Word of wisdom this week: Beware of stupid laws and the men behind them. I speak of the Republican effort to pass the Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages in the US Congress. This is a stupid law, because its heavy on ideology and paper thin on legal and practical considerations.
The last time the US had such a giant leap of law based upon faith and religious moral reasons, the result was that mess we call the Prohibition Era. And the basic reason why Prohibition didn't work, was NOT because of wrongness in its ideology, but rather the impracticality of enforcing such a law. Put simply, even if something is wrong, for whatever reason, laws cannot stop people from choosing to do harm unto themselves. For this same reason, some have criticized the seatbelt laws as well as the anti-drug laws.
So when politicians, including Republicans, have admitted that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, or marriage, then how can it even be wrong for homosexuals to marry? It would be rather like saying homosexuals cannot live in the state of Florida, to preserve the "sanctity" of the state of Florida. That would just be ridiculous.
Even assuming that the intended definition for marriage as a union between a man and a woman is 100% correct, the practical implication demonstrates how ill conceived this amendment really is. Afterall, the US constitution never defined either the term man or the term woman!
Im not nitpicking here, its a very serious and practical legal problem.
I mean, if this amendment passes in Congress and gets signed into law, the federal government will be made to enforce this law. But who is considered a man, and who is considered a woman? The layman definition may work 95% of the time, but what about the borderline cases? What about (people who are both male and female), transgenders (people who chose to change their sex), and people who have all sorts of ambiguous of sexual identities? What about their rights? Who are they supposed to be? And who are they allowed to be married to? It is said that there are 3 different and general ways of sex identification, (1) genetic, (2) physiological, and (3) psychological. And yet none of the 3 can be said to be the single most accurate way of sex identification. Allow me to explain.
(1) Genetically, a male has XY chromosome, and a female has XX chromosome. But, there are cases where a person is born with XXY chromosome, or XXXY chromosomes. If genetics is the sole basis of sex identification, it is impossible to identify the borderline cases, and legal disputes would be enormous.
(2) Physically, a male simply obtains his physiological characteristics because of hormone changes during pregnancy. This is typically normal, but for a fraction of the population this process is not normal. Sometimes, a genetic male develops into a physiological female, and vice versa. Other times, a genetic male or female develops into a hermaphrodite with both male and female characteristics.
(3) Psychologically, males and females are attracted to the opposite sex, but again, this is not always the case. In reality a genetic and physiological male maybe emotionally and psychologically attracted to another male. Some have attributed this to some minute genetic characteristics that are not yet understood fully.
Ignoring the dispute over the same-sex marriage, laws do not YET exist in US to accurately identify who is a male and who is a female. Ultimately, a persons own sex and therefore sexual orientation, is determined as a personal choice, as there is no accurate way of identification.
For the transgenders, its an even more muddled question. Males who choose to become females, or vice versa. For them, how will the same-sex marriage ban amendment work?!
Is a man a man NOW??!! Or must he have been a man at birth as well as in the present? Because if you want to enforce the amendment legally, a transgender is whatever he/she chose to be, according to the laws, and that would naturally make the same-sex marriage ban impractical.
Beyond that, there is no law requiring a man to claim himself as a woman ONLY with transgender medical procedures, nor any laws banning transgender medical procedures.
So in essence, a man can claim himself to be a woman, even if he never underwent transgender procedures, which clearly presents itself as a loophole in the Amendment.
Are we to ban all of these people from having any rights of ever getting married? These practical unanswered questions make this amendment very stupid indeed, as it will undoubted create a thousand questions that makes its enforcement impossible.
Aside from the practical questions, theres the procedural question of the law, specifically in regards to the Separation of Church and State.
I know, I know, Conservatives say Liberals are destroying religion in America, but please bear with me, this is not ideological, this is practical.
The fact remains, NOT all religions agree on this matter of same sex marriages. Believe it or not, some US Churches will conduct same sex weddings and help same-sex couples get licensed. Specifically, the Universal Unitarian Church is a legitimate religious organization that regularly conducts same sex weddings.
