Reflections on Proposition 8: California’s Shame (Part Two)

What is one thing you will com­mit to do in 2009 that will draw you closer to Jesus?
(This is not a New Year’s Resolution)

Click here to read Part One.

If Amer­i­cans learned noth­ing else from the Novem­ber 2008 elec­tion, they learned this: We are a polar­ized soci­ety. Never before in my life­time have I seen so many exam­ples of intol­er­ance, mis­un­der­stand­ing, and out­right manip­u­la­tion of the facts in order to sway other vot­ers as I wit­nessed in the months lead­ing up to the elec­tion or in the weeks since.

The good news is that Amer­i­cans are pas­sion­ate about the issues we face at the dawn of this New Year. The bad news is that many Chris­t­ian Amer­i­cans are inca­pable of lov­ing, tol­er­ant dis­agree­ment. Is the cur­rent state of divi­sion between Amer­i­can Chris­tians what Jesus envi­sioned when he said that he did not come to earth in human form to “make life cozy”? (Matthew 10:34)

As to Propo­si­tion 8, I believe that, when they entered the vot­ing booth, too many Cal­i­for­ni­ans were unable to sep­a­rate reli­gious beliefs and moral imper­a­tives from sec­u­lar law. If you ask most of the vot­ers who cast a bal­lot in favor of Propo­si­tion 8 — and the com­ments posted on this site demon­strate the point — they will tell you that their vote was based, at least in part, upon their reli­gious beliefs which form the basis for their moral out­look on the world and com­pels them to the con­clu­sion that the part­ners in a valid mar­i­tal rela­tion­ship must be lim­ited to one man and one woman. But the Found­ing Fathers of this coun­try designed our sys­tem of democ­racy method­i­cally and delib­er­ately for the express pur­pose of assur­ing that all cit­i­zens enjoy reli­gious free­dom, i.e., the abil­ity to believe and wor­ship — or not believe or wor­ship — in the man­ner each sees fit with­out inter­fer­ence from the gov­ern­ment. By its very def­i­n­i­tion, the term “reli­gious free­dom” means that no one can or should impose his/her beliefs upon or force oth­ers to live in accor­dance with reli­gious prin­ci­ples to which he/she does not espouse.

Propo­si­tion 8 has noth­ing to do with reli­gion or reli­gious beliefs, but, rather, con­sti­tutes a demo­c­ra­t­i­cally imper­mis­si­ble entan­gle­ment of reli­gion and gov­ern­ment. It is a sec­u­lar law sub­ject to Con­sti­tu­tional scrutiny — and it can­not sur­vive that rig­or­ous exam­i­na­tion because it strips away fun­da­men­tal equal rights by inject­ing dis­crim­i­na­tory lan­guage into the State’s Con­sti­tu­tion. As such, it is a scourge upon Cal­i­for­nia, a badge of shame that Cal­i­for­nia cit­i­zens as a whole are invol­un­tar­ily wear­ing until it is again struck down by the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court.

“Propo­si­tion 8 must be inval­i­dated because the amend­ment process can­not be used to extin­guish fun­da­men­tal con­sti­tu­tional rights with­out com­pelling jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.” Jerry Brown, Cal­i­for­nia Attor­ney General

Mak­ing the case that Chris­tians need to lov­ingly dis­agree with each other is made more dif­fi­cult by the shock­ingly arro­gant argu­ments advanced by its sup­port­ers. In the brief they lodged with the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court, Propo­si­tion 8 sup­port­ers con­tend not only that it must be upheld, but that exist­ing mar­riages must be deemed null and void because only a mar­riage between one man and one woman is wor­thy of legal recog­ni­tion. In their zeal to hold onto their bal­lot box vic­tory, they appar­ently over­looked the fact that Propo­si­tion 8 is com­pletely devoid of any lan­guage that would empower the court to apply its pro­vi­sions retroac­tively, thereby inval­i­dat­ing the thou­sands of mar­riage cer­e­monies per­formed in the brief inter­val between the Supreme Court’s his­toric rul­ing and Propo­si­tion 8’s pas­sage. That’s some mighty sloppy lawyer­ing by, among oth­ers, Ken­neth Starr, who wrote in the open­ing brief:

For this court to rule oth­er­wise would be to tear asun­der a lav­ish body of jurispru­dence. That body of deci­sional law com­mands judges — as ser­vants of the peo­ple — to bow to the will of those whom they serve — even if the sub­stan­tive result of what peo­ple have wrought in constitution-amending is deemed unenlightened.

