The Dosquatch Says…

I’m posting this on its own, with a clear title rather than my typical goofy titles, because I don’t want this message lost within another nor unfairly tainting the content of another.

My take on marriage, same-sex or otherwise, is this – “Marriage” is the province of religion, and I am not certain why secular government takes any position on it at all.

There are many good reasons for the state to allow and establish familial relationships between consenting adults. These reasons include, but certainly are not limited to, concerns regarding taxation, assignment of property, rearing of children and related parental duties, speaking on another’s behalf in time of crisis, establishment of privileged access with respect to 5th Amendment rights, and so forth.

These are all concerns in which the state has a valid, vested interest, and this all remains unequivocally true for all consenting adults* without regard for race, creed, color, age*, or gender. If the state sees fit to establish such ties in the name of civil union at all, there is no secular reason to deny those ties based on arbitrary demographics, whatever those might be. There is also no good secular reason to confuse the state’s needs in said civil unions by invoking the religious notion of marriage in its description.

I understand that the needs and views of a church or religious order might be different. That’s fine, the church is under no obligation to perform the ceremony. A justice of the peace, however, as a public servant, should be, and under the guidance of our 1st Amendment rights, no church or other religious influence should be in a position to establish public policy to the contrary.

I understand that you find it icky, or morally repugnant, or depraved, or what have you, but it ain’t your relationship. Mind your own.

Religion, Social Commentary, philosophy church, gay, marriage, state

Election day was yesterday. Ballots always include referendums, and Maine included this:

Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?

Now, I don’t care what you believe. I’ll talk about the content of the questions later. Right now I want to address the form of the question.

This, like a great many questions on charged issues, is worded very poorly. Add to that the fact that it is a multi-part question, and no matter how the votes tally, I defy you to claim it in any way reflects a consensus view. When attempting to establish public policy by consensus, steering the issue with blatant obfuscation ought not be tolerated.

No referendum question should ever be more difficult to interpret or answer than “Do you want a cookie?” If yours is, then it needs to be rewritten and, possibly, asked as multiple questions. So let’s take this one on, splitting it on the “and”.

“Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry” – what is this asking, anyway? The intent of the question is unclear beyond “do you reject the new law”. It’s possible you think the law is poorly crafted, but don’t otherwise have an objection to gay marriage. It’s possible you reject gay marriage on face. It’s possible you may object for other reasons. It’s possible it may not matter how it is interpreted, but most likely it does. Better to ask in the form of “do you want a cookie?”, or “Should gay marriage be allowed, yes or no”

The second part of the question – “[should the law allow] individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?” is at least straight-forward. The problem is that, as part of a multi-part question, you have to either accept all premises or reject all premises. You may be alright with gay marriage, but object to practitioners being able to opt out. You may object to gay marriage, but prefer – should it exist – that practitioners not be obligated to perform such ceremonies.

And, on the whole, it would be better to determine the will of the people before rather than after the law has been passed.

I don’t mean to pick on Maine, it just happens to be the referendum I plucked in exemplar. There are any of dozens more on dozens of other topics from many, many states I could have also used. My whole point is that confusing questions yield useless results.

Maybe, though, that is the point. It could be that those who write such questions are counting on muddy waters as a means to simply getting their way. If this is true, if this is a means to foist one group’s pet views on the whole, it is a sad thing and ultimately does a disservice to the whole.

For that, you get no cookie.

Politics, Religion, Social Commentary church, gay, marriage, state