Gay Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom’s Path - By Alexander Cockburn

“Assimilation is not liberation, and the invocation of “equality” as the great attainment of these gay marriages should be challenged. Peter Tatchell, the British gay leader, put it well a couple of years ago: “Equality is a good start, but it is not sufficient. Equality for queers inevitably means equal rights on straight terms, since they are the ones who dominate and determine the existing legal framework. We conform–albeit equally–with their screwed-up system. That is not liberation. It is capitulation.”

xoxo, jared

Also, it’s pretty clear that the proponents of state sponsored homophobia have gotten wise in Massachusettes. They’re banning people from other states from coming to MA to get gay married. Which seems a brilliant way of keeping the gay marriage issue out of the Supreme Court.

Bastards.

Anyway, as long as marriages are around, however, I think the Constitution is pretty clear on this issue:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
- The Unites States Constitution, Amendment XIV

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
- The Unites States Constitution, Amendment IX

On the role of the government in determining what expressions or philosophies are damaging enough to be regulated or proscribed. To me, this goes to most cases where proponents of government regulation argue that God says something is bad:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”
- The Unites States Constitution, Amendment I

On the role of religion-based arguments that underpin proposed government action:
“[O]ur civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence . . . is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; . . . that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, . . .
We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever . . . but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
- Thomas Jefferson, “A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom”

That’s it for now.
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