As the state’s high­est rank­ing law enforce­ment offi­cial, the Attor­ney Gen­eral is specif­i­cally respon­si­ble for uphold­ing state law. To his immea­sur­able credit, Jerry Brown shocked many Cal­i­for­ni­ans last week by pub­licly declar­ing that “constitution-amending” will not be tol­er­ated in Cal­i­for­nia when such “unen­light­ened” efforts serve to deny its cit­i­zens equal pro­tec­tion under the law. Although he ini­tially said that his office would fight to have Propo­si­tion 8 upheld — just as, in the first instance, his office unsuc­cess­fully argued against the legal­ity of same-sex mar­riage — “upon fur­ther reflec­tion and a deeper prob­ing into all the aspects of our Con­sti­tu­tion,” he directed his deputies to lodge a brief in oppo­si­tion to Propo­si­tion 8. “It became evi­dent that the Arti­cle 1 pro­vi­sion guar­an­tee­ing basic lib­erty, which includes the right to marry, took prece­dence over the ini­tia­tive,” he announced. “Based on my duty to defend the law and the entire Con­sti­tu­tion, I con­cluded the court should pro­tect the right to marry even in the face of the 52 per­cent vote.” For a man who, by all accounts, wants to con­tinue his long polit­i­cal career for at least a few more years, his stance on Propo­si­tion 8 amounts to a huge polit­i­cal risk, a fact that under­scores the poignancy and brav­ery of his legal conclusions.

Of all the arti­cles I have read about the ongo­ing legal bat­tle, I think that Jef­frey Feld­man summed it up best:

The idea that civil rights can be stripped by a sim­ple major­ity plebiscite is not just uneth­i­cal, but actu­ally vio­lates the prin­ci­ples on which our sys­tem of gov­ern­ment is based. First off, it is uncon­sti­tu­tional to pass laws that deprive cit­i­zens of rights guar­an­teed in the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion (e.g., equal pro­tec­tion), a basic point the Prop. 8 folks do not seem to get. Sec­ond, the pur­pose of the judi­ciary is to uphold the Con­sti­tu­tion as a form of sys­temic bal­ance to the other two branches of gov­ern­ment — not to bow down to them.

The lan­guage of the “Yes To 8″ brief sug­gests that group sees itself in a moral strug­gle not just to strip gay peo­ple of rights, but to mobi­lize pub­lic against the Cal­i­for­nia judiciary.

Time will tell which effort will hold the day. How­ever, I sus­pect there are few judges in Cal­i­for­nia (or any­where else) who respond well when lawyers “com­mand” them to “bow” down. Come to think of it, nobody responds well. And when you think about it, that really is the point of this whole Prop. 8 non­sense, is it not? Try to strip Amer­i­can cit­i­zens of their equal rights, and when that does not work: raise a bloody stink about the sup­posed despotic decline of the United States judi­cial system.

Iron­i­cally, not even Jesus “com­mands” us to “bow” down before him. On the con­trary, we have been given free will, a core con­cept of the Chris­t­ian faith. We come to believe in the divin­ity of Jesus not by being com­manded to do so, or even through good works, but solely by grace through faith.

What does all of this have to do with the one thing I plan to do in 2009 that will con­tinue to draw me closer to the Sav­ior? I plan to con­tinue study­ing, delib­er­ately, con­tem­plat­ing, and med­i­tat­ing upon this, as well as other issues, in an effort to dis­cern the Bible’s true mean­ing for Chris­tians in 2009. I believe that’s the key: We are liv­ing in 2009, not New Tes­ta­ment days. The Bible must be read, under­stood, and inter­preted con­sis­tent with all of the knowl­edge gained in the two thou­sand or so years since it was writ­ten. It can­not be read or inter­preted in a vac­uum, divorced from advances made in the fields of, e.g., sci­ence, med­i­cine, and sociology.

