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Text of the page (random words):
8 is known as protect marriage com so the backers clearly believed that the way to get people to vote for the ballot measure was to convince them that the institution of marriage was threatened if it was not restricted to heterosexual couples formal redefinition of marriage as an exclusively heterosexual arrangment in the state constitution was needed to restore what had never been explicitly stated but always assumed as normative by the common culture the institution of marriage had to be protected from homosexuals who would otherwise destroy it now there can be no denying that the backers of prop 8 had history on their side in at least one respect which is the fact that the judeo christian understanding of marriage was widely assumed for most of this country s history to not differ significantly from the state in terms of sexual orientation the expression heterosexual marriage would ve been foreign to the thinking of virtually all californians in much of the state s history because marriage was impliticly understood to be a union of one man and one woman supporters of marriage equality have to acknowledge that the diversity they celebrate today was not acknowledged in the past and that the notion of gay pride is actually a recent albeit proactive movement that was prompted by near universal rejection of homosexuals in the popular culture but that is not the same thing as arguing that the laws of california in and of themselves inherently privilege any particular sectarian understanding of marriage either today or in the past in fact until 1977 there was no mention of gender or orientation in california statutes regarding marriage which was defined as a personal relation arising out of a civil contract to which consent of the parties making that contract is necessary in that year a nervous legistlative committee realized that there was nothing specific in the language prohibiting same sex marriage and so added the phrase between a man and a woman to the statute the first attempt to redefine marriage in california was not prompted by those arguing for marriage equality but for those who wished to prevent anything but heterosexual unions being recognized as valid in that state to put it another way prior to 1977 no particular understanding of marriage was privileged in california law and the first attempts to privilege any particular understanding was taken by those opposed to marriage equality as it so happene at no time after 1977 did those californians who spoke of gay pride and eventually marriage equality ever attempt to redefine marriage in california law rather advocates of marriage equality used the courts to attempt to obtain the same legal protections and benefits accrued opposite sex couples by invoking long established california statutes eventually the california state supreme court ruled that in fact it was the opponents of marriage equality who had attempted to redefine marriage in california law beginning in 1977 with an act by the legistlature and continuing with a ballot measure proposition 22 which was the state s attempt to emulate doma the state would go on to rule that those attempts to redefine marriage as such were unconstitutional because such redefinitions inherently deprived same sex couples of a fundamental right now this brief of the state s legal history is filled with technicalities that a lot of people find impossible to discuss objectively as with doma which explicitly condemns homosexuality on moral grounds the ballot inititiaves proscribing same sex marriage in this state was largely an exercise in privileging the attitudes of beliefs of many but not all heterosexuals at the time they were placed on the ballot supporters of prop 22 and later prop 8 might have made the specific arguments i listed above but the heart of their argument is that their traditional understanding has always by tradition been privileged in that state and in order to protect their understanding its position of privilege must be formally affirmed by the laws of the state how to privilege that understanding by redefining it what an irony defenders of traditional marraige claimed that laws are needed because gays don t have the right to redefine marriage for everyone else yet it was not gay rights folk who actually attempted to redefine the civil compact of marriage but their opponents if gay residents of the state didn t have that right why did non gay residents of the state have that right how could defenders of traditional marriage make that argument with a straight face the answer of course is that they couldn t and lawyers for the backers of prop 8 have never attempted to make such an argument in court the truth is the majority of voters does have the right to redefine marriage in california s state constitution if they so choose because if such a right didn t exist no one would ve attempted to pass a ballot proposition to do exactly that that s why ultimately prop 8 is doomed whether or not scotus affirms all part or none of it this summer as the voters move on this issue it will no longer be possible for a minority to impose their privileged definition of marriage on the majority i have more to say on this subject in the future let me just conclude by emphasizing that the real motivation for prop 22 prop 8 and doma are the same to privilege a traditional understanding of marriage and thereby deny same sex couples the social psychological and legal benefits of marriage you can t sugar coat it there is an entire class of persons who feel that their morals and traditions are under assault who feel that honor and duty requires them to use the apparatus of the state to privilege their views even if the consequence of that action is deprive gay men and women and their children of certain benefits there are not content to let the same constitutional guarantees of religious liberty protect both themselves and homosexuals equally rather they believe that the very existence of gay people and their families pose a threat to their conception of the moral and social order and that the laws of the state must be leveraged in favor of their beliefs and against both the beliefs and the welface of same sex couples and their families if i have said anything that is inaccurate or unfair with respect to such persons i encourage comments word count 1 264 total 31 424 posted by scott hatfield at 1 51 pm 8 comments 3 27 2013 marriage equality why i changed my mind part 1 i haven t posted much of late and i m probably not going to be posting much in the future either i ve had so much additional work from various quarters in the last year that this blogging pasttime had to either start to significantly benefit other areas of my life or else be neglected but today i m wearing red and with some free time courtesy of spring break this teacher has a chance to say something about an issue that s become important to me in the last few years marriage equality first of all as a practical matter i ve never seen any convincing evidence that same sex couples make worse parents than couples of the opposite sex interestingly when i was younger i assumed the opposite was the case that in order to promote healthy development that it was important for young men and women to have healthy role models of both sexes in their immediate family reasoning this way i argued that while i had no animus against homosexuals per se that the state could justifiably