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Opposition
to same-sex marriage restricts freedom It may come as a bit of a surprise to know that actually no rights are guaranteed all of the time. The government’s “police power” allows it to invariably limit some rights in favor of things like societal order, government interests or in order to protect rights placed in higher value. But the government always has to show significant justification for the use of police power. The question of justification is something the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was constantly at a loss to find when it questioned the government’s reasoning for school segregation and it is something that continues to elude gay rights groups striving to secure the legalization of same-sex marriages. Much like segregation, the resistance to same-sex marriages seems to be little more than a sign of the bigotry and prejudice of the time. So it came as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about anything when in 1996 Hawaii’s highest state court ruled the state had failed to present compelling public reason for prohibiting same-sex marriages. This ruling took on a national scope because Article IV, Section I of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other court.” What this essentially meant is that if Hawaii legalized same sex-marriages, couples from South Dakota or New Jersey could fly to Hawaii to become married and then come back home and enjoy all the legal benefits of marriage like tax benefits, adoption rights, health care coverage or inheritance. To cut this inevitability, the House of Representatives passed the Defense of Marriage Act, which would allow states to ignore the sanctioned same-sex marriages of other states. The rationale, flimsy as it may be, has always been that marriage is an institution between and man and a woman. But that definition is one lent from Judeo-Christian values. Once the religious argument is separated from the non-religious one there isn’t (as the state of Hawaii found) significant justification that the concept of marriage can’t be broadened to encompass a joining of two people. The question then becomes should the government be allowed to discriminate against people based on values that derive from religious grounds? If precedent is to be any guide the answer would seem to be “no.” The contention here is not that people of various faiths aren’t entitled to what they feel their religion tells them to believe about homosexuality, but that those religious objections can’t be applied to the actions of a secular government. Within the frame work of a secular government, policies derived from religious values can’t be allowed to impress themselves upon government actions because it not only violates the set precedent of the separation of church and state but also enters precarious territory whereby government can be held within the grip of various religious extremism. If the last months have shown us anything, it’s how important it is to have a government that operates independently of specific religious purposes. No
one is attempting to force Catholic or Muslim or Protestant faiths
to marry same-sex couples if it is against their specific religious
beliefs. They should never be forced to do anything like that. The
request here is simply for the government to allow for a legal contract
to be established. This discrimination carries with it the same thing that the discrimination of segregation did and leaves the supporters asking the same question: If it doesn’t imply inequality then what can it mean? Imagine spending your whole life being told that you will never be allowed to marry the person you love. What could be more essential and more ingrained in a scheme of liberty, freedom and equality than the right to love and marry whomever you choose? Tim
Dragga is a junior political science major from Lubbock. |
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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002 |
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