Educating Peter

This semester I have had the pleasure of teaching Democratic Theory to undergraduates.  I designed the course myself from scratch and it has been one of the best education experiences of my life.  I won the student lottery in getting a great group of 50 who make the time teaching very enjoyable.  I like teaching this subject because I know a lot about it and because it is so important to reemphasize basic principles of democracy after eight years of the Bush administration.  These themes include freedom of conscience, pluralism, equal treatment under the law, and necessity of separating religion from governance; themes largely ignored by Bush and his masters.  I try not to use the same example too often when I teach but sometimes I cannot help it.  Examples about legal struggles affecting GLBTQ people are not only observable in real time; they touch on multiple themes at the same time.

It is easy to provide an example of freedom of conscience or pluralism using legal discrimination against people because of their sexual orientation.  It is easy to use these examples as basic demonstrations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.  But I have to be careful to provide examples of these concepts without using my classroom as a platform for partisan activism.  I really do seek an intellectual, constitutional argument against equal rights for gay people.  Although this is a popular topic among news and politics blogs, most of the opposition’s rhetoric reads like this gem from GoodAsYou:

 

Stating the obvious, even the most respectable anti-gay interest groups do not have graduates of well-ranked universities or law schools on their staffs.  They just cannot be found.  AFTAH’s “legal expert” on gay issues, Matt Barber, is really a former over-the-phone insurance salesman who was fired after he used the company’s name and logo in an online screed against gay people that he wrote while technically on the clock. Then he claimed he was fired for his religious beliefs. But some groups at least try to sound intellectual and lay out their case.  There are people that have technically passed the California bar exam going before their state’s supreme court regarding Proposition 8, even if those attorneys graduated from bottom tier, barely accredited law schools like Regents, founded by Pat Robertson specifically to train law students in the art of inane religious arguments for civil law.  

Finding no value in the “Adam and Steve” reasoning demonstrated in the example above I actively seek out an intellectual argument against gay rights.  I am beginning to have more hope in finding the Holy Grail with wine still in it.  One person that at least tries to sound legitimate is Peter LaBarbera, a strident anti-gay activist who runs a website designed solely to highlight and perpetuate negative stereotypes of gay people.  Unlike many religio-political leaders who focus on several hot button issues, Peter devotes his entire career to anti-gay activism and a downright creepy fixation with the fringes of the culture including an annual “undercover” sojourn to a leather bondage enthusiasts convention and odd, breathless descriptions of pornography the average web browser cannot even find.  Once he posted about googling the words gay, porn, and military and describing what he found.  These offerings by Peter I have no interest in reading. 

Excluding all the posts that are as inflammatory as they are masturbatory, occasionally Peter or another guest “writer” manages to belch out a half-plausible legal argument.  Usually he seeks some form of correspondence with me after such postings in what I can only assume is a search for validation through conversation with someone serious.  Sometimes I cannot help but indulge my vanity and his neediness by replying.  Below are my answers to his questions.  Honestly, my undergraduates ask better questions than this supposed expert and they came into the course already possessing a stronger grasp of legal and constitutional principles.  Still, I feel I am providing an act of academic charity by donating my time to Educating Peter.

PETER: I hate to ask you to do this, but please check out lesbian Pam Spaulding’s juvenile web story on our counter-protest against a Chicago pro-homosexual “marriage” rally — and the hate-filled comments from Pam’s followers on her “Pam’s House Blend” blog. I’ve worked with hundreds if not thousands of mostly Christian pro-family and pro-life activists over the years and I cannot imagine any of them writing anything that comes even close to the nastiness of these comments. More evidence that nobody hates like the Left.

Pam must be so proud of her intelligent readers….More on this coming, with photos…

GABE: I read all of the comments on Pam's post. While they are not nice they basically make fun of your appearance, your interpretation of religion, and your fixation with gay people. But I didn't see any comments that said you should be treated differently under the law for choosing to identify as a Christian. I cannot see how you interpret those comments as hate. It's one thing to disagree with or dislike a group. It's another thing entirely to advocate legal discrimination based on identity. That, sir, is real hate.

