Group gathers to protest gay rights votes in Maine and Washington

What the Maine and California votes so clearly indicate is that fundamental rights should NEVER be put to the people for ratification by the majority, particularly when those fundamental rights impact the lives of members of minorities.

The best estimates of the percentage of the male population that is either exclusively or predominantly gay are between 4% and 10% of the overall male population, whereas the best estimates pertaining to the percentage of the female population that is either exclusively or predominantly gay are slightly lower. It is simply not possible for this group of Americans to receive a fair shake at the hands of the majority, particularly in a nation in which the levels of homophobia, bigotry, and naked cruelty directed towards gay citizens are so depressingly high. Only by enlisting the help of a large percentage of the heterosexual population can gay men and lesbians ensure vindication of their rights when these rights are challenged by religious crackpots and wingnuts at the ballot box -- and at this present, shameful juncture in American history, it remains acceptable in the eyes of a great many people to abuse gay men and lesbians, and to discriminate against us in areas such as employment, access to housing, and service in places of public accommodation (restaurants, hotels, etc.).

I challenge any heterosexual person who reads this message and who disputes the levels of hatred to which I refer -- spend just ONE WEEK holding hands with a heterosexual friend of the same sex in public and cuddling that person in public (in the same way that heterosexual men and women do when in the presence of their husbands, wives, boyfriends, or girlfriends), introducing yourselves to others as a couple, and applying yourself to American society by indicating to everybody that you are gay.

Then come back and tell us all about the fairness and decency of your fellow American citizens.

The US Supreme Court has long recognized marriage to be a "fundamental" right in the pantheon of rights identified by the Court (Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374 (1978), Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), etc.). Fundamental rights are rights that exist without reference to popular sentiment or prevailing political attitudes. In West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), the Court made this principle abundantly clear when Justice Jackson wrote that "The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."

The Court recently recognized that gay sexual relationships cannot be criminalized by the government when they occur between consenting adults in private settings (Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)). Seven years earlier, the Court made it absolutely clear that anti-gay bigotry has no place in American society (Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996)).

The real tragedy about the events that unfolded in Maine and California was not the fact that evil people tore up the marriages of gay couples. The real tragedy about these events was the fact that this issue -- an issue involving rights so basic that heterosexual, married couples don't give them a second's thought -- was actually placed on the ballot in the first place.

PHILIP CHANDLER

philipcfromnyc Anonymous

2 weeks ago
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It isn't the province of the Federal Government to invent rights that weren't guaranteed when this nation was founded. The "inalienable rights" to which men were entitled, as mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, were those endowed by the Creator. The Creator to whom they referred was the Creator revealed in the Bible.

The people of Maine and California simply showed the legislatures of those states that they were out of touch in ignoring a fundamental truth upon which our society is based. In enacting provisions approving gay marriage, the legislatures of those states ignored natural law, Biblical truth, and common sense. The people's only recourse to restore sanity in their states was a constitutional amendment.

The Bible clearly does not guarantee the right of any man to engage in homosexuality, adultery, gluttony, child molestation, witchcraft, larceny, or any number of human sins. If you want to look to the natural law as the source of rights, you cannot find anything in nature that remotely suggests that homosexuality is an inborn trait. It serves no reasonable purpose. The sexual apparatus is obviously designed for reproduction. Nature reveals that. The Bible authenticates what nature reveals, and nature authenticates what the Bible declares.

Loving v. Virginia is about the right of heterosexuals to marry, not the right to engage in adultery or fornication outside of marriage. It is actually not about the fundamental right to engage in a particular form of sexual intercourse at all. It is based on the idea that reproduction is basic to civilization. It continues a line of cases that said that people have an inherent right to reproduce. The right to reproduce is among a penumbra of rights, so the Supreme Court said, that emanates from the right to privacy guaranteed under the 4th amendment. Given that the right to reproduce is inherent, the only way people could legally reproduce was to marry.

