I’m afraid that whomever wins the day in the California Proposition 8 legal battle, we all lose in the long run. I’ve been trying to follow the arguments presented by both sides to the California Supreme Court and while I support Proposition 8, I think the arguments being made by both sides are pretty dangerous. A lot of the argument goes back to the fundamental arguments made during the formation of the U. S. Constitution and then solidified during the Civil War.
On the one had we have democracy which is the rule of the majority. The government derives its just powers from the people. So a government has to be fundamentally democratic to wield any power justly. A government that foists the desires of a minority over the majority would be an unjust oligarchy, and tyranny of the minority.
However, the founders were also very suspicious of pure democracy because more often than not it devolved into a tyranny of the majority, where the majority unjustly tramples the rights of the minority.
So while keeping the government fundamentally democratic, they structured the government with a series of checks and balances based on distributing democracy to competing scopes that would prevent the states with large populations from tyrannical rule over the states with small populations, while still allowing government action to be derived justly from the people. They called this a Democratic Republic.
In the case of Prop 8 the majority has ruled to uphold traditional marriage norms through democratic vote.
Those who favor same-sex marriage lost at the ballot box and view this as an act of tyranny of the majority, so they have turned to the courts to try to overthrow it.
Those who favor traditional marriage view the court case as an act of oligarchy, a usurpation of the democracy from which the government derives its powers.
Now we come to the arguments made by the lawyers before the California Supreme Court.
Lately I have seen a lot of activity in blog comments and social websites where people who are promoting California’s Proposition 8, which will amend the state constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman, are being called bigots, homophobes, and fools, and their arguments dismissed as irrational, ignorant, and unfounded.
While there are certain to be fools and bigots among the opponents of same-sex marriage, just as there are among its proponents, opposition to same-sex marriage is not irrational. It is not ignorant or uninformed.
Just as those in favor of same-sex marriage have legitimate concerns and rational arguments for their stance on the subject, so do those of us who oppose it. Going around trolling the blogs and facebook walls of those who support the traditional definition of marriage and describing their position as irrational and ignorant certainly isn’t going to win you many converts.
So rather than shut down constructive conversation by treating those with whom you disagree as idiots, why not acknowledge that at least some of their points are valid concerns; that you can see how they would be concerned, even if you think that other considerations should overrule that concern.
Same-sex marriage advocates certainly have some strong arguments in their favor. So do opponents. That fact should be acknowledged.
