Tuesday, April 28, 2009

grass roots for "gay marriage" in Iowa

From a report and analysis by the Washington Post's Keith Richburg as republished in the C-J...

For most of the country, the unanimous decision this month by the Iowa Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage was an unexpected and seemingly random victory for a movement that has long drawn its deepest support from major cities in liberal coastal states.

But for Camilla Taylor, a Chicago-based lawyer for the gay rights group Lambda Legal, it was the logical conclusion to a deliberate seven-year effort to make the Midwestern state one of the first in the country to allow same-sex marriage.

Coming just months after voters in California outlawed same-sex marriage, the decision was also a much-needed jolt for a group of loosely coordinated gay rights activists and legal experts who had been quietly building the case for marriage equality in states where they thought conditions were favorable, including Iowa and a handful in the Northeast....

In World, Joel Belz picks up the ball from the perspective of a Christian and a native of Iowa, expressing not so much surprise-- and recognizing the importance of this for the continuing "culture wars"...

It's an illusion fervently held by too many conservatives. If, they say, we could just get the decision-making processes of America relocated from the elitist enclaves to the masses "out there," culture would finally move in the right direction. "Out there," as in Iowa?

Yes, I understand that it was not the voters at large, but seven judges...

It doesn't make much difference. It's getting harder and harder these days to make a convincing argument that there's much distance between the values of the elites and those of the masses....

Does it surprise you that the county in the whole United States with the highest number of abortions per thousand population was for many years Iowa's Johnson County—the home of the University of Iowa? Good old hometown values, hard at work....

I love my home state...I wince when it's portrayed...as hickish or backwards....Iowa has always led the nation in literacy. But literacy in what? I no longer kid myself that just because they're at the middle of the middle of America, Iowans have their values straight....

But this isn't mainly about Iowa; it's about a whole nation headed the same direction....the Iowa primaries early in 2008 proved an accurate precursor to the election of Barack Obama...It's not that seven judges, totally out of touch with the people who put them on the bench, made a wacko decision. This native Iowan has to conclude instead—and with great sadness—that those judges may have a lot better handle on our culture than I dare to think.

I think it is difficult to make a biblical case for Christians embracing government activism as a means to avoiding "civil unions". (It is easier to oppose nonsensical "gay marriage".) In any case, the point from both essays is probably that we're going to see "it" soon. Perhaps it would be not only ethical/biblical, but also eminently practical, to have argued for civil unions-- when this train started rolling.

At this point, I doubt that we'll ever know. Moreover, it seems likely that we'll have something called "gay marriage" throughout much of the land within the next decade.

7 Comments:

At April 28, 2009 at 10:05 PM , Blogger PianoMom said...

With comments like the following appearing on gay/lesbian
activist websites, it is difficult to take seriously your
suggestion that the Church could have prevented this
seemingly inevitable outcome of gay marriage by backing civil
unions.

[The United States Constitution guarantees equality for all. As
you can see, marriage and civil unions are not the same.
Creating equal access to marriage is the only fair way to ensure
equality for gay and straight couples alike.]

This comment and others like it dating back to early 2000's in the archives of gay websites indicate that civil unions were merely a "stepping stone" to gay marriage. They were not viewed by most homosexual men and women as a satisfactory final outcome.

Also, I take issue with your basic assertion that it would have been correct for the Church to take a stand in support of civil unions from the beginning. It makes no sense whatsoever that God would have his people stand up and support a cultural movement which He clearly describes as sinful in the Bible.

 
At April 28, 2009 at 10:39 PM , Blogger Eric Schansberg said...

I agree that one cannot say definitively. But what activists want is not the same as what activists get-- or what society allows. And it looks like we're going down this path anyway-- despite strong efforts by Christian and other opponents of same-sex unions. If it goes that way, we will learn that stringent opposition was not effective. (Whether something more tactful might have worked, we'll never know!)

Interestingly, in his book, Abortion Rites, Marvin Olasky argues that strong Christian opposition to contraception-- even among those who were married-- missed out on a compromise position in sexual ethics, and eventually helped lead to the legalization of abortion.

 
At April 28, 2009 at 11:06 PM , Blogger PianoMom said...

Regarding your comparison to OLasky's theories - it's apples and oranges. The Bible clearly defines homosexuality as wrong. Therefore, it is wrong to expect Christians to take a stand in favor of it culturally or legally.
The right/wrong of birth control is not so clearly spelled out in Scripture.

 
At April 29, 2009 at 11:14 PM , Blogger Aspergers.life said...

Why license any marriage?

 
At April 30, 2009 at 8:13 AM , Blogger PianoMom said...

Society needs "Marriage Laws" for practical purposes. Here are a few off the top of my head:

Who can adopt children?

Who gets your stuff if you die?

If you separate (get a divorce), how will the stuff be divided, or the situation with kids be handled? If you were never married in the first place, who has the rights to the stuff/kids?

"Spousal" benefits?

There are more considerations than these.

All the divorces we've got are causing enough chaos in family court. Imagine the confusion/disorder we would have without marriage laws.

Marriage has to be defined one way or another to establish order in the culture.

 
At April 30, 2009 at 10:41 AM , Blogger PianoMom said...

Regarding, parental rights - Obviously, biological mom and dad are the ones who get the preference there.

In the above post, I was refering to a situation in which there is no marriage at all and any two people or even group of individuals could adopt children

As I already stated, the difficulty of not having defining "marriage" laws is made apparent when you consider a host of other scenarios - property rights, decision-making in medical emergencies, etc

 
At April 30, 2009 at 10:57 AM , Blogger Eric Schansberg said...

I agree with PM, but to Endiana's point: you could have private contracts upheld/observed by the government to accomplish those purposes.

At the end of the day, maybe the gap isn't as big as I was thinking: if we have private contracts that are not recognized by the govt in public matters, the result would be similar to the govt doing the licensing.

Endiana, whadya think?

 

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