prohibit same sex marriage on the grounds that the state had a vested interest in acting when possible to promote the optimal development of minor children well turns out that my assumptions are terribly flawed it seems that the stability of the family unit is far more important than the gender or orientation of the parents whatever contribution relative to healthy development is made by homosexuals versus heterosexuals seems to be so small that it s easily swamped in the noise of all the other factors that arguably can make childhood heaven or hell for a young person homelessness unemployment addiction the reckless accumulation of debt and marital infidelity seem to pose far greater threats to the health and well being of the child because all of these items appear to contribute directly to the breakdown or dysfunction of the family relationships that sustain the child s development divorce or abandonment especially in adolescence can be particularly traumatic for young people again compared to the obvious bludgeoning of the child s circumstance by these factors the role of gender and sexual orientation is so muted that it probably can t even be estimated with any degree of reliability now it could be argued that homosexuality is just part of a continuum of aberrant behavior and that it could be seen as symptomatic of other issues that directly threaten the family again the data doesn t seem to bear that out when comparing committed couples who have been together for a decade or more the incidence of things like homelessness or addictive behavior does not seem to vary significantly based on the parent s sexual orientation especially when compared with heterosexual couples who were not married the american psychological assocation has made a number of recommendations including the following 1 there is no scientific basis for concluding that gay and lesbian parents are any less fit or capable than heterosexual parents 2 there is no scientific basis for concluding that the children of gay and lesbian parents are any less psychologically healthy or well adjusted 3 the institution of marriage offers social psychological and health benefits that are denied to same sex couples 4 the children of same sex parents will benefit if their parents are allowed to marry so the available data does not in any support my original position on same sex marriage it suggests in fact quite the opposite i am now in my fifties and whether i like it or not it appears that something that i confidently asserted for much of my adult life simply lacks evidential support and probably reflected stereotypical and limited experiences with gay people rather than any real understanding of what it might be like to be any sort of parent with grown children this realization came gradually to me and i should probably express gratitude for the many gay people who may have heard my clever rationale for denying them oppotunity yet continued to engage me with courtesy and dignity while i certainly don t think i ever held homophobic views i definitely was ignorant and i definitely was operating under stereotypes that discouraged me from thinking critically about my views thank god i have an opportunity to make my mea culpa now though to be completely honest it wasn t logic that initially propelled me to reconsider my views or even increased familiarity with the social science literature on the topic it was the practical experience of having a very diverse student population including kids who were nerds misfits or even as some claimed gay teaching was a second career for me during my forties as i gained experience in the classroom i came to see that the one putdown that was still universally accepted by my students was the word gay which had become a stand in insult for anything that the present clique might regard as outlandish it wasn t necessarily hate speech as used by most of my students but it was clearly acceptable practice for them to use this term in such a way and i came to realize that this caused a few students more than discomfort but pain this was disruptive to the learning environment but it was not enough in my view to forbid the practice on practical grounds what was needed i felt was a sound justification not based on sentiment but logic as to why we should not use the word gay as a put down yet as an agent of government it was probably not be prudent for me to advocate for gay rights per se in a public school classroom that would create even more controversy and disruption of the learning environment searching for a professionally appropriate way to protect these students from this sort of language i realized that the reason the word could be used in a perjorative way had to do with it having originally been embraced as an identify statement few people wake up in the morning and announce to their bathroom mirror their pride at their particular sexual orientation but for many homosexuals it became essential in the late 20th century to develop a self descriptive term that was empowering rather than clinical heterosexuals who bemoaned the loss of a perfectly decent word gay from their lexicon had missed the point gay people had chosen to call themselves gay as a means of identifying themselves in a fashion that was assertively positive indeed gayness was often deliberately invoked in the phrase of gay pride thus what made the use of the word gay as an insult so obnoxious was that it attempted to invert the target s positive self image and turn their very identity against them this was a revelation for me personally the very next time a student used the word gay as a put down i matter of factly explained that for many people in our state the word gay described their identity in the same way that the word jew or the word black might describe another person s sense of their self we should never use another s identity as a weapon against them i would say and at some point that saying became a mantra because of course students being students that particular teachable moment would come again i can honestly say that in my classes that sort of moment is becoming less frequent what was a mantra adopted out of convenience as a way of finessing disruptive behavior has gradually become a core belief that informs not only my instruction but how i view others i disagree with political conservatives on many points probably more so now than at any point in my life but i no longer view it as legitimate to use words like conservative or republican as a put down such folk like everyone else deserve to be engaged on the basis of their ideas and not rejected on the basis of how they identify themselves to be consistent with my classroom practice a fair minded person would have to reconsider the arguments made against same sex marriage with respect to the claimed negative effects rather than simply assume that being gay that somehow such unions must be sub optimal with respect to children s development it was at this point that for the first time i made a serious effort to understand the social science literature to see if it would actually provide any support for my earlier rationale the discovery that such evidence was not forthcoming was not entirely a shock my mind was prepared to consider the possibility that i was wrong what was surprising however was that confronted by the evidence it still took time for my views to crystallize so to summarize what i ve written the scientific evidence that is available suggests that marriage equality pro...