PreservingMarriage.org

I still don’t get why it’s all such a big deal to the church.

I figure i’m probably opening myself up to flames by saying so, but i say that in part to make a completely honest request: Can somebody explain to me why it’s such a big deal if the requirements for marriage change (again!–it’s not like the institution of marriage has been anywhere near static over the centuries), particularly since the change would be a civil change, not a religious one?

And PreservingMarriage.org is a nice, slick site, but it’s written to preach to the choir–it doesn’t give any information that connects with people like me, who aren’t hostile to the idea of setting up crisp, clean definitions for the requirements for marriage, but who really don’t necessarily believe the underlying assumptions that the hetero-marriage-only crowd buys into: that the family is under attack (whatever that actually means), that heterosexual couples are inherently better suited to raising children than homosexual ones, that differences in civil and religious laws will necessarily lead to conflict, &c. So what does the blogosphere have to convince people like me?

Kris: Does it help? Not really–it’s not like i haven’t read that piece, after all.

Part of my skepticism of the arguments raised is the use of things like stating that “other advocates of same-sex marriage are suggesting” nuclear options. Well, sure–and there’s some advocates of Lyndon Larouche who used to regularly come on to the U of Maryland’s campus and start suggesting that the US would end as an independent entity if Larouche wasn’t elected president. The fact that fringe elements suggest things doesn’t necessarily translate to reality.

I’d be more convinced if someone could point to issues like this that have *actually* come up in places where same-sex marriage is already legal (Massachusetts, Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands, South Africa, Spain). If same-sex marriage exists in various places (and has for some years, in some cases), why do we keep hearing “this might happen” arguments from both sides? Why not a “this *is* what’s happening”?

(And that leads to a coda–i’ve asked the same sorts of questions of same-sex marriage proponents on other fora. Really, it mainly annoys me that i feel like all i ever get is hypotheticals, or at best conclusions drawn from a clear paucity of data, from both sides. If people really think this is so important, can’t they do better than that?)

David,
I was going to try to make this into a tidy essay for you, but I have a very bad cold and I don’t have the energy right now, so here it is in (very) rough draft form. The point is that freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of parents to direct their children’s education–at the bare minimum–will be hugely affected if Prop 8 doesn’t pass. Below is a small sample of what is already happening that we can expect to become more widespread and, certainly, there is much that can’t even be foreseen from where we are now.
Kris

The Unintended Consequences of ‘Same Sex Marriage’
By Ronald J. Rychlak
5/2/2008
Inside Catholic (www.insidecatholic.com)
Excerpts:
“in Massachusetts in 2004: Justices of the peace who refused to preside over same-sex unions due to moral or religious objections were summarily fired. Since same-sex unions were entitled to be treated the same as traditional marriages, this refusal was discrimination and a firing offense.”

…Just last year, two women filed a complaint in New Jersey because they were denied use of a pavilion for their civil union ceremony. The pavilion was owned by a Methodist ministry. It had been rented out for marriages, but the ministry refused to rent it for civil unions because it is a religious structure, and civil unions are not recognized in the United Methodist Church Book of Discipline.

Due to the ministry’s refusal to rent it for the lesbian ceremony, New Jersey revoked its tax-free status.

The Des Moines (Iowa) Human Rights Commission found the local Young Men’s Christian Association in violation of public accommodation laws because it refused to extend “family membership” privileges to a lesbian couple that had entered a civil union in Vermont.

Accordingly, the city forced the YMCA to recognize gay and lesbian unions as “families” for membership purposes, or lose over $100,000 in government support.

Perhaps the most notorious example of a state forcing its view on a church agency comes from Massachusetts, where Boston Catholic Charities ran an adoption agency that had been placing children with families for over 100 years.

In 2006, Archbishop Sean P. O’Malley announced that the agency would abandon its founding mission rather than submit to a state law requiring it to place children with homosexual couples. (A Vatican document from 2003 described gay adoptions as ”gravely immoral.”) …

If homosexual marriages or civil unions are the equivalent of traditional marriages, you can’t discriminate. If you do, at the very least you put your government benefits at risk.

A potentially greater threat is that government agencies will try to change church teachings. It is already happening in other nations.

The Catholic Church, for instance, teaches that homosexual inclination is a “tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.”

Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary, Canada, was investigated by the Alberta Human Rights Commission for doing little more than writing about this teaching in a newspaper column. Åke Green, pastor of a Pentecostal church in Sweden, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to a month in prison for a sermon that insulted homosexuals.

