Total Eclipse

In response to a post on Coilhouse concerning the passing of Proposition 8 in California to end gay marriages in the state, I wrote this response, which I thought was too long for anyone to read as a comment, but still worth sharing with the world, somewhere.

There truly is a sour taste coming from the passage of Prop Hate in this otherwise joyous occasion.

To reflect a minute, there’s something interesting going on here from a socio-linguistic point of view. The notion that you discuss – that people marry out of love – is a relatively new idea injected into a very old practice, in part to conform with more modern conventions of nuclear family and women’s lib.
The social contract had changed so much from its original social-religious meaning, that people who partake in a wholly different form of relationship wished for their union to fall under the same category. With good reason, particularly due to the various official changes in social status and government benefits that turned what was once a contract with religious undertones into a venerable rites de passage that most every person believed they deserved for themselves.
Then come conservatives, who wish either from bigoted hatred to the new group or from a fundamental concern with the persistence of what they perceive as a religious term to forbid these so-called newcomers from falling under the same category.

Look what’s happening here; The fight is over a word; the extension of a term.

I remember reading Mormon scifi author Orson Scott Card argue that there is no ban on gay marriage; They can get married, under the term he considers to have always meant ‘marriage’ – that is a union of man and woman. All he wants is for us liberals to leave his words alone, and not make his ‘holy’ unions coextensive with what he perceives as ’sanctimonious’ unions of same-sex partners.

The libertarian in me says “fuck it”, government shouldn’t interfere in these personal and religious matters and should anyway abolish its recognition of marriage as an official status, preferring a ‘civil union’ category if we decide that such a union is a social good. Religious weddings could be a form of civil union, or perhaps anyone going into wedlock would need to go to cityhall anyway. Either way, with the removal of the semantic problem, it becomes a purely a matter of civil rights without forcing religious people to accept a change in their terminology they find offensive.

But then the atheist (and, okay, the realist too) in me kicks in, and says another “fuck it” for good measure, followed by the rhetoric that offending people is none of my concern. If the word ‘marriage’ today commonly means the official union between loved ones, then the religious people can sod off, its anyway a matter of civil rights, and anyone with a semantic argument would need to demonstrate how the term marriage has always meant what they believe it meant – which it clearly has not – and that it is somehow a social good for the evolving term not to include these same sex unions – without resorting to religious-based arguments – which they also clearly cannot.

[... Wow I should copypasta this to my blog, I'm on a roll here.]

Leaving only bigoted hatred, and that, my friends can be fought, with unity and determination.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Tagged as anti-gay, california, civil union, conservatives, gandhi, gay, gay marriage, gay rights, gay weddings, hate, language, liberals, linguistics, orson scott card, prop 8, Proposition 8, proposition hate, religion, semantics, Shay Brog, Telecart, טלכרט, שי ברוג + Categorized as Current Events, Social Politics