Well, the courts have done it again! Taken from the people the right to govern themselves and imposed their ideology on well established societal norms. But this time, they have done worse. The Supreme Court of California has redefined a word, and so changed the status of every married person in that state. It used to be that if a man said, "I'm married," that meant he had a wife, a member of the opposite sex. Now, it might mean he has a, well, I'm not sure what to call it? Are they husband and husband? Wife and wife? Partner and partner?
The problem is that it is difficult to define marriage, even in lay terms, without mentioning husbands and wives, and it is difficult to conceive of the institution without them. In my religion, marriage is a sacrament. It is the consecrated union of man and woman as husband and wife, wherein the two are no longer considered separate, but "one flesh." This union is validated in the gift of children, who are that one flesh, in the flesh, so to speak: one part husband, and one part wife. This kind of union is not possible between a man and another man, or a woman and another woman, no matter how badly one might want it to be or how unfair one might think this reality. You may grant whatever legal status you want to these relationships between men, or between women, but they are not marriages.
Yes, you may say, but these are only my religious beliefs, and society is free to have a broader conception of marriage. I may even agree with this sentiment, but only if society makes that decision. That is not what happened in California. Society chose to define marriage as being between a man and a woman and to accommodate civil unions between men, or between women, with similar status, thus allowing gays to have all the privileges and legal rights of marriage, but preserving the definition of marriage as something distinctly separate. The court says if you give these unions the same status and rights, you must call it a marriage. That's like saying that if you grant Black Americans the same rights as White Americans, you have to call Black Americans White Americans.
Can institutions be similar and gain similar treatment under the law without the courts demanding that they are the same thing? Evidently, not in California.
In its decision, the court argued that gays would be treated as second class citizens if they were not allowed to marry. In fact, gays have the same rights to marry as anyone else; they may marry a member of the opposite sex. Where I live in New Jersey, we have an ex-governor who is gay and managed to get married twice. I know a guy who married a woman who was gay. I really don't think there is a shortage of gays getting married. But that's not what they want. They want a special right to marry someone of the same sex, which is not really possible. They want to change the laws of nature so that they may become one with a member of their own sex, the way men and women become one in marriage. They would like this union to result in children, which is not possible. Their true argument is not with the law, but with biology. They may gain some temporary satisfaction in the California court's ruling, but it will not change the underlying facts of why the age-old definition of marriage included a husband and a wife. That is a law that is not so easy for a court to overturn.