Ronald J. Rychlak is the associate dean and MDLA Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law. He is the author of Hitler, the War, and the Pope (2000) and Righteous Gentiles (2005).
http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=27817

Bill May’s San Francisco Chronicle Op-ed

Bill May is chairman of Catholics for the Common Good, “a nonpartisan Catholic organization focusing on issues related to the social teachings of the Catholic Church.” He has written this piece in the San Francisco Chronicle today. It’s a short, well-written summary of the key reasons to support California’s Proposition 8. Mr. May begins:

Marriage in California isn’t just about the rights of loving and committed gay couples. If that were the issue, Proposition 8 wouldn’t be on the state ballot. All Californians respect the right of gay couples to live the lifestyle they choose and to enjoy the same legal protections of every citizen. California’s laws, including our expansive domestic partnership statutes, already provide every legal right to gay couples that are provided to married spouses.

The California Supreme Court’s ruling last May gave birth to a broader perspective on same-sex marriage, and that is how it affects the rest of society. That’s why Proposition 8 is on the ballot, and that is why we are working hard to pass it.

Read the whole thing. May’s op-ed is brief; he lacks the space to go into much detail, but every point he makes can be substantiated.

California’s Education Code Section 51890 and Parker v. Hurley

For example, May refers to a 2007 federal court decision arising out of Massachusetts. The case is Parker v. Hurley. By 2007, Massachusetts had been living for four years with a 2003 decision by that state’s Supreme Court, which, like California’s high court, had discovered that same-sex marriage is a right under that state’s constitution.

In Parker, a teacher had taught a second-grade class using a book telling the story of a prince who married another prince, rather than a princess. Some parents complained, asking to be allowed to opt out of such instruction until their children were in the seventh grade. When the school district refused, the parents sued in federal court.

They lost. The opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is right here. It is 43 pages long, but if you read pages 5-11 you will see described the very situation that many concerned California voters and parents fear will occur in our state.

Why? Because like Massachusetts, we have a statute, Education Code Section 51890, which requires:
(1) Pupils will receive instruction to aid them in making decisions in matters of personal, family, and community health, to include the following subjects:

. . .

(D) Family health and child development, including the legal and
financial aspects and responsibilities of marriage and parenthood.
It is not difficult at all to imagine California schools using the “two princes” story, or one like it, for second-graders here, just as the story was used in Massachusetts.

In fact, the Los Angeles Unified School District has already passed a resolution opposing Proposition 8. If, like me, you wonder why a school district would take a position on a ballot proposition that seeks to define marriage, you might also worry that LAUSD will engage in the same kind of instruction that the Massachusetts school district did in Parker v. Hurley. After all, Education Code Section 51890 does require California schools to teach children about marriage, from kindergarten forward. (added emphasis.)

…The fact is, if Proposition 8 is not passed and the California Supreme Court’s decision is allowed to stand, there will be consequences. This is undeniable. What also seems certain is that we cannot be certain what those consequences will be. The Parker v. Hurley scenario is only one possible consequence.

http://hedgehogcentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/same-sex-marriage-is-about-more-than-i.html

