Today I would like to take the time to discuss what is going on in the Supreme Court at this period of time, because everyone else seems to be freaking out about it.

First, let me give some background as to what’s actually going on.

The Supreme Court is deciding the fate of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) and California’s Proposition 8. Basically, both of these oppose same-sex marriages at different levels (DOMA is federal, while Prop. 8 is within a state) and they are now being contested. Advocates for gay rights want both of these to be repealed by the Supreme Court.

It has been years since these have passed (DOMA in 1996, Prop. 8 in 2008) but now the case is finally being heard, and people are holding on to high hopes.

Now, I wanted to use this space not just for a history lesson, but in response to an article I found via a facebook friend.

The article is called “Why the Arguments for Gay Marriage are Persuasive” by a Christian pastor, Kevin DeYoung. It can be found here.

There are multiple places that I want to pick at from this article, so please read it, because then it will make more sense.

He writes that “For a long time, homosexuality seemed weird or gross. Now it seems normal.” I disagree with that -or, more specifically, I would like for him to admit that he is only talking about the American context  in very specific time periods. In COLONIZED America, homosexuality seemed weird or gross. Homosexuality and Trans* people were not always “gross” in “America”, because there were tribes of people who accepted these people in their cultures, until white people came in and basically destroyed everything. (If requested, I have actual articles on this, and I will reference them if necessary.)

And, even if we ignore the fact that this land was once filled with people who had Two-Spirit traditions going back centuries, other cultures had similar ideas too –Africa, for instance, before it was colonized, and India too. (Basically, let’s just agree that European colonization screwed everything up in every way.) In ancient Greece, homosexuality usually took place between an older man and a younger man/boy, and it was seen as healthy.

So, in short, no one should make sweeping generalizations about how homosexuality was “weird or gross” however long ago, because I assure you that there is more than enough research to prove that even longer ago than that time, people were cool with it and it wasn’t a big deal.

After he writes this very general and wrong statement, he makes a list of how gay marriage fits in to our common cultural assumptions:

“1. It’s about progress. Linking the pro-gay agenda with civil rights and women’s rights was very intentional, and it was a masterstroke. To be against gay marriage, therefore, is to be against enlightenment and progress. It puts you on the “wrong side of history.” Of course, most people forget that lots of discarded ideas were once hailed as the inevitable march of progress. Just look at Communism or eugenics or phrenology or the Volt. But people aren’t interested in the complexities of history. We only know we don’t want to be like the nincompoops who thought the sun revolved around the earth and that slavery was okay.

2. It’s about love. When gay marriage is presented as nothing but the open embrace of human love, it’s hard to mount a defense. Who could possibly be against love? But hidden in this simple reasoning is the cultural assumption that sexual intercourse is necessarily the highest, and perhaps the only truly fulfilling, expression of love. It’s assumed that love is always self-affirming and never self-denying. It’s assumed that our loves never require redirection. Most damagingly, our culture (largely because of heterosexual sins) has come to understand marriage as nothing but the state sanctioning of romantic love. The propagation and rearing of children do not come into play. The role in incentivizing socially beneficial behavior is not in the public eye. People think of marriage as nothing more than the commitment (of whatever duration) which romantic couples make to each other.

3. It’s about rights. It’s not by accident the movement is called the gay rights movement. And I don’t deny that many gays and lesbians feel their fundamental human rights are at stake in the controversy over marriage. But the lofty talk of rights blurs an important distinction. Do consenting adults have the right to enter a contract of their choosing? It depends. Businesses don’t have a right to contract for collusion. Adults don’t have a right to enter into a contract that harms the public good. And even if you think these examples are beside the point, the fact remains that no law prohibits homosexuals (or any two adults) from making promises to each other, from holding a ceremony, from entering into a covenant with each other. The question is whether the government should bestow upon that contract the name of marriage with all the rights and privileges thereto.

4. It’s about equality. Recently, I saw a prominent Christian blogger tweet that she was for gay marriage because part of loving our neighbor is desiring they get equal justice under the law. Few words in the American lexicon elicit such broad support as “equality.” No one wants to be for unequal treatment under the law. But the issue before the Supreme Court is not equality, but whether two laws–one voted in by the people of California and the other approved by our democratically elected officials–should be struck down. Equal treatment under the law means the law is applied the same to everyone. Gay marriage proponents desire to change the law so that marriage becomes something entirely different. Surveys often pose the question “Should it be legal or illegal for gay and lesbian couples to marry?” That makes it sound like we are criminalizing people for commitments they make. The real issue, however, is whether the state has a vested interest in sanctioning, promoting, and privileging certain relational arrangements. Is it unjust for the state not to recognize as marriage your group of four friends, close cousins, or an office suite just because they want their commitments to be called marriage?

5. It’s about tolerance. Increasingly, those who oppose gay marriage are not just considered wrong or mistaken or even benighted. They are anti-gay haters. As one minister put it, gay marriage will eventually triumph because love is stronger than hate. Another headline rang out that “discrimination is on trial” as the Supreme Court hears arguments on Proposition 8 and DOMA. The stark contrast is clear: either you support gay marriage or you are a bigot and a hater. It’s not wonder young people are tacking hard to left on this issue. They don’t want to be insensitive, close-minded, or intolerant. The notion that thoughtful, sincere, well-meaning, compassionate people might oppose gay marriage is a fleeting thought.”