PETER: C’mon Gabriel, you’re smarter than that. It’s all ad hominem. Personal insults, etc. That’s hateful behavior (and pretty childish, too). It’s nasty stuff – aren’t you embarrassed for them, just as I’m embarrassed when Fred Phelps gets publicity with his false “God Hates Fags” message? 
?    I’d encourage you to step back and take a look at your hard-core activists – what’s that liberal bumper sticker: “Mean People Suck”?

GABE: I'm not saying the comments are nice.  I make a difference in terms of degree.  Making fun of someone's appearance is not tantamount to advocating that they be treated differently under the law.  You have made a "career" out of perpetuating negative stereotypes of GLBT people and advocating for political inequality.  Those most affected have every justification to hurl insults at you, ad hominem or not.

I also draw a distinction between formal and informal advocacy.  The posts on a website are formal and assumed to be edited with forethought.  Comments are off-the-cuff remarks.  As Jeremy posted yesterday on GoodAsYou, "christians" make just as despicable comments as anyone, even threatening violence.  But nowhere on Pam's site or anyone else's have I seen anyone advocate that it should be legal for a christian to be fired from his job simply for identifying as christian.  You advocate that employers should be able to fire someone just because an employee is gay.  That is unequal treatment under the law and that is more demonstrably hateful than making fun of your weight.

I try in my correspondence not to stoop to comments on appearance.  However, when I write things like, "Please get help," it is sincere.  I really think you should sit down and talk to an actual psychologist - not a church counselor or "minister" - about your fixation with gay people.

PETER: What do you mean, “freedom of conscience” as applied to pro-gay ideology and public policy, Gabriel? –pl

GABE: Although I disagree with your understanding of homosexuality I support your right to have whatever religious or moral belief you choose.  You have every right to pursue the will of God in your faith and then express what you believe to be God's will in whatever manor you choose.  There is nothing intrinsically hateful about identifying behaviors your religion teaches are wrong and telling the world what your religion says.  For example, a Hindu can assert vehemently that eating beef is forbidden without hating meat eaters.  A Buddhist can espouse lessons against materialism without hating greedy Wall Street tycoons.  So, it is completely possible to oppose homosexual behavior and not be a bigot, or not be operating from a position of hate.

However, based on an analysis of your website and similar groups I have to conclude your advocacy goes beyond opposition to a behavior.  You advocate that people should be treated differently under the law because they do not share your beliefs.  You advocate that people who do not share your characterization of homosexuality as simple behavior or who don't practice the faith that says those behaviors are wrong should have a different legal status than people who do.  Hindus do not advocate the legal right to fire meat eaters.  Buddhists do not advocate marriage licenses be denied to the wealthy.  There's something more to your agenda than opposition to mere behavior.

I personally do not believe one needs to go to a priest to confess one's sins.  Actually, under my understanding of God the idea that a human intercessor is necessary challenges the very essence of my faith.  I do not believe that is what the Bible teaches and I oppose certain acts done by Catholics.  I don't hate Catholics.  I'm not an anti-Catholic bigot.  I just object to certain Catholic acts based on my faith.  I fully recognize Catholicism is not an immutable trait.  It is a chosen identity and one chooses to live a Catholic lifestyle.  I don't agree with that lifestyle and if anyone asks I'm happy to explain why based on my personal beliefs and that does not make me a bigot.
Disagreement is not hate.

However, if I were to go beyond the rejection of Catholic behaviors and advocate that it should be legal to fire someone for being Catholic that would be bigoted.  If I were to say that Catholics should not be issued marriage licenses by the government because their love cannot be legitimate or their union must occur under the practices of my faith, that would be bigoted. If I were to argue in any way that someone should be treated differently under the law for identifying as Catholic I would be bigoted.

You probably don't accept the Catholic analogy so I will generalize to freedom of conscience.  In a liberal democracy people are free to order their lives how they choose and to accept or reject whatever religious teachings they want.  We have ontological liberty.  The religious preferences of one group, no matter how numerous or powerful, are not a legitimate basis for different treatment. Gay people who are happy with being gay and want to identify as gay don't follow your religion.  They probably do acts you oppose.  But moral opposition to behavior alone is not a legitimate basis for unequal treatment under the law.  Read the 14th Amendment, please.

