Marriage segregationists win in Maine

Six months ago, the Maine legislature passed a law extending the right to marry to same  sex couples. Yesterday, Maine’s voters repealed the law.

The loss of marriage equality in Maine was due in large part to the efforts of religious organizations. Richard Malone, the Catholic Bishop of Portland, was ecstatic:

Bishop Richard Malone issued a statement Wednesday in which he thanked Mainers for protecting and reaffirming marriage as it’s been understood “for millennia by civilizations and religions around the world.” Malone also said respect and acceptance of all people regardless of sexual orientation is not a point of controversy.

“Respect and acceptance,” but not equality. Malone clearly doesn’t understand this country.

At the heart of our secular democracy is the legal principle that everyone — everyone — is equal in the eyes of the law. The majority needen’t “accept,” “respect” or even “tolerate” the minority. Doing so implies that they have a choice. They don’t.

In this country, minorities don’t exist at the sufferance of the majority. The rights of members of minority and majority communities are indistinguishable from one another. One doesn’t tolerate the other. This, obviously, is a concept not yet grasped by conservatives.

Luckily, Bishop Malone and other religious extremists don’t get the final say. The courts do. Ultimately, judges will recognize the right of gays to marry for a very simple reason: No secular justification exists to prohibit it. The prohibition furthers no legitimate state interest and it discriminates against citizens who possess an immutable trait. And that’s unconstitutional.

In the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws on the same basis.  Few today would dispute that the decision to permit members of different races to marry was the right one, but 1967′s conservatives were apoplectic. Seventy percent opposed the court’s ruling.

The trial judge who would later be reversed by the Supreme Court said this in upholding Virginia’s race-based marriage law:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents[.] The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

And here’s Bishop Malone’s homily in advance of yesterday’s vote in Maine:

“From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. . . ”

Now the state tells us that even being male and female has nothing to do with marriage. So if you eliminate permanence, fidelity, openness to children, and male and female, what is left of marriage? It becomes no more than a relationship for mutual assistance and sharing of property; and since the state cannot legislate emotional and spiritual support and assistance, it ends up little more than a contract regarding property rights. Marriage has been reduced to the least common denominator.

There is simply nothing new under the sun. Conservatives found Bible-based reasons to oppose interracial marriage and they’ve found Bible-based reasons to oppose gay marriage.

But if we’re going to base our marriage laws on Biblical principles, we’d better be prepared to accept them all. See, there’s a word for people who moralize about “traditional marriage” while simultaneously picking and choosing which Biblical law to obey and which to ignore to suit their own needs: Hypocrites.

With that in mind, I hope my fellow supporters of gay marriage will make an effort to place initiatives on as many state ballots as possible in 2010 to help conservatives defend marriage. Let’s start with this traditional marriage rule: Any woman who was not a virgin at the time of her wedding is to be executed.

Hey, traditional marriages have rules, and this one comes straight from Deuteronomy, Chapter 22:13-20:

If a man takes a wife and, after lying with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” then the girl’s father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin to the town elders at the gate. . . If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.

If conservatives who are opposed to gay marriage because they want to defend traditional marriage aren’t also in favor of executing non-virginal brides, then they’re not really defending traditional marriage. They’re just bigots.

Partisan Gridlock with Geoff Berg airs every Friday from 3:00 – 4:00 pm on KPFT, 90.1 FM in Houston, 89.5 FM in Galveston, and everywhere else on Facebook or at www.kpft.org.