Practically, because the heterosexual marriage definition is a religious definition, some other religions may disagree with that definition, and then it becomes a religious matter of dispute, NOT a legal or political matter.
Afterall, if this amendment is put into place, will it not become a violation of religious freedom for those in the Universal Unitarian faith?! Even if some of us do not agree, that will not stop the Universal Unitarian Church from challenging the Amendment as a violation of their religious rights to define marriage according their own faith, and to perform marriages accordingly.
Hence, as I said, this is a procedural question of the Separation of Church and State. Once we make a stupid law based upon a religious definition, we are bringing in other religions to challenge that law, turning the US government into a religious debate ground for ecumenical issues.
Plus, whats to stop the gay and lesbian community from forming other new churches based upon a religious definition of free marriages" allowed? How can the US government stop them? Ban their new churches? US doesnt even have laws to ban known cults.
Some have listed the Utah Polygamy Ban as a precedence of where a State has made a law that countered a religious definition of marriage. However, I have to say that the Utah ban remains controversial, with legal cases pending, so the debate has not ended on that one.
Technically, marriage in US is serial monogamy in any case. A polygamist, if he really wanted to, can simply marry and divorce his many wives in turn around the year, or once every minute or every hour. There is no law against that either.
More fundamentally, the government and legal definition of marriage is supposed to be open and non-religious.
Why? Very simple.
If the Catholic Church forbids a Catholic from marrying a Protestant for religious reasons, that Catholic and that Protestant can still marry in the eyes of the State. The State is the final refuge for all those who are rejected by one church or another, or who are without church. This is a right of all people, whether you have a church or not. You can walk away from a church and its rules.
Fundamentally, a church can forbid anyone it wishes from marrying someone else, but that does not translate to any legal obligation in the State.
This same-sex marriage ban is a case of some Churches forbidding people from marrying other people, people who are NOT even members of those Churches. It is religious tyranny at its worst.
Afterall, a particular priest can ban all marriages in his church, period. And if his congregation follows him, good for them, no one would care. But it becomes lunacy when that priest extends his definition of good marriages and bad marriages into laws and has them enforced upon people outside of his church.
Frankly, there are great many people in the world who hardly qualify as adults, and their marriages produce nothing but misery for everyone involved, and yet we dont pass legal judgments upon them. Because fundamentally, marriage is defined by the choices of consenting adults, that being a fundamental right that should not be restricted by the state.
I ask you again, if it is not wrong for someone to be gay, then how can it be wrong for two people to be gay and married?
Sure, marriage is illegal if one party is under aged and does not have parental consent, but even in that case, the legal age is dependent from country to country, state to state. The legality of consent is therefore dependent upon the definition of adult. Then if same-sex marriages are banned, isnt that a denial of that right to consent as adults based upon sexual orientation, and thus a clear case of Discrimination?
All the legal technicalities aside, I dont see how any harm can be done to my wife and me if some gay couple got married, any more than if anybody else got married in the world.
So I still wonder, what the heck are these politicians and priests thinking in trying to pass such a ridiculous amendment, into the US Constitution no less.
Are we to revert back to the days of slavery, when slaves could not legally marry, and they had to jump over brooms as their own ceremony of civil unions which the state did not recognize?
Yes, I did say slaves, because that was the ONLY other time in US history when consenting adults could not legally marry due to the fact that slaves were not considered free men and women.
Im thankful that this latest amendment was defeated before it was even put to a serious vote, but I was astonished when I heard that the Republicans had seriously consulted with their constitutional scholars on the wording of the Amendment. What kind of lawyers would not even consider the sheer stupidity of this law, in all its legal and procedural implications?