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California Supreme Court rules doctors must provide treatment against their religious beliefs…
“The children of God will face enslavement by the enemies of God, known as your world Christianity, unless you pray and carry the banner of Faithful and True to God the Father.” – Our Lady of the Roses, September 7, 1974
LifeSiteNews.com reported on August 19, 2008:
A lesbian woman in California has won a law suit in which she claims doctors at a fertility clinic discriminated against her based on her sexual orientation.
In a 7-0 decision yesterday, the California Supreme Court ruled that religious beliefs do not excuse doctors from the state’s anti-discrimination law, which “imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations.”
“The 1st Amendment’s right to the free exercise of religion does not exempt defendant physicians here from conforming their conduct to the . . . antidiscrimination requirements, even if compliance poses an incidental conflict with the defendants’ religious beliefs,” wrote Justice Joyce L. Kennard in the 18-page decision.
Dr. Douglas Fenton and Dr. Christine Brody of the North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group in San Diego County, the defendants in the case, said they had declined for religious reasons to artificially inseminate an unmarried woman and argued that the US 1st Amendment, which guarantees rights to free speech and free exercise of religion, protected them from being compelled to perform a medical procedure which conflicted with their moral beliefs.
Dr. Brody, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the clinic, said she would not perform an intrauterine insemination on Guadalupe, a lesbian who lives with her partner and wanted to become pregnant with donated sperm, stating she would not perform the procedure on any unmarried woman, regardless of sexual orientation.
Benítez sought the treatment in 1999 after two years of trying to conceive using an at-home insemination kit; she had been diagnosed with an ovarian syndrome that would require her to get the help of fertility specialists to get pregnant.
When Dr. Brody refused to do the insemination Benítez sued her and the clinic, which resulted in a 2004 court ruling in favour of Benitez. An Appeals Court overturned that decision one year later, finding that the previous ruling had denied the doctors’ religious rights. Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, however, voided the Appeals Court ruling.
“This isn’t just a win for me personally and for other lesbian women,” said Benitez about the Supreme Court ruling. “Anyone could be the next target if doctors are allowed to pick and choose their patients based on religious views about other groups of people.”
According to an L. A. Times report, Kenneth R. Pedroza, who represented the doctors, said the ruling would probably cause many physicians to refuse to perform inseminations at all. Pedroza said Dr. Brody did not violate the law because it did not bar discrimination on the basis of marital status when Benitez sought insemination in 1999. The state law has since been amended.
A press release from the Capitol Resource Institute, a California family policy advocacy group, said, “The California Supreme Court’s decision proves that these activist judges are willing to deny our First Amendment religious freedom in order to create rights for homosexuals.” (http://www.capitolresource.org/)
[So to meet the expectations of the gay lobby, this woman doctor has been found guilty of violating a law that was not on the books at the time charges were filed.-MS]
BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS
Father faces trial over school’s ‘pro-gay’ book
Arrested after objecting to kindergartner’s reading material

Posted: August 04, 2005
1:00 am Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

David Parker, parent of kindergartner, stands before Judge Robert McKenna in Concord District Court April 28 after spending the night in jail (Photo: Article 8 Alliance)
A Massachusetts man faces a court trial over a dispute about the teaching of homosexuality in his son’s kindergarten class.
David Parker, of Lexington, spent a night in jail and was charged with criminal trespassing after refusing to leave a scheduled meeting with school officials April 27, unless they gave him the option of pulling his child out of certain classes.
Parker says the officials had indicated they would agree to a notification policy then suddenly refused. He insists he has done nothing wrong and is willing to contest the charge rather than plea-bargain.
At a hearing Tuesday, Parker’s trial date was set for Sept. 21.
The Lexington School Board contends Parker deliberately set out to be arrested and make national headlines.
Parker’s attorney, Jeffrey Denner, rejected that claim as supporters picketed outside the courthouse.

David Parker’s son brought home the book ‘Who’s in a Family?’ in school’s ‘Diversity Book Bag’ (Image: Article 8 Alliance)
“That is simply untrue. I don’t speak for the school, but that is simply untrue,” he said. “He was invited to come in, he came in, there was a dialogue going back and forth, there were faxes sent back and forth, from the school to the school committee. His intent was absolutely not to be arrested. His intent was to establish a dialogue to protect his own children and other children as well.”
The dispute began last spring when Parker’s then-5-year-old son brought home a book to be shared with his parents titled, “Who’s in a Family?” The optional reading material, which came in a “Diversity Book Bag,” depicted at least two households led by homosexual partners.
“There’s a larger issue here locally and nationally and internationally about the role of family and what kind of encroachments government can make into children’s and people’s lives,” Denner told reporters.
The illustrated book, according to the local non-profit group Article 8 Alliance, says, “A family can be made up in many different ways” and includes this text:
“Laura and Kyle live with their two moms, Joyce and Emily, and a poodle named Daisy. It takes all four of them to give Daisy her bath.”
Another illustrated page says:
“Robin’s family is made up of her dad, Clifford, her dad’s partner, Henry, and Robin’s cat, Sassy. Clifford and Henry take turns making dinner for their family.”
Article 8, an opponent of the state’s same-sex marriage law, says the book “uses subtle but powerful emotions to normalize homosexual relationships in the minds of the young children.”
A backer of the Lexington School District, Laura Tully, argued, according to WCVB-TV in Boston, “A 5-year-old who is coming to the classroom with two moms deserves to be in a classroom that includes books that show his family.”
Denner said he is negotiating with school officials to prevent the trial, but he also indicated that Parker likely will file a civil suit in federal court by this fall against the town of Lexington, the school system and its officials.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45594