Not so gay Paree
Mar 14, 2007 Lex scripta, O Mores!
France’s highest court Tuesday rejected as unlawful the first marriage by a gay couple in France, annulling the union of the two men.
Stephane Charpin and Bertrand Charpentier were married in a civil ceremony on June 5, 2004, in Begles, a town in the southwest Bordeaux region. The government immediately said the union was outside the law, and a series of court decisions unfavorable to the couple followed.
In the latest decision, the court ruled that “under French law, marriage is a union between a man and a woman,” backing a 2005 decision by an appeals court in Bordeau.
Now, that’s not supposed to happen, is it? I don’t think so.
I find this particularly interesting in juxtaposition to the “outrage” and “demands for resignation” regarding the comments by General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling lesbian and gay personnel “immoral.” Here’s why:
What is fascinating here is that the tactic — the public posture — taken by homosexual rights groups is that the status of homosexuality as morally acceptable, or the premise that there is no moral question other than whether an activity involves consenting adults, is now normative political and legal morality in this country and everywhere else where you can get broadband.
It’s not. And I am not arguing here whether or not homosexuality is or is not moral (obviously I believe it is not moral, but I am not likely to convince anyone of that fact in a blog posting). Rather I am observing that this moral / political argument is entirely distorted by political and media elites that not only accept homosexuality as moral, but consider rendering judgment on it as gravely immoral.
The entire tenor and indeed content of reporting on the subject is loaded with bias. Every radio report I heard on the subject was essentially the reading of a press release from pro-homosexual-rights advocacy groups, followed by “actualities” (sound bites from phone interviews) of their representatives expressing outrage, etc., etc. No attempt at balance or perspective, of course, is made. The consensus on right and wrong on issues of public policy is not amenable to messy things like debate.
So when the script is violated and a “progressive” Western European country such as France, thought of as the home of sexual Liberté, does something that Frenchmen can sometimes do — defy expectations at least occasionally — it should be not only newsworthy, but should act as a rhetorical and editorial speed bump in the rush to conventional (MSM) wisdom on situations such as the General Pace situation.
It probably won’t, but it should.
UPDATE: “Never mind“?
SERIOUS UPDATE: The Rudy’s gay roommate straw man; meanwhile Democrats don’t want to touch this one.
March 14th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Ron,
I guess I see the tactic a little differently. Is it an argument that homosexuality is moral, or that government should be neutral towards issues of private (as opposed to public) morality? Put another way, the old argument that your rights end where the other guy’s nose begins can also be taken as the contrapositive to say that where the other guy’s nose is not, is an area where your rights are.
March 14th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
If government were to be neutral as to morality, it would not be involved in marriages at all. I don’t believe government should be neutral as to morality, and if pressed on numerous issues I bet we’d find you don’t either, Zach.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I don’t know, press me.
I agree the government shouldn’t be involved in marriages, for example.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Homosexuality itself is not illegal. So, your point is intact. Marriage is a public act licensed by the state. No one