Hairless Apes

Ok, now that the monkey story is over, I thought I could go back to writing about subjects more befitting of homo sapiens. Things like philosophy, art, music, etc. You know, intelligent topics of discussion and what not.

But then today, on a whim, I started doing some research into Proposition 8, which overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that upheld the rights of same sex couples to marry. Californians voted by a 52.2% majority on election day not to extend the legal rights of heterosexuals to homosexuals. They... decided... excuse me, I'm trying to wrap my brain around this one... to outlaw gay marriage... after the supreme court of their state... said that to do so would be unconstitutional. And they voted that... the supreme court... was wrong? ...Because... their churches... told them to.
California. The state where the gay rights movement started. Where people began to realize that homosexual people are, well, people.

I'm confused.

So I've been researching what happened. And I'm just disgusted. It's the kind of thing that I guess shouldn't surprise me anymore. People being hateful toward each other for no discernable reason is part of our heritage. But even if we are just big hairless apes, and even if we've spent most of our history as a species being terrible to one another, we are still hairless. We have evolved beyond other apes. We do have bigger brains. And we have been using them for a while now. How is it that we continue to be so stupid? What is it in our genetic makeup that plunges us from the heights of philosophy and artistic achievement into the darkness of disgustingly backwards primordial goo? Why do we do this?

I realize this isn't the most well-reasoned or objective look at the issue, but there aren't enough people out there reading this just yet for me to be responsible with my interpretations or reporting of facts. So... if you want... bear with me.

The whole thing is just so preposterous to me, so absolutely awful, so bigoted and prejudicial and – yes, I’ll say it – un-American, that I simply cannot say anything about it that doesn’t sound angry.

It’s not as if Californians voted it down unanimously, or even that there was a landslide at the polls, which might anger me more. I don’t know what I’d do with myself if one of the most progressive states in the nation, which has proven itself to be so forward-thinking and open-minded in the past, was really populated by homophobes and hate-mongers. But then again, if Proposition 8, which overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that upheld the rights of same-sex couples to marry in that state, had been passed by a large margin, there would have been little room for argument. I might have been able to just shake my head at people’s narrow-mindedness, reaffirm my lack of desire to ever move to California, and move on.

But the fact is that the 14 words added to the California State Constitution on November 5th, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California," were voted in by only 52.2% of voters. And the margin was determined almost entirely by those responding to calls by different religious groups to ‘get out and vote.' What makes that even grosser is that even groups from outside the state of California, who are somehow, magically, personally effected and offended by California gays, got involved. Specifically the Mormon church asked its members to donate to pro-Prop8 organizations like "protectmarriage.com," and their members responded with huge and numerous contributions that helped get more closed-minded Californians to the polls.

The Mormons. Who no longer officially permit, but still often engage in, polygyny. Suddenly these people have the right to tell other people who to marry? How does this work in their heads? Apparently their theory that "the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan" excludes homosexuals... because... we just don't want to let them adopt any of the millions of children in the world who currently have no stable or loving parents. Because homosexuals can't procreate in the typical biological way, Mormons have decreed that their matrimonial union would be a threat to families rather than an opportunity to create more for children who have already been brought into this world. The Mormons, who bemoaned the fate of the "innocents" who have been aborted, don't seem to give a fuck about the kids who managed to be born but who nobody wanted.

...ok, ok, maybe I'm going overboard, but... seriously.

Anyway, the whole religious involvement thing does make sense on the one hand: religious groups tend to have very strong opinions about the institution of marriage. Of course they do. Marriage is a cornerstone of most moralistic theologies. Traditionally it has been touted as a holy sacrament in Western societies (at least ever since St. Thomas Aquinas called it that in the 13th century), and as a union between a man and a woman in Christian and Jewish belief systems. Which is all well and good. Freedom of religion and all that. In America religions are free, as privately led institutions, to back up whatever moral systems they choose. Their believers are free to hold those moral systems dear and to internalize them as their own personal beliefs, or natural truths, or whatever. If it makes them feel closer to their god, then I have no quarrel with them, so long as they are not hurting anyone by doing it.

