Why Does God Hate Gay Marriage in 17 Memes

Another June in the Gay Community.
Almost I see the ghost, spirit, “eidolon” of that great American Bard and Seer, W. Whitman, himself, smiling, urging Justice Kennedy on, as he wrote, rewrote, edited and polished the majority opinion for OBERGEFELL v. HODGES. I can hear Whitman instruct: “breathing breath of life into all these and more (all the physical, political, commercial, etc. achievement) must be its moral civilization- the formulation, expression, and aidancy whereof is the very height of literature. The climax of this loftiest range of civilization, rising above all the gorgeous shows and results of wealth, intellect, power, and art as such—above theology and religious fervor—is to be its development, from the eternal bases and fit expression, of absolute Conscience, moral soundness, Justice. (Whitman, Democratic Vistas, 1871) emphasis mine.” Toward the realization of this dream, his shadow impels.

June 26, 2015: apparently always the end of June is to hold special significance for the Gay Community. On June 27, 1969 a few brave drag queens and their friends and lovers at the Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village, New York City, fought back for the first time in American history against ruthless, wholly arbitrary, police persecution and brutality. This act sparked in others the dream, and from the dream, the demand that Gay people were people, too. More than this, we were citizens of this nation who were endowed by our creator or by nature with the same inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as were all our fellow citizens. What followed of course is a history of a movement filled with many marches and actions of civil disobedience, disease and dread, litigation and legislation, and the births of many organizations across the country, in large cities and small, all of them holding as a central belief, a faith in their fellow citizens’ reason to see love as love. If our fellow citizens could be reached with enough truthful information, we thought, they would do the reasonable thing and invite us to join them at the table of full equality with respect and in amity. While the history of this movement has been marked with many successes that have benefitted the Gay Community in many ways, the dream of full equality has eluded us. Nowhere was this so, patently obvious as in the persistent denial of the value of our long-term relationships with one another. For some reason, no matter how enduring, our personal partnerships could not be recognized as being of equal worth or meriting any of the usual protections or benefits that were granted heterosexual personal partnerships through the special status of marriage. Well, now, that too is changed, here, at the end of another June:

“It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality. Here the marriage laws enforced by the respondents are in essence unequal: same-sex couples are denied all the benefits afforded to opposite-sex couples and are barred from exer¬cising a fundamental right. Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry.” OBERGEFELL v. HODGES, 576 U. S. 21 (2015)

The above passage taken from the just released Supreme Court decision re same- sex marriage succinctly encapsulates what we in the Gay Community have been saying for years. Indeed, many in our community, upon reading this particular portion of the majority opinion, might be tempted to say, “No-duh! How could it take you so long to see this?” The far sadder aspect of this matter is the simple fact that many of our fellow citizens still do not see this or, at least, refuse to acknowledge what we consider to be self-evident. Still we trust in our common bond of humanity and reason as we persist in presenting factual information in our hope of persuading others that we are no threat to their way of life, beliefs, or well-being. But what “many” refuse to understand is the difference between holding a belief and insisting on its rightness and the insistence that the secular state enact through legislation the prescribed moral perspective. The first is certainly protected by the first amendment, the second is proscribed by the same amendment. As the Court observed in its opinion:

Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here. But when that sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied. OBERGEFELL v. HODGES, 576 U. S. 19 (2015)

Part of this persistence of refusing to acknowledge this inequality stems from the simple notion that marriage has always been defined as a relationship between a man and a woman, that it was so instituted by God in Garden of Eden. In the western legal tradition marriage, certainly, was elaborated through practice as a contract between or concerning two unequal parties, one, superior, male and the other, inferior, female. But who today acknowledges that marriage is the yoking together of two unequal parties? Yes, still for some among the most conservative, reactionary elements of the Christian tradition, marriage is seen as such, but, if one of the parties to such a marriage brings suit or action to court, such a view has no standing and gains no validity simply because one of the parties insists on such an understanding.
The real history of the institution of marriage reveals that:

The ancient origins of marriage confirm its centrality, but it has not stood in isolation from developments in law and society. The history of marriage is one of both continuity and change. That institution—even as confined to opposite-sex relations—has evolved over time. OBERGEFELL v. HODGES, 576 U. S. 11 (2015)

The Court has said in this opinion that the reality of marriage, what constitutes its component parts, has altered and the reality of this change must be acknowledged through legal elaboration:

The identification and protection of fundamental rights is an enduring part of the judicial duty to interpret the Constitution. That responsibility, however, “has not been reduced to any formula.” Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 542 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting). Rather, it requires courts to exercise reasoned judgment in identifying inter¬ests of the person so fundamental that the State must accord them its respect. See ibid. That process is guided by many of the same considerations relevant to analysis of other constitutional provisions that set forth broad princi¬ples rather than specific requirements. History and tradi¬tion guide and discipline this inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries. See Lawrence, supra, at 572. That method respects our history and learns from it without allowing the past alone to rule the present. OBERGEFELL v. HODGES, 576 U. S. 15 – 16 (2015)

So, this decision bravely leads America forward into the undiscovered country, the collective future of all its citizens; in this, as yet, undiscovered country all human love for fellow human, same-sex, opposite-sex love, can be celebrated equally. This remains our challenge as well as our hope. As W. Whitman looks upon this newest canto of the great American Quest “for liberty and justice for all,” I can see him smiling as the conclusion is reached:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embod¬ies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people be¬come something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be con¬demned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civiliza¬tion’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.
It is so ordered.
OBERGEFELL v. HODGES, 576 U. S. 33 (2015)
Ah, W.W. reflects, my dream that I dreamed in 1860 is now approaching:

I Dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth,
I dream’d that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
In all their looks and words. (W. Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1860 edition)

And as I elaborated in 1871:

It is to the development, identification and general prevalence of that fervid comradeship,… that I look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar American democracy and for the spiritualization thereof. . . I confidently expect a time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audible and visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship, pure and sweet, strong and life-long carried to degrees hitherto unknown—not only giving tone to individual character and making it unprecedentedly emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having the deepest relations to general politics. I say democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or counterpoint, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself.
(W. Whitman, Democratic Vistas, 1871)

With that, he sighs and leaves the courtroom to saunter out among his greatly loved throngs, America’s great legion of lovers, in their jubilation and celebration. With him comes the vast crowd of shades of the fallen, the murdered, the suicides from despair, the formerly disgraced, the lost youths forced out of their families, turning in desperation to prostitution and drug-caused deaths, murdered by their society’s indifference, all of these and more, follow him through the happy throngs, whistling softly as the go to their rest, “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” So ends another June in the American Gay Community.

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One response to “Why Does God Hate Gay Marriage in 17 Memes”

gwynlion June 29, 2015 at 5:04 pm · · Reply →

Another June in the Gay Community.
Almost I see the ghost, spirit, “eidolon” of that great American Bard and Seer, W. Whitman, himself, smiling, urging Justice Kennedy on, as he wrote, rewrote, edited and polished the majority opinion for OBERGEFELL v. HODGES. I can hear Whitman instruct: “breathing breath of life into all these and more (all the physical, political, commercial, etc. achievement) must be its moral civilization- the formulation, expression, and aidancy whereof is the very height of literature. The climax of this loftiest range of civilization, rising above all the gorgeous shows and results of wealth, intellect, power, and art as such—above theology and religious fervor—is to be its development, from the eternal bases and fit expression, of absolute Conscience, moral soundness, Justice. (Whitman, Democratic Vistas, 1871) emphasis mine.” Toward the realization of this dream, his shadow impels.

June 26, 2015: apparently always the end of June is to hold special significance for the Gay Community. On June 27, 1969 a few brave drag queens and their friends and lovers at the Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village, New York City, fought back for the first time in American history against ruthless, wholly arbitrary, police persecution and brutality. This act sparked in others the dream, and from the dream, the demand that Gay people were people, too. More than this, we were citizens of this nation who were endowed by our creator or by nature with the same inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as were all our fellow citizens. What followed of course is a history of a movement filled with many marches and actions of civil disobedience, disease and dread, litigation and legislation, and the births of many organizations across the country, in large cities and small, all of them holding as a central belief, a faith in their fellow citizens’ reason to see love as love. If our fellow citizens could be reached with enough truthful information, we thought, they would do the reasonable thing and invite us to join them at the table of full equality with respect and in amity. While the history of this movement has been marked with many successes that have benefitted the Gay Community in many ways, the dream of full equality has eluded us. Nowhere was this so, patently obvious as in the persistent denial of the value of our long-term relationships with one another. For some reason, no matter how enduring, our personal partnerships could not be recognized as being of equal worth or meriting any of the usual protections or benefits that were granted heterosexual personal partnerships through the special status of marriage. Well, now, that too is changed, here, at the end of another June:

“It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality. Here the marriage laws enforced by the respondents are in essence unequal: same-sex couples are denied all the benefits afforded to opposite-sex couples and are barred from exer¬cising a fundamental right. Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry.” OBERGEFELL v. HODGES, 576 U. S. 21 (2015)

The above passage taken from the just released Supreme Court decision re same- sex marriage succinctly encapsulates what we in the Gay Community have been saying for years. Indeed, many in our community, upon reading this particular portion of the majority opinion, might be tempted to say, “No-duh! How could it take you so long to see this?” The far sadder aspect of this matter is the simple fact that many of our fellow citizens still do not see this or, at least, refuse to acknowledge what we consider to be self-evident. Still we trust in our common bond of humanity and reason as we persist in presenting factual information in our hope of persuading others that we are no threat to their way of life, beliefs, or well-being. But what “many” refuse to understand is the difference between holding a belief and insisting on its rightness and the insistence that the secular state enact through legislation the prescribed moral perspective. The first is certainly protected by the first amendment, the second is proscribed by the same amendment. As the Court observed in its opinion:

Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here. But when that sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied. OBERGEFELL v. HODGES, 576 U. S. 19 (2015)

Part of this persistence of refusing to acknowledge this inequality stems from the simple notion that marriage has always been defined as a relationship between a man and a woman, that it was so instituted by God in Garden of Eden. In the western legal tradition marriage, certainly, was elaborated through practice as a contract between or concerning two unequal parties, one, superior, male and the other, inferior, female. But who today acknowledges that marriage is the yoking together of two unequal parties? Yes, still for some among the most conservative, reactionary elements of the Christian tradition, marriage is seen as such, but, if one of the parties to such a marriage brings suit or action to court, such a view has no standing and gains no validity simply because one of the parties insists on such an understanding.
The real history of the institution of marriage reveals that:

The ancient origins of marriage confirm its centrality, but it has not stood in isolation from developments in law and society. The history of marriage is one of both continuity and change. That institution—even as confined to opposite-sex relations—has evolved over time. OBERGEFELL v. HODGES, 576 U. S. 11 (2015)

The Court has said in this opinion that the reality of marriage, what constitutes its component parts, has altered and the reality of this change must be acknowledged through legal elaboration:

The identification and protection of fundamental rights is an enduring part of the judicial duty to interpret the Constitution. That responsibility, however, “has not been reduced to any formula.” Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 542 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting). Rather, it requires courts to exercise reasoned judgment in identifying inter¬ests of the person so fundamental that the State must accord them its respect. See ibid. That process is guided by many of the same considerations relevant to analysis of other constitutional provisions that set forth broad princi¬ples rather than specific requirements. History and tradi¬tion guide and discipline this inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries. See Lawrence, supra, at 572. That method respects our history and learns from it without allowing the past alone to rule the present. OBERGEFELL v. HODGES, 576 U. S. 15 – 16 (2015)

So, this decision bravely leads America forward into the undiscovered country, the collective future of all its citizens; in this, as yet, undiscovered country all human love for fellow human, same-sex, opposite-sex love, can be celebrated equally. This remains our challenge as well as our hope. As W. Whitman looks upon this newest canto of the great American Quest “for liberty and justice for all,” I can see him smiling as the conclusion is reached:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embod¬ies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people be¬come something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be con¬demned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civiliza¬tion’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.
It is so ordered.
OBERGEFELL v. HODGES, 576 U. S. 33 (2015)
Ah, W.W. reflects, my dream that I dreamed in 1860 is now approaching:

I Dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth,
I dream’d that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
In all their looks and words. (W. Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1860 edition)

And as I elaborated in 1871:

It is to the development, identification and general prevalence of that fervid comradeship,… that I look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar American democracy and for the spiritualization thereof. . . I confidently expect a time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audible and visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship, pure and sweet, strong and life-long carried to degrees hitherto unknown—not only giving tone to individual character and making it unprecedentedly emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having the deepest relations to general politics. I say democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or counterpoint, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself.
(W. Whitman, Democratic Vistas, 1871)

With that, he sighs and leaves the courtroom to saunter out among his greatly loved throngs, America’s great legion of lovers, in their jubilation and celebration. With him comes the vast crowd of shades of the fallen, the murdered, the suicides from despair, the formerly disgraced, the lost youths forced out of their families, turning in desperation to prostitution and drug-caused deaths, murdered by their society’s indifference, all of these and more, follow him through the happy throngs, whistling softly as the go to their rest, “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” So ends another June in the American Gay Community.

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