Loving v. Virginia does logically follow once we accept that human beings are all one species. When it was thought that some human like beings were either less than human or were not as highly developed genetically, then laws prohibiting intermarriage between the races were really laws prohibiting bestiality, since the less developed being was not capable of true consent. We can thank Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution for the idea that some humans weren't completely evolved, thus undergirding laws against interracial marriage.

Even today, we would not sanction sexual relationships between people who were mentally whole and those who were deemed incapable of consent. That would be considered a form of abuse. It is not an inherent right of any person to consort sexually with a person of inferior mental capacity, even though the person of inferior mental capacity might experience pleasure rather than pain. The state still has a right to enact regulations in the sexual arena to prohibit that type of abuse from occurring, whether with people of diminished mental capacity, or animals that are absolutely incapable of communicating their sexual desires. The issue is not about whether one of the two parties experiences pleasure. The issue is the ability to communicate consent.

There is no question that states retain the right to outlaw adultery and fornication. They could base them on an attempt to reduce out of wedlock childbirth, to reduce the spread of venereal disease, or to control violent crime stemming from jealousy and betrayal. They have simply stopped doing it. They didn't stop enforcing laws against adultery and fornication becuase those acts were inherent. They simply took them off the books because adultery and fornication had become so widespread that any attempt to enforce the law would be selective at best. That doesn't mean that there is an inherent right to engage in adultery and fornication.

You failed to mention Bowers v. Hardwick, decided in the mid 1980s. The Supreme Court, in Lawrence v. Texas, made th opposite decision and struck down Bowers v. Hardwick. In Bowers v. Hardwick, the court said there was no inherent right to engage in homsexual sodomy.

If you will read Lawrence v. Texas carefully, you will find that the real problem the U.S. Supreme Court had with the case, is that Texas did not outlaw sodomy between heterosexuals, while it did outlaw it between homosexuals. Texas could outlaw sodomy between heterosexuals and could enforce it.

Lawrence v. Texas was about the act of sodomy, not the right to marry.

Sandra Day O'Connor was the swing voter in the unfortunate decision of Lawrence v. Texas. The court illogically reversed Bowers v. Hardwick. Still, Lawrence v. Texas does not guarantee anyone the right to engage in sodomy. It is a poorly written decision that did nothing more than strike down a rarely enforced Texas law. It is not a watershed case, and it does not in any way guarantee the right of homosexuals to marry.

The Texas Supreme Court had a much better opinion.

Interestedcitizen5 Anonymous

1 week, 5 days ago
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The right of a woman to vote was added by constitutional amendment, approved by the legislatures of the states. It was not invented by the Federal government, and was not considered an inherent right by our founders.

If you want the right of a woman to vote to be compared with the right of homosexuals to marry, then you are going to have to ask Congress to propose an amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing the right of homosexuals to marry, and you are going to have to ask 3/4ths of the state legislatures to ratify it.

I know of no state, federal, or local law, that ever said a woman could not leave the kitchen. No Federal law invented that right. I know of no law that, at any time in history, forbade a woman from purchasing anything. Even the Bible records the act of a woman purchasing a very expensive vial of purfume and pouring it on Jesus' head. It was fundamentally understood that an inalienable right was the right of anyone with the means to do so to purchase food, or something as seemingly frivolous and wasteful as a vial of perfume, for daily sustenance.

I know of no state law that forbade a woman from voting. I only know of laws that set forth the requirements for voting, and women weren't eligible. Voting wasn't considered an inherent right, even for males. At one point, voting was restricted to males who owned property. Congress didn't have the power, absent a constitutional amendment, to impose upon the states the duty to allow anyone to vote who wanted to vote. It took the 14th amendment to say that it was illegal to interfere with the voting franchise on the basis of race, but it took yet another amendment to say gender couldn't be considered an elibility factor.

Interestedcitizen5 Anonymous

1 week, 5 days ago
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