But that last bit, “as long as they are not hurting anyone” – ah, there’s the rub. Because, well, people trying to force their religious, or religiously-based, beliefs on others in a way that discriminates against them socially and legally and economically – that’s hurting people. Church groups bringing their issues with other people’s sexuality into the sphere of legality, forcing their morality down people’s throats and into their bedrooms and bank accounts – that’s hurting people. And it’s violating a dictum that our founding fathers set down hundreds of years ago, one that has become as sacred as things are supposed to be allowed to be in our legal system: the separation of Church and State.

Given this edict, which hangs over all government proceedings like the necessarily absent word of God, how do governments justify poking their noses into people’s bedrooms and private lives on the basis of a religiously-fueled public sentiment? All forms of government, and law enforcement, exist in this country to protect their people from physical, economic, and other tangible harm. And they are allowing themselves to actually harm people. And while they are also to act in accordance with the will of the people in matters open to public voting, I can’t help but be disgusted that they are allowing nothing short of prejudice and discrimination to be part of their public agenda.

Does nobody remember Jim Crowe? Martin Luther King? What it means to allow prejudice, bigotry, fear, and hatred to govern public life? That people have died before and will die again because the law allows discrimination that gets out of control? That at a time in our history, white people considered other races to be ‘naturally inferior,’ and that now we've alloed people who consider gay marriages to be ‘unnatural’ to write laws? Doesn’t this ring a familiarly awful bell?

And furthermore, on a simply practical level, how can people not see that the “protection of marriage” line that’s being recited by those who voted for Proposition 8 really, honestly, makes no sense? How, exactly, are American marriages being threatened by the extension of marriage itself? Are married gays going to somehow go around breaking up heterosexual couples? Are married lesbians going to kidnap the children of two-parent homes once they’ve gained the same tax benefits as married straight people? Is the extension of tax and healthcare benefits to more people going to somehow rob the bank accounts of homophobes? In the genius words of Lewis Black, are there some "gay banditos" out there who will get married and then go from house to house, interrupting idyllic American dinners by fucking each other in the ass in tasteful pumps just to destroy the American family? The answer to all these questions, no matter how many times I look at them from different angles, is “no.” Of course fucking not.

The only people who will be hurt economically, socially, and possibly even physically by prejudicial attitudes being written into our laws and state constitutions are homosexuals who want to be treated the same as everyone else. And the only ones who would be hurt by those attitudes being written out of our laws would be... nobody. Sure, maybe those of us with narrow minds and feeble imaginations feel unnerved by seeing two men kissing or two women holding hands in public, but unless those two men or women force you to watch them perform their private business, or assault you, or rob you, the law should have no more right to interfere with them than you do.

The way I see it is this: if a church or an entire religion want to ban homosexual couples from sharing in their definition of marriage, well, that’s the business of that church or that religion. Nobody should be able to stop them, just like nobody has been able to stop the Boy Scouts from keeping gay men out of their leadership. They are private institutions, and people are free to choose whether or not they want to participate in their ceremonies and beliefs and sacraments, just as they are free to choose whether certain people are allowed to participate. Marriage as a religious ceremony and institution is fair game for the morality of the religion that is joining its believers in matrimony. No skin off my nose.

But when those religions try to start influencing the law, then I start getting angry. And when the law starts acting like a privately controlled religion, well then I get a bee in my bonnet. The legal code of a state or country, according to the philosophies on which American democracy is based, should have nothing to do with religiously-biased morality. If we can’t agree on who should be allowed the legal benefits of marriage, then we should all have to go without. Telling someone that he or she can’t have something just because somebody somewhere thinks that they shouldn’t has no place in a government that we are striving to make available to “all men” who were supposedly “created equal.” If we can’t agree on whether homosexuals should be granted civil unions versus marriages in the eyes of the law, then in order to prevent prejudicial treatment, we must not allow anyone to benefit from marriage on a legal level. Rather than accepting something that others cannot have for no good reason, we must legally sanction only civil unions for everybody.

Let churches handle marriage and do whatever they think is morally all right for their married faithful, and let civil unions be the territory of our laws. Let’s all pay the same in taxes once we’ve been unified civilly, and join ourselves in matrimony in whatever churches will accept us.

And... I'm spent. I can't even think about it anymore without getting angry and risking brain exolode-y. Which is frowned upon at art galleries, where primordial brain goo is frowned upon by the supposedly cultured bipedal, hairless apes who are supposed to be rising above mindless hatred and emotional violence. As if.