Expressing beliefs about behaviors one finds wrong is not bigoted.  However, using faith to support laws that penalize those not believing like you do is bigoted.  The fact that you go further than just opposing behavior is indicative of some degree of malice toward those that identify as gay.  A lot of people are repulsed by the thought of gay behavior but they don't devote their entire professional adult life to countering equal treatment under the law.  Your political agenda and obsessive fixation, not your religious beliefs, indicates an animus toward the identity of being gay, which surpasses opposition to homosexual behavior.

PETER:    [In red text for some weird reason] Every culture for 5,000 years and every religion for 5,000 years has said the definition of marriage is between one man and a woman.

GABE: If every culture defined marriage as one woman and one man for 5000 years, why did King Solomon have many wives?

PETER: Marriage was always between man and woman and yes, sometimes, unfortunately, between man and “women.” But never has marriage widely been regarded in a society as between “man and man,” or between “woman and woman.” Tell me, Gabriel, why should we start now?

GABE:  Marriage in history has primarily been a religious construct.  No law should seek to define marriage for any religious group.  Looking at civil marriage specifically, it is a government-recognized contract.  The 14th Amendment of the Federal Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law.  That means the government cannot grant a contract to one party it does not grant to another.  Whether or not the union comports with a religious prescription does not matter.  Religious institutions can continue to define marriage however they like.  Churches can also refuse to marry whomever they want.  Many pastors and priests refuse to marry couples that cohabitate, don’t submit to premarital counseling, or have been married before.  That is their right.  However, the government cannot deny a couple a marriage license because of a religious teaching.  The core of your argument is that religious teachings should be a guiding criterion for civil law. It demonstrates a shocking lack of understanding of the most basic tenets of liberal democracy.

Marriage has been redefined by every culture in every time.  Serfs in feudal England could not have legally recognized marriages because marriage was a way to pass property from generation to generation.  Serfs had no property to inherit.  Slaves in America could not have marriage licenses no matter how sincere and committed a slave couple viewed its union.  For most of human history women have been considered a piece of property exchanged from the father to the husband.  That is why ceremonies still ask,  “Who gives this woman away.”  If you do not think marriage has been continuously redefined, how much was your wife’s dowry?

Although not common, other cultures have recognized same-sex unions too.  But, the comparison is moot.  Wholly civil marriage with no religious component is a fairly new concept for which direct comparisons to past cultures cannot be made.  Furthermore, marriage is now a combining of lives between two people rather than an exchange of property among landed gentry.  Because civil marriage only includes government recognition of the combination of civil aspects of two people’s lives – tax returns, inheritance, federal benefits, next-of-kin, inheritance, etc. – like all civil laws it should be the same for all people regardless of gender or religious practice.   

  

Comments

[Stephen]

Excellent to see you back to writing here Gabe! I really enjoyed this particular piece, and agree completely that there is no legal justification I have been able to find for not recognizing the right of any two citizens with legal standing not to have the exact same right to enter into a contract, as any other two citizens with legal standing. (The need for legal standing is why the arguments that this will lead to a slippery slop of people marrying animals or inanimate objects is absurd. None of those things have legal standing or the ability to enter into contracts as a consenting adult).

What do you think about the idea of the government just getting out of the "marriage" business entirely? I've long thought that it would make more sense that from the Government's point of view all "marriages" should simply be civil unions, regardless of the genders of those involved, and we should simply retire the term "Marriage" from any legal meaning, leaving it as a private cultural institution. That way, no church would ever have to worry about being forced to "marry" anyone they didn't want to (not that they have to now anyway, as you point out churches refuse to marry people for all kinds of reasons all the time that the government doesn't and can't use as reasons to prevent people from being married).

All of that being said, I do think that as long as the Government/State is going to use the term Marriage, and that that term is going to have any legal meaning then it has to be open to all individuals with legal standing, regardless of sex, gender, race, or any other classification you could think of.

[emborpono]

He continued in the same spirit
http://shopping.invisionplus.net/?mforum=shopping&s=21f7f1cc7c03cbf231833a5e036bb3aa&showuser=312