There is a scary part of this debate over same-sex marriage that few people are talking about, and it was illustrated on last night’s panel discussion on Fox News Special Report.
I respect Kirsten Powers as an honest, blue-blooded Liberal, and I pay attention to what she says. And I was struck by her comments last night on the Special Report all-star panel, when asked if the Supreme Court should just let states decide on same sex marriage. Her underlying assumptions are scary. Let’s start with what she said:
“I guess I’m just an idealist. I think when something comes before the Supreme Court of such importance where people are being discriminated against so blatantly – Ted Olson and David Boies have a column today in the Wall Street Journal where they talk about the Supreme Court has found 14 times, 14 times, that the right to marry is a fundamental right. This is discrimination. It’s unconstitutional. I think the Supreme Court should rule on it. You know, for them to have cowardice to say essentially ‘we don’t want to touch this because this is too much of a hot topic,’ you know, sending it back to the states, we don’t put rights up to a vote. It’s the same thing with civil rights. This is a civil right.”
Think carefully about what she said, because this is the core assumption of those who are pushing for same sex marriage. Belief in traditional marriage is so fundamentally wrong that we don’t even need to vote on it.
First of all, the very constitution itself was voted into existence. And granting civil rights to African-Americans was first voted on as constitutional amendments, a vote, by the way, which required super majorities of 2/3 of each house of Congress and then 3/4 of the states. Later, it was implemented by legislation that was voted upon by majorities in Congress. So it is indeed arrogant to say that this issue is so right that we don’t even need to vote on it.
Second, and this is the scary part of this whole debate and something to which too few people are paying attention. Her underlying assumption is that disagreeing with her is so wrong it’s not even worthy of discussion. If you don’t support same-sex marriage, you are bigoted, denying people fundamental rights.
Consider this scenario. We have now so matured as a society that we are allowing our government to tell religious groups who teach that abortion is a heinous act that they have to violate their consciences and pay for abortions. So the barrier to the government mandating the violation of conscience has been struck down. If that is so and if society now determines that belief in traditional marriage is denying people fundamental rights and therefore bigoted and hateful, what stands in the way of government mandating religious institutions to perform same-sex marriages? And what about mandating schools, other public communications, and even churches and families, to teach these things? This is starting to actually happen.
I have watched these gay activists, and I understand them. This is their end game. This issue will not end with allowing them to get the official stamp of public approval declaring that a homosexual union is equal to a heterosexual union. No, they want to banish from their ears any communication that passes any kind of judgment on homosexual acts. Or from anyone else’s ears, for that matter. They brandish slogans like “Stamp out homophobia!” It’s not about tolerance – it’s about intolerance.
Click here to visit the Liberty Musings conservative politics home page.