I can only conclude that historically, power hungry men with little common sense are often known to try to pass stupid laws, i.e., they dont do it for the law or justice, they only do it to show that they have the Power to give or take rights. So they take away some rights from some and make the rest feel as if they gained something. That makes them feel powerful and feared. And for once, the Democrats are right, the Republicans dont really care about the issues, they just whipped up this stupid law as a political gimmick, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The last time the US had such a giant leap of law based upon faith and religious moral reasons, the result was that mess we call the Prohibition Era. And the basic reason why Prohibition didn't work, was NOT because of wrongness in its ideology, but rather the impracticality of enforcing such a law. Put simply, even if something is wrong, for whatever reason, laws cannot stop people from choosing to do harm unto themselves. For this same reason, some have criticized the seatbelt laws as well as the anti-drug laws.
So when politicians, including Republicans, have admitted that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, or marriage, then how can it even be wrong for homosexuals to marry? It would be rather like saying homosexuals cannot live in the state of Florida, to preserve the "sanctity" of the state of Florida. That would just be ridiculous.
Even assuming that the intended definition for marriage as a union between a man and a woman is 100% correct, the practical implication demonstrates how ill conceived this amendment really is. Afterall, the US constitution never defined either the term man or the term woman!
Im not nitpicking here, its a very serious and practical legal problem.
I mean, if this amendment passes in Congress and gets signed into law, the federal government will be made to enforce this law. But who is considered a man, and who is considered a woman? The layman definition may work 95% of the time, but what about the borderline cases? What about (people who are both male and female), transgenders (people who chose to change their sex), and people who have all sorts of ambiguous of sexual identities? What about their rights? Who are they supposed to be? And who are they allowed to be married to? It is said that there are 3 different and general ways of sex identification, (1) genetic, (2) physiological, and (3) psychological. And yet none of the 3 can be said to be the single most accurate way of sex identification. Allow me to explain.
(1) Genetically, a male has XY chromosome, and a female has XX chromosome. But, there are cases where a person is born with XXY chromosome, or XXXY chromosomes. If genetics is the sole basis of sex identification, it is impossible to identify the borderline cases, and legal disputes would be enormous.
(2) Physically, a male simply obtains his physiological characteristics because of hormone changes during pregnancy. This is typically normal, but for a fraction of the population this process is not normal. Sometimes, a genetic male develops into a physiological female, and vice versa. Other times, a genetic male or female develops into a hermaphrodite with both male and female characteristics.
(3) Psychologically, males and females are attracted to the opposite sex, but again, this is not always the case. In reality a genetic and physiological male maybe emotionally and psychologically attracted to another male. Some have attributed this to some minute genetic characteristics that are not yet understood fully.
Ignoring the dispute over the same-sex marriage, laws do not YET exist in US to accurately identify who is a male and who is a female. Ultimately, a persons own sex and therefore sexual orientation, is determined as a personal choice, as there is no accurate way of identification.
For the transgenders, its an even more muddled question. Males who choose to become females, or vice versa. For them, how will the same-sex marriage ban amendment work?!
Is a man a man NOW??!! Or must he have been a man at birth as well as in the present? Because if you want to enforce the amendment legally, a transgender is whatever he/she chose to be, according to the laws, and that would naturally make the same-sex marriage ban impractical.
Beyond that, there is no law requiring a man to claim himself as a woman ONLY with transgender medical procedures, nor any laws banning transgender medical procedures.
So in essence, a man can claim himself to be a woman, even if he never underwent transgender procedures, which clearly presents itself as a loophole in the Amendment.
Are we to ban all of these people from having any rights of ever getting married? These practical unanswered questions make this amendment very stupid indeed, as it will undoubted create a thousand questions that makes its enforcement impossible.
Aside from the practical questions, theres the procedural question of the law, specifically in regards to the Separation of Church and State.
I know, I know, Conservatives say Liberals are destroying religion in America, but please bear with me, this is not ideological, this is practical.
The fact remains, NOT all religions agree on this matter of same sex marriages. Believe it or not, some US Churches will conduct same sex weddings and help same-sex couples get licensed. Specifically, the Universal Unitarian Church is a legitimate religious organization that regularly conducts same sex weddings.
