Gay marriage debate turns into fight for validation of private beliefs

By David McElroy · March 29, 2013

We all think that what we believe is right. We’ve been taught principles of right and wrong all our lives. We’ve thought about what the principles mean and we’ve decided which narrative of morality we believe is right. Sadly, most of us want something else, too. We want others to endorse our view of morality.

The whole issue of gay marriage has become a battle between two sides wanting to “make a statement” about right and wrong — and forcing others to go along with them — rather than finding a legal solution that respects everybody’s rights. This battle is fierce enough that passionate people on both sides aren’t really interested in a principled solution to get government out of the marriage business. For those people, it’s a social battle to force “society” to endorse their position.

On the surface, the issue seems to be about how everyone can be treated equally by the law while respecting individuals’ very different beliefs about the underlying issue of homosexuality. If that were truly the only issue to deal with, we have a solution. Eliminate marriage licenses and get government out of the business of deciding what a marriage is. But that’s no longer what this is about. Here’s what the two sides really seem to be saying:

— Gay rights activists want society to endorse the idea that there’s nothing morally or ethically wrong with being gay. They insist that society must not only tolerate their beliefs and actions, but that society must declare it to be socially acceptable and that any opposition to their views is wrong.

— Opponents of gay marriage object to homosexuality in every way, shape, form or fashion. They believe it’s morally wrong. They not only object to gays and lesbians being treated equally by the law insofar as marriage, but they want society to declare (through prohibitive marriage rules) that being gay is fundamentally wrong.

Both sides in this debate are trying to use the power of government to force their views about morality onto people who strongly disagree with them. There’s absolutely no reason for everyone to agree about what marriage is. Private parties can recognize whatever they want to recognize. Companies can recognize whatever is in their interests to recognize. Churches and other religious groups can recognize whatever they believe complies with their views about right and wrong. Individuals can do whatever is in line with what they believe is right. Nothing should stop them.

If you endorse one particular state-enforced definition of marriage, you’re agreeing that government has the right to make that definition and enforce it on everyone. If government is wrong to use the power of the state to force someone else’s belief about the issue on you, why is it any more right for you to attempt to use the power of the state to force your view on others? No matter which side of the issue you’re on, your support of a government-mandated solution says you agree government has a right to force a definition on you, too.

Government has no business deciding who’s fit to be married. For most of history, governments had no role in the matter. It wasn’t until sometime in the 1500s that the Church of England started issuing licenses (for purposes very different from ours today), and since the Church of England was essentially a part of the state, other church groups weren’t allowed to legally license marriage.

In this country, recognition of marriage was a formality for many years. It wasn’t until later in the 19th century that governments started trying to control who could marry — mostly on racial grounds. Writing in the New York Times, history and family studies professor Stephanie Coontz wrote six years ago, “Marriage licenses came about in the late 19th century to prevent mixed-race marriages. That should be appalling to anyone, and is in my opinion the strongest argument to privatize marriage.”

If the only issue is how the law can treat everyone equally and still respect people’s right to disagree about morality, the answer is simple. Get government out of the licensing of marriage.

But if your desire is to force other people to endorse your views about morality, go right ahead with your crusades to force your views on everyone else. But be clear about what you’re doing. You’re fighting to empower government to define marriage as any random majority sees fit and you’re hoping to make your views the majority view that gets enforced.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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