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With the news yesterday that New Hampshire passed a law to allow gay marriage I sincerely hope that the proponents of gay marriage may begin to see the right way to bring the change they seek – especially when put in context next to Vermont’s legalization of gay marriage, Maine’s legalization, the setback in the California Supreme Court ruling on Prop. 8, and the reaction to Massachusetts’ Supreme Court decision in 2004. While there has been little if any reaction to those three states that legalized gay marriage through the legislative process there was a large push to overturn the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts through a state constitutional amendment, and the same approach in California succeeded in rolling back the original Supreme Court decision in California that legalized gay marriage temporarily in 2008.
The point is that the right way to enact these changes is to take the time to educate and convince people so that the change may be made through the legislative process and be accepted rather than simply trying to ram “equality” down the throats of your fellow citizens based on an unwillingness to trudge the long path of education and debate.
Although it may seem quicker to use the courts, we should all remember that cutting off the debate through judicial action has not led to any resolution on the abortion issue even after more than 30 years. It may be that 30 years would be enough to take the “slower” route of education and persuasion to peacefully achieve your goals.
9 replies on “Change Done Right”
I totally agree, this is a good lesson for anyone trying to convince anyone of something they are not comfortable with. Ramming takes longer and usually ends with a worse product (angry people, fences to mend, etc.), whereas if you take the time to talk, educate and persuade, you will get much more done and all will come out with better feelings of the process and the results.
“A person changed against their will, is of the same opinion still.”
It all comes back to agency . . . no one wants to be forced.
Slowly by ‘educating’ or quickly by legislative shoehorning, it doesn’t matter how we get to institutionalized selfishness. The entire debate is raised by people who have forgotten their relationship with God and the purpose of families.
Actually, it’s judicial shoehorning that I was addressing and it does matter very much how these social changes are made. Through education and the democratic process we are much less likely on complex and emotional issues to overreact and throw the baby out with the bathwater.
On the surface issues like abortion and gay marriage are very simple, especially to those people on both sides of the debate that are ready to charge in and make a sweeping rule that would be binding on everyone else. But if we look deeper into either of those issues (and a host of other issues) we always find that there are subtleties that are not addressed by those sweeping changes.
For example, virtually everyone agrees that abortion needs to be an option when the life of the mother is in danger – how much danger is enough to legally justify an abortion? There is no consensus on that because legally we are wrangling with a horrendous Supreme Court decision that cut off the process of debate and legal experimentation that the states were engaged in before Roe.
When it comes to gay marriage, despite what the gay rights activists believe most of the people who favor traditional marriage do not have a great desire to prevent homosexuals from having happy and fulfilling lives, nor to interfere with their rights. On the other hand, we have not legally found a way to protect the rights of gays, like the right to visit and care for loved ones, while maintaining that there is a substantive difference between the relationship of two men and the relationship of a man and a woman. (And all that is before we even talk about the spiritual component of the issue – which is crucial.)
The subtleties of these emotionally charged issues is one more evidence of why we need limited government – the less the law has to say about things the more we are able to use our judgment in dealing with individual situations. Whether we are trying to codify something into law or whether we are simply dealing with an individual situation our only chance at doing things right is to have a moral society. When we codify something into law it has a wider impact, and the fact is that more often than not we don’t get things exactly right so we need to use the best method possible when making those decisions. Because of their widespread and lasting impact that means that we need the widespread participation in education and discussion that are a natural part of the democratic process rather than the more confined participation in the judicial process.
Dude, serious ‘Charlie Brown talking with the teacher’ moment. Blah Blah, Blah Blah, Blah Blah.
The crucial issue here is that people have forgotten their relationship with God and the purpose of families. The subtleties you’re talking about are the same nuances as getting the sock drawer organized while the house is burning to the ground. Why do we talk about the socks at all? Shouldn’t we simply address the crucial issues as best we can?
Gays keep themselves from leading happy, fulfilling lives. ‘Marriage’ doesn’t make a person happy. The raison d’ etre of the ‘gay movement’ is to avoid feeling guilt. To ‘have it my way’ and not have to worry about whether ‘my way’ actually conforms to God’s way.
After all, God isn’t here, so why should they do what he says. These silly traditions handed down to us by our fathers only bind us down and keep us from enjoying our rights.
Sound like a rough paraphrase of anything you may have read?
Charlie Brown talking with the teacher – in other words the “Blah, blah, blah” translation of anything we don’t agree with is the very thing that stifles discussion and limits us to a black and white choice between gay marriage and no gay marriage, or between abortion on demand and no abortion. Sadly the world is not that black and white.
You are arguing that simply being gay impedes a persons ability to lead a happy fulfilling life because being gay keeps them separated from God’s love. (Admittedly I am extrapolating from what you actually said, but I’m confident that you would agree with that assessment.) Using that same logic – that sin leads to unhappiness and lack of fulfillment and so we must act in accordance with the principles of righteousness if we are to live happy and fulfilling lives – I argue that we cannot reduce this to the simple argument that you are trying to make. Righteousness demands that we treat our fellow men with respect and dignity even when they are engaged in sin. That does not mean that we must always tolerate sin, but it does mean that we cannot use sin to justify sins of hatred and bigotry. If we are to honor the God-given rights of our fellow men then it is appropriate, even necessary, for us to honestly explore whether we are denying those rights inappropriately to some person or people based solely on whether we recognize some sin in their lives rather than being based on whether such a denial is a legitimate consequence of their sin.
