and-friendship-for-18-years.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Imagine if those guys could get benefits. Here’s the thing. Why would they want to marry a woman? It would be the same general contract, but the woman would also bring a lot more demands to the table, as well as the potential of pretty heavy financial penalties if the “contract” broke. I think a sizable amount of men in this situation would avoid marriage and just co-op with their roommate. Think Felix and Oscar in the Odd Couple.
I think what would have to happen is that the state would have to assume a large amount of the specific burdens a woman brings to the marriage contract in order to make it attractive enough to at least stay at equilibrium. Even then, it would be diminished. Why on earth should a simple civil union require absurdly expensive wedding rings or wedding ceremonies, and why should a marriage of equals be so punitive to the man when dissolved?
The government would have to take over a lot of things to reduce the latter. Stuff like free day care or retraining would have to replace child support or reduce it, and it would change to a stipend you’d receive per child. This way it would be independent of the man, and make the OSM contract at least tolerable. So we’d probably need to move to a full-on welfare state, or risk seeing OSM decline even more. Look at the French pacs for an example. In just ten years, for every three marriages there were two pacs.
[…] have differing opinions on the matter but I genuinely appreciate my net-friend K. Coble, and her decision to put a reminder of the crucifixion on her FB page rather than a Equality […]