And I will con­tinue to speak out, stand­ing up for what I believe to be divine truths. I wel­come lov­ing, Christ-like dis­agree­ment and zeal­ous argu­ment from vis­i­tors to this site because that type of dis­course helps all of us grow. But I can­not stand silent in either my real or cyber lives. A cen­tral fea­ture of my per­son­al­ity is the need to speak out and take a prin­ci­pled stand on mat­ters about which I am pas­sion­ate. By giv­ing form to my thoughts, opin­ions, and ideas, my rela­tion­ship with the Divine Cre­ator is enriched and deep­ens on a daily basis.

One thing is cer­tain — what­ever our per­son­al­ity may be, or what­ever it is to become, is wrapped up in the one idea that there is a Spirit in man, and God Him­self is incar­nated in every liv­ing soul. This Spirit within us is the gift of heaven, and with­out it we would not be alive. It is a recog­ni­tion of this Spirit within us that is the true start­ing point for the devel­op­ment of personality.

We often think we have to pat­tern our lives after the lives of oth­ers. But our per­son­al­ity, no mat­ter how win­some it may be, or how con­vinc­ing, or how dom­i­nant, is more than a mask we wear; it is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of an inner, hid­den Prin­ci­ple, a Divine spark within us which uses both the mind and the holy for Its own Self-Expression.

…

There is a Divine Per­son back of our per­son­al­ity — a unique man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Liv­ing Spirit. It is never alike in any two peo­ple. This is proved by the fact that no two per­sons’ thumb prints are alike, no two blades of grass are alike, no two any­things are iden­ti­cal. And yet every­thing is rooted in One Life, One Pres­ence, and One Power. Why, then, should we expect that any two indi­vid­u­als should be alike? God Him­self has placed a unique stamp on every­one. We should not study to be alike, but rather to develop what we really are.

Unity does not mean uni­for­mity. Our unity with other peo­ple does not mean that we must think and act as they do. All it means is that we should get along with them. We should unify with every­thing, while at the same time keep­ing intact and whole that God-given some­thing at the cen­ter of our being which is the Spir­i­tual Ego.

Liv­ing the Sci­ence of Mind by Ernest Holmes

My prayer for 2009 is that Chris­tians every­where develop more fully their own per­son­al­i­ties and con­tinue striv­ing to live har­mo­niously in unity with each other, if not uni­for­mity. I pray the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court inval­i­dates Propo­si­tion 8 so that Cal­i­for­ni­ans can enjoy equal pro­tec­tion under the sec­u­lar laws of this State and that all Chris­tians impacted by that rul­ing appre­ci­ate the fact that “God Him­self has placed a unique stamp on every­one,” exhibit­ing tol­er­ance, under­stand­ing, and accep­tance of all per­sons irre­spec­tive of their dif­fer­ent beliefs about sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, mar­riage, and the other issues fac­ing each of us on this first day of 2009.

Happy New Year!

Writ­ers Offer­ing Their Finest for the Jan­u­ary 9, 2009 WOOF Con­test. Top Picks:

Poetry

• Dragon Blog­ger & Jen­nifer M. Scott – The Fallen Knight — a poem in the fan­tasy genre about a knight hunted in the snow.
• Dragon Blog­ger – Mad­ness for Love — A ran­dom twit­ter poem based on 7 words turned out to be about search­ing for love.

Non-Fiction, Phil­io­soph­i­cal, Opin­ion Piece

• Hope­ful Spirit — Reflec­tions on Propo­si­tion 8: California’s Shame — A two-part dis­cus­sion, from a pro­gres­sive Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive, of Propo­si­tion 8. The sec­ond part is found here.
• JHS, Esq. — Mon­day Mus­ings: Box­ing Day — She says, “In recent years, I have done very lit­tle dec­o­rat­ing for Christ­mas. It took me a long time to fig­ure out why I was no longer get­ting excited about the hol­i­day … but I think I finally found the answer.”

Flash Fic­tion, Fiction

• Jen­nifer M Scott – Every­man – about a ser­ial killer.

Brought to you by Plot­Dog Press with the Ser­ial Sus­pense Screen­play “Inter­ven­tion.”

Tech­no­rati Tags: Inter­net Café Chat, Plot­Dog Press, Propo­si­tion 8, Reflec­tions on the Horizaon, WOOF Con­test