A person has a right to define those with whom they have the closest relationships and it is not the business of outsiders to deny them the association of those they are closest to in their time of need. If we are denying that right to some people simply because they are engaged in homosexuality then we must fix that injustice. That does not mean that recognizing gay marriage is the appropriate vehicle to fix it (it’s not), but we have to be able to honestly see the ample evidence that some people are having their rights trampled (hospitals denying the rights of homosexuals to see their sick partners have been well documented). If we refuse to even engage the issue by translating it to “blah, blah, blah, but that’s a sin” then we are complicit in infringing on the rights of some of God’s children and we are thus separating ourselves from the Good Shepherd.
I think the burning house is the wrong imagery. Is the house of American society crumbling? Yes. Is that the fault of gays? Not exclusively. It is the fault of gays who would thrust their idea of rights (gay marriage) upon the rest of us while refusing to engage in a discussion of what is really right. It is also the fault of pharisees who will not even talk about the rights of gay people simply because they are gay – as if they were not people. It is the fault of Dr. Tiller who consistently broke the law to perform an abortion simply because he believed that it is the right of any woman to have an abortion anytime she so chooses just as much as it is the fault of the man who murdered Dr. Tiller because he believes that we can take the law into our own hands if we do not like the way it is being enforced (or not enforced in this case).
Our society is not breaking down because we have gay people – in fact it would be closer to true to say that we have so many gay people because we were already crumbling our society by shutting our eyes to our many other sins.
First – Leave abortion out of the gay debate. You’re dancing in the fringes when you talk about life of the mother. When I talk about abortion, I’m talking about didn’t-keep-your-pants-on-and-are-scared-of-the-consequences abortion. A ‘mother’s life’ question is generally exquisitely painful to those involved and the law has little place there.
Second – The world is in fact that black and white. Unless of course, He sometimes doth vary a little bit from that which He hath said to accommodate people who don’t quite like that His course is one eternal round.
What respect and dignity are you asking me to treat them with? I’m not stoning anybody. I’m just not letting them assume privileges reserved to others. If I keep the law, I expect the associated privileges, if I break the law, I expect to not have those privileges.
Gays have all the rights of roommates. I don’t see what love has to do with this. The Consitution doesn’t guarantee that roommates can visit each other in the hospital. There’s no rights involved, no issue and nothing to discuss. Refusing to recognize a gay relationship as legitimate is not society intruding, it’s society trying to keep the foundation of society in place. It’s not that they’re not human, it’s that they haven’t kept the law that allows them hospital visiting rights. It’s not the state’s fault that hospitals won’t allow them to see each other. If you want to blame somebody, blame the med-mal lawyers.
Hatred and bigotry are different than non-acceptance and non-indulgence of sin. Stoning is the former, not allowing hospital visiting rights is the former.
Third – If you don’t like the burning house image, we can go with deck-chairs on the Titanic or running around with a bucket of water to put out the hurricane. Pick one. I’ve got more.
Fourth – Please changed the paragraph settings back to left flush. Centering the paragraph is kind of annoying to read.
First, the debate was about how we make changes in society and in the law – that applies to abortion as much as it does to gay marriage. I used those two examples because the abortion issue was “settled” through the courts (and we see how well that worked) while the gay marriage issue threatens to be largely battled in the courts. You are right that the law really has no place in the abortion decision where the life of the mother is concerned, but thanks to Roe it is there already.
Second, the world is that black and white as far as the fact that God does not vary either to the right or to the left, but if you examine my statements you will find that they are perfectly in line with the published opinions of the church that we both adhere to. The church has said that abortion should not be condoned except in cases such as the life of the mother (they have gone beyond that but the point is that I have not exceeded what they have said). They have also said that they support rights for gays such as hospital visitation and probate rights. Why should the hospital have any say in whether my roommate can visit me? I think you are right to place the blame with medical malpractice lawyers who seem to be busy being active so that they feel they have done something worth their fees. Once again this is evidence of the law being inserted where it really does not belong.
Third, you may think of it as straightening deck chairs and sock drawers, but I think that the process by which we make changes in society and law is fundamental to having a healthy society. So long as we use a broken process we are guaranteed to get laws that are detrimental to society.
Fourth, I have not changed the paragraph settings – they are still left justified as they have always been.
Fourth – Must have been my browser, the home computer is just fine
Third – Families are fundamental to a healthy society. God’s laws and obedience thereto are fundamental to a healthy society. A democratic republic is totally unnecessary when the first two are in place. So all the legislating and politicking in the world is simply collecting brass in a firefight when the fundamentals aren’t in place.
Second – I’m not complaining about your stance on abortion. Has anything the Church said about visitation or probate rights come through official channels? I’ve heard that rumor kicked around but I’ve never seen anything official.
I’ll be honest, my opinion of most people’s hot button issue comes from Lord of the Flies, “Sucks to your [issues].” Put the fundamental in place first and the fringes cases take care of themselves.
Families are fundamental to society, but they are not the only thing that is fundamental to society. How we define and respect families affects our society and we have been tearing that institution apart slowly for a long time. The problem is that how we operate our societies affects our families as well. The fact is that we are burning the candle at both ends. You and I do not fundamentally disagree but you seem to look at every problem from the perspective of trying to put the fire of the destruction of the family out and assume that if we succeed in stopping that fire the other will take care of itself. On the other hand, I believe that we have to attack both fires because they feed each other and because either one is enough to functionally destroy our nation. Often when I am focusing on the issues from the social and legal structure standpoint you jump in and say I am ignoring the real problem.
Now let me lay to rest the rumor you have heard kicked around. This is from Novermber 5, 2008 and published on the church website (among other places):