unmasked ugliness
it’s not often that i write about political mutterings here, not often that i say a heavy piece. perhaps that’s the minnesotan in me - trying not to offend by avoiding anything of controversial substance.
i’m on vacation, i’m playing in an island nation and doing my best to avoid the media - commercials, weighted news points, opinionated columnists, etc… i spent four months without the majority of these things and i have to say that it was incredibly refreshing.
even here, however, on vacation, relaxing on ocean beaches and in the shadow of mountains 8000 miles from home, even here i can’t escape what i feel as the heavy hand of bigotry.
i just learned that bush has officially endorsed and is now promoting a constitutional ammendment that would ban same-sex marriage, pushing an attempt to specifically define marriage in the constitution as a union between a man and a woman.
as best i know, in the 28 ammendments that have been passed and ratified in 200 odd years, only one has ever specifically limited rights and freedoms - prohibition. one more specifically revoked that former ammendment. all others were to delegate further rights (be they to states or individuals), to prevent those rights and freedoms from being trampled, and to preserve the equality of the individual in this nation. to propose an ammendment that would specifically limit the right of an individual is ludicrus, regardless of what right is limited or who the individual is.
in 1967 it took a court decision to force the allowance of interacial marriage. in that decision came a jarring definition - that:
“Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”
— Loving v. Virginia, 1967
marriage as one of the “basic civil rights of man,” marriage as the “pursuit of happiness.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
— The Declaration of Independence, 1776
marriage has long been defined by religious institutions, has long been debated and discussed in theocratic circles. it should continue to be so. the marriage debate is best held in public, and i hope that it is a lively, open discussion. i sincerely hope that various religions are able to find and define their stance on marriage and then can actively support it - within their own congregations. the boundaries and definitions of marriage should be left up to the individuals involved in a coupling and the institutions they choose to be involved in the process, not to the individuals observing it.
for the federal government to step in and regulate marriage (particularly through a constitutional ammendment) is insidious in its trampling of state rights and individual rights. it is a movement toward a religious decision, one more step (a giant one) toward the theocracy i hope never to see in place of our democracy and the limiting rights of the countries we so vehemetly choose to hate in the shadow of terrorism.
we may not all agree with the decisions of those who sit next to us, but the beauty of the united states is that we can think, act, and live differently than one another. many, many years of toil and many, many lives have gone into protecting our freedoms - i care not to see the reversal of that process, the limiting of personal liberty, in my lifetime.
i am on vacation in a foreign country. i am 8000 miles from my home. i don’t like being ashamed of the government of my country (dirty looks abound for u.s. citizens, even in the fairly conservative nation of new zealand). i don’t want to be ashamed of our constitution (it is a proud document) and i don’t ever, ever want to feel as if i’d be better off not returning to my home.