Practically, because the heterosexual marriage definition is a religious definition, some other religions may disagree with that definition, and then it becomes a religious matter of dispute, NOT a legal or political matter.
Afterall, if this amendment is put into place, will it not become a violation of religious freedom for those in the Universal Unitarian faith?! Even if some of us do not agree, that will not stop the Universal Unitarian Church from challenging the Amendment as a violation of their religious rights to define marriage according their own faith, and to perform marriages accordingly.
Hence, as I said, this is a procedural question of the Separation of Church and State. Once we make a stupid law based upon a religious definition, we are bringing in other religions to challenge that law, turning the US government into a religious debate ground for ecumenical issues.
Plus, whats to stop the gay and lesbian community from forming other new churches based upon a religious definition of free marriages" allowed? How can the US government stop them? Ban their new churches? US doesnt even have laws to ban known cults.
Some have listed the Utah Polygamy Ban as a precedence of where a State has made a law that countered a religious definition of marriage. However, I have to say that the Utah ban remains controversial, with legal cases pending, so the debate has not ended on that one.
Technically, marriage in US is serial monogamy in any case. A polygamist, if he really wanted to, can simply marry and divorce his many wives in turn around the year, or once every minute or every hour. There is no law against that either.
More fundamentally, the government and legal definition of marriage is supposed to be open and non-religious.
Why? Very simple.
If the Catholic Church forbids a Catholic from marrying a Protestant for religious reasons, that Catholic and that Protestant can still marry in the eyes of the State. The State is the final refuge for all those who are rejected by one church or another, or who are without church. This is a right of all people, whether you have a church or not. You can walk away from a church and its rules.
Fundamentally, a church can forbid anyone it wishes from marrying someone else, but that does not translate to any legal obligation in the State.
This same-sex marriage ban is a case of some Churches forbidding people from marrying other people, people who are NOT even members of those Churches. It is religious tyranny at its worst.
Afterall, a particular priest can ban all marriages in his church, period. And if his congregation follows him, good for them, no one would care. But it becomes lunacy when that priest extends his definition of good marriages and bad marriages into laws and has them enforced upon people outside of his church.
Frankly, there are great many people in the world who hardly qualify as adults, and their marriages produce nothing but misery for everyone involved, and yet we dont pass legal judgments upon them. Because fundamentally, marriage is defined by the choices of consenting adults, that being a fundamental right that should not be restricted by the state.
I ask you again, if it is not wrong for someone to be gay, then how can it be wrong for two people to be gay and married?
Sure, marriage is illegal if one party is under aged and does not have parental consent, but even in that case, the legal age is dependent from country to country, state to state. The legality of consent is therefore dependent upon the definition of adult. Then if same-sex marriages are banned, isnt that a denial of that right to consent as adults based upon sexual orientation, and thus a clear case of Discrimination?
All the legal technicalities aside, I dont see how any harm can be done to my wife and me if some gay couple got married, any more than if anybody else got married in the world.
So I still wonder, what the heck are these politicians and priests thinking in trying to pass such a ridiculous amendment, into the US Constitution no less.
Are we to revert back to the days of slavery, when slaves could not legally marry, and they had to jump over brooms as their own ceremony of civil unions which the state did not recognize?
Yes, I did say slaves, because that was the ONLY other time in US history when consenting adults could not legally marry due to the fact that slaves were not considered free men and women.
Im thankful that this latest amendment was defeated before it was even put to a serious vote, but I was astonished when I heard that the Republicans had seriously consulted with their constitutional scholars on the wording of the Amendment. What kind of lawyers would not even consider the sheer stupidity of this law, in all its legal and procedural implications?
I can only conclude that historically, power hungry men with little common sense are often known to try to pass stupid laws, i.e., they dont do it for the law or justice, they only do it to show that they have the Power to give or take rights. So they take away some rights from some and make the rest feel as if they gained something. That makes them feel powerful and feared. And for once, the Democrats are right, the Republicans dont really care about the issues, they just whipped up this stupid law as a political gimmick, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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