Special Rights, Not Equal Rights

The jig is up.  We can now officially put to bed the lie that advocates of gay marriage only want equal rights.   According to a Reuters story out of Connecticut, eight gay and lesbian couples are asking that state’s Supreme Court to mandate the legalization of gay marriage.  You should know that Connecticut is a state that already grants the “rights and benefits” of marriage to homosexuals under a civil unions law.

The couples claim they are seeking the right to marry because “a ban on gay marriage violates their constitutional rights”.  They claim not being able to marry is a violation of their equal protection rights under the Constitution.  Oh?  What rights as individuals are they being deprived of?  Surely not privacy.  The Supreme Court covered their rights to conduct their special behavior under the un-enumerated right to privacy several years ago in its Lawrence vs. Texas decision.

What this is really about is their “right” to force everyone else, via the state, by way of the judiciary, to approve of – and officially sanction – their behavior and grant them rights and benefits on the basis of that behavior alone.  It would seem that, if they have the right to everyone else’s approval, then everyone else no longer retains the rights to their own opinions.  Of course, that irony isn’t lost on them, just ignored.

They’re proving that they don’t just want their rights to privacy, and they’re not satisfied with being granted equal rights based on their behavior.  They want it all baby!  They’re opposed to marriage licenses with checkboxes marked “husband” and “wife”.  They’re against the state issuing birth certificates that identify “mother” and “father”.  Essentially, they want the eradication of sex as a distinction.

If they are granted such rights, what happens to the rights of others?  What about the rights of religious groups that provide adoption services and who’s faith will not allow them to place children with homosexual couples?  What about the rights of society to govern itself in a way that protects its future?  What about the rights of children?

Aside from its purpose of creating an entity to foster an atmosphere for the growth and nurturing of the next generation and protecting the family’s resources, there would be no reason for marriage to exist.  What’s left is just a corporation.  The state, as well as many private institutions, offer benefits and inducements to encourage male and female partners to sacrifice their individual rights and freedoms to that of the marriage, for the sake of the next generation.  And if society has an interest in anything, it should be its future generations.

This is a subject that the American people have spoken out very loudly and very clearly on.  State constitutional amendments or similar referenda defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman have passed by an average of seventy percent of the vote in twenty-seven out of twenty-eight states where they have appeared on the ballot.

Bypassing the will of overwhelming majorities of the electorate on an issue that would have repercussions all throughout our legal system will give us what we have in the abortion debate; an unsettled political issue that was never fully aired, thanks to the judiciary.

And make no mistake about it, we are headed to a lawyer’s dream world when it comes to litigation that would spring from such a radical redefinition of marriage.  The institution is so interwoven into our legal structure that simply changing the definition of the term would call other laws that contain the term into question.  The class actions suits would fly.  Add the fact that people are constantly moving from state to state and the problem gets worse.  The challenges to one state’s laws on the basis of marriages in other states will flood the courts.

Already, the state of Virginia is as odds with Vermont and a lesbian who divorced her former partner in a civil union in that state.  The fight is over a child.  The former Virginia couple went to Vermont to obtain a civil union, then moved back to home.  Thereafter, one of them was artificially inseminated and later gave birth.  The “non-biological” mother (man this gets confusing) never legally adopted the girl under Virginia law.  The couple split up when the biological mother became a Christian.  As a result, she left the union and took her biological, non-adopted child with her.

The result?  The state of Vermont orders the mother to grant parental rights to the non-mother, and Virginia says no.  The case comes down to whether or not one state can impose its same-sex unions law on another state.  We have dueling state courts and will no doubt soon have dueling federal district and circuit courts.  Supreme Court here we come.

Does an individual state have the right to define marriage within its borders, (we have to ask?)?  Is the federal Defense of Marriage Act constitutional?  Or will marriage be covered under the Constitution’s “full faith and credit” clause, causing all states to recognize marriages performed in other states, whatever their nature?

Methinks we may have replaced Sandra Day O’Connor just in time.