Why the Law Does and Does Not Matter

An odd title, coming from me...considering that I see myself as a hardliner for evidence/legal reasoning. But frankly, Proposition 8, while a decidedly legal maneuver, actually has very little to do with "the law."

For us to believe that there is no connection between the societal values which we hold and the laws that we as a society pass is not sustainable by appeals to any sort of appeal to case studies. Yet homosexual activists, even the California Supreme Court, suggest that opening marital opportunities to homosexual just gives them more civil rights, that it has no effect on heterosexuals, that any opposition to these privileges must be born of good old-fashioned bigotry.

By sustaining the California Supreme Court decision, we are not just offering economic benefits to homosexual couples. I wish we were. However, just as a marriage license and a speeding ticket are not just pieces of paper but are cultural rudders, as it were, the legal definition of marriage as heterosexual is similarly a cultural rudder that would have not only legal implications but also fuzzier but more wide-reaching implications concerning our collective worldview. Legal decisions, alas, have consequences. I've discussed these consequences elsewhere...but how do they come about?

Discourse
The first is in our discourse...the "rectification of names." Bill Clinton famously refused to call the Rwandan massacres "genocide" because of the responsibility to act that naming would bring. To think that we can just words/metaphors loosely without it affecting our reasoning would be fallacious. In other words, words and ideas have consequences, as Richard Weaver has famously argued. There's a reason thinkers debated the number of angels dancing on the head of the pin was of tremendous importance to Middle Ages thinkers...because that question directly addressed how they saw the fundamental reality of the world...of time and space. That we discount it as nonsense simply shows that we no longer use ideas as our governing assumptions. The idea of heterosexuality, of homosexuality...it's all considered to be an artificial creation of our own minds which has, its heart, nothingness. And the idea that ideas aren't significant is itself a significant intellectual development for the modern world. We can no longer question the abstract utility of a movement, but only in terms of dollars and cents. Invoke the concept of morality and you'll be a right-wing demagogue (though I myself am averse to the term for merely tactical reasons).

State antagonism
Simply put, we can't trust that the state is our friend. While religions may not be required to perform gay marriages, taking the Court at its word, the state has now established itself to be directly at odds with the interests of various religious groups. And who has the greater power of dissemination when it comes to the spreading of ideology? As one scholar noted, the state holds the power of the Repressive State Apparatus (the public school system and the Courts), so while their precise ruling may give some wiggle room to churches to act as they will, the educational system will be mobilized as an ideological "means of production" (in Marxist theory) to assure the state's decision. We are wrong if we think the state to be a passive entity that simply follows our bidding at election time.

As my friend Ashly noted, we are essentially burning our conceptions of sexuality and gender at the altar of the government's god. Parents who oppose it cannot be notified of its teaching or even opt out of their children being taught it. The state has its interests. My opponents suggest that we are invoking fear...and yes, I am (fear is really the staple of all politics at some level...liberal or conservative). So suggesting that I use fear really sheds little light on the subject...they need to demonstrate to me that my fears cannot plausibly materialize. Given the track record, they will be hard-pressed to do so.

So let's not think that we're just offering civil rights to an oppressed group. That's a compelling narrative, but let's recognize that the forces against Prop. 8 are the same forces that will try to mold our next generation in the government's image.