Soapbox

Swiss cheese

In today’s Dispatch Christine Walker states that the DOMA law recently passed in Ohio is a welcome blow against crime, violence and poverty in America. I do not share these opinions, but Ms. Walker is welcome to them. However, if she cannot assert and defend her position with clarity and logic, she should consider keeping her opinions to herself.

The holes in the logic of this letter are many and varied. To begin with, is the writer claiming to have evidence that crime, violence and poverty occur more often in same-sex couples than in hetersexual ones? Or that gay people having a legal union would somehow plunge straight couples into poverty? If so, I would like to see it. She also takes issue with the insinuation that negative qualities are ever found in heterosexual marriages, simply because they aren’t found in all marriages. Excuse me? By this logic, since all dogs are not beagles, then no dogs are beagles!

A marriage is only as holy, honorable and committed as the couple who enters into it, regardless of their sex. While homosexual couples certainly don’t all have perfect relationships, we heterosexuals aren’t setting the bar very high. For centuries, marriage was a contract in which the man owned the woman, and was free to do with her as he liked. There are still places in the world today where a man can kill his wife if she “dishonors” him by doing something awful like being raped.
In America, some people marry 5 and 6 times, taking it no more seriously than a seasonal fashion, and make “sacred vows” that they have no intention of keeping. And just when you thought marriage couldn’t get any more trivialized, we’ve turned it into a game show where people get married to win a prize, or as the result of a telephone poll! Ms. Walker, the Ohio legislature and even our president want to use the state and federal constitutions to ensure that only heterosexuals have the right to degrade the institution of marriage in this way. And this is supposed to somehow “defend” us all.

We are asked if we “Remember the whole thing” about loss of traditional values causing families to deteriorate. Which traditional values does she mean? Societies always have traditions which they abandon when they no longer make sense in a changing world. If this did not happen, just imagine what our culture would be like. For centuries a child conceived out of wedlock was considered by society to be tainted and inferior even before it was born. Kings were once considered to have a God-given right to rule and profit from the misery of the poor. Slavery was condoned- even by the Bible!

Ms. Walker deplores the day “they” took prayer out of the school and the decay that has followed. I’m not sure which “they” she refers to. Homosexuals? Athiests? Democrats? I grow weary of those who seem to believe that if only those magical 10 commandments were on the wall at Columbine High, that tragedy could somehow have been averted. Yes yes, we’d all be SO much better people if we were just Christians. Well, the right kind of Christians that is: not the yucky, liberal-minded feminist kind who believe in civil rights and God’s love for all people.

“We Christians have taken a back seat…” says Walker. In what universe? Speaking as a Christian, it seems to me that many who profess my same faith are to the constitution and the rights of minorities as a bull is to a china shop! Some want to use the Constitution to defend a “Sacred” (meaning religious) institution, when the constitution is a secular document. They insist that the civil laws of this country adhere to their particular interpretation of the Bible, conveniently forgetting a little thing called “separation of Church and state”

Ms Walker believes that we must all do as she thinks the Bible says because America’s laws (a vast and complex set of documents) “…sure do resemble the 10 Commandments.” Really? Don’t they resemble the Magna Carta even more? Does that mean that we should have a king, or all be required to speak with a British accent?

The fact is that America’s legal code is a secular contract. We don’t outlaw theft, for example, just because the Bible tells us to. We recognize that people going around stealing from each other with no penalty would cause chaos. If Ms. Walker has reliable socialogical evidence that gay unions would be harmful to society, that would be a correct basis for a civil law to prevent it. But doesn’t the Bible also say that we are supposed to give burnt offerings, and keep kosher, and stone adulterers? If the legislature is going to pass laws discriminating against people based on what someone’s holy book says, we’re going to need a lot more constitutional ammendments!

Ms. Walker, you personally are free to believe whatever and to hate whomever you chose. Your church is free to preach this intolerance, and to refuse to perform marriage sacraments as it sees fit. But the fact remains that there are a lot of families out there who are being categorized and thrown out with the trash by Ohio’s “Defense of Marriage” law, and discrimination against an entire class of people is something I had hoped America could learn to rise above in the 21st century.

It may be that our society is not yet ready to grant all members that most basic of human values: the right to love. But that day will and must come. As for those who use their religious beliefs to legalize discrimination, I wish they would have the good grace to call their stupid law the “God Loves us Better” Act or the “At Least I’m not one of Them” Act. Don’t try to pretend that you are somehow defending my marriage. That kind of help I can do without.
I guess that makes me just another “Liberal-minded, Greedy, Life-is-too-short Feminist.”