So. My first issue comes to play in his #2, where he apparently assumes that marriage is not about love between two people, and that if the USA grants same-sex marriage, then love will be confused with sex somehow. I’m not entirely sure how he makes this jump: ” But hidden in this simple reasoning is the cultural assumption that sexual intercourse is necessarily the highest, and perhaps the only truly fulfilling, expression of love.” Because gay/lesbian people and their allies are NOT arguing for the right to have sex, they are arguing that they can be legally recognized by the government as being married and get the rights involved with that distinction. Sex is not a problem here. Rights are.

Also, what is the problem with marriage being about love? Because, literally, that is the reason most people list when you ask them “why did you get married?” It’s not ‘because we wanted kids’, ‘because we wanted to have sex’, ‘because we wanted to show people socially beneficial behavior’. It’s because they loved each other so much that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. I assure you that marriage fails for a number of reasons, one being that they didn’t love each other any more, but any marriage based off of those three examples I gave above is practically doomed to failure from the start.

AND, let’s talk about kids, because I don’t think that marriage is REALLY about procreating (or that it should be at all) when more than 250,000 kids are put in foster care every year and over 136,000 are waiting to be adopted per year. So, let’s not make this a ‘kid issue’, because I am positive that some same-sex couples would LOVE to adopt and would not increase these rates about kids needing adoption. We do not have a procreating issue, I promise.

My next problem with the article is, of course, #3. DeYoung writes, “the fact remains that no law prohibits homosexuals (or any two adults) from making promises to each other, from holding a ceremony, from entering into a covenant with each other. The question is whether the government should bestow upon that contract the name of marriage with all the rights and privileges thereto.”

The question is actually if the government can recognize separation of church and state  in order to give these couples their damn rights. There are same-sex couples who have been together as-long-as or longer-than many opposite-sex couples, and they have nothing to show for it. They have no say in life-and-death matters in hospitalization, they don’t get tax benefits or social security benefits when their partner passes (or if they are disabled or laid off), and any of the other 1,138 rights married couples get.

Meanwhile, I sense a lot of hypocrisy coming from this man who is so willing to tell gay/lesbian people “you can make promises to each other and that should be good enough for you” when he benefits from all of the rights that these people don’t have and are fighting for.

In #4, he argues that legalizing same-sex marriage would forever change the meaning of marriage, so that it becomes “something entirely different”. This is crap, honestly, because the definition of marriage has changed before in history. (He should know this, especially since in #1 he was commenting on all the ‘complexities of history’ that we tend to ignore, kinda like he did in this case.)

Marriage, before the women’s movements I discussed in my first post, was about ownership. Men literally owned women -they were property. That is why the woman took the man’s name, because he owned her. It was a practice called coverture. Let me restate this: THE HUSBAND LITERALLY OWNED THE WIFE AS THOUGH SHE WAS A PIECE OF LAND OR FURNITURE. She went from having her father’s name -from being property of her father -to having her husband’s name, being the property of her husband.

Clearly, marriage has been VERY redefined since then, so I feel that the argument “We can’t redefine marriage, it’s always been the same!” is bullshit. Especially when it’s spouted by Christians, because in the Bible, marriage is rarely ever the same thing. The Bible has one man-one woman, one man-multiple women, one man-one woman-one slave, one man-lots of concubines, men-who-never-get-married, one woman-one relative; it also has remarriage (but only after death), sanctions against divorce, messages of coverture, sanctions against mixed-religion relationships, rapists marrying their victims, sanctions to remain unmarried, etc. (And don’t get me started on David and Jonathan…)

Basically, when Christians say that redefining marriage is against the Bible, or that God only defined marriage in one way, I want to slap them in the face and tell them to read the Bible, because it is just not true. (I also want to point out all the other verses that we ignore in this culture, like the kosher regulations (“but those are just for Jews!” they cry) and not wearing clothing of mixed fibers. We seemed to forget about those ones.)

I’m just sick of hearing/seeing people being bigots, because that’s what denying equality makes you. If you are so scared that someone else’s happiness is going to somehow take yours away, you need to re-evaluate what makes you happy. If you think that someone else’s marriage is going to de-value your own, you have very messed up ideas about how marriage works, and honestly your marriage is probably already broken.

I’m not even going to try to tackle the rest of his article, because it is ridiculous and bigoted and hateful. It is backwards in so many ways, and wrong in so many other ways. I am tired of people shouting with their eyes clenched shut and their hands over their ears. I want to be a person who is shouting with joy when same-sex marriage is legalized, and I want to go to my friend’s weddings when they finally legally marry their partners. I will be on the right side of history, and I don’t care if that makes me ‘part of the culture’ or whatever, because all I am working to do is make this culture a better place for everyone, and to make it more equal for people who are discriminated against.

Straight people need to check their privilege and start actually caring about people who are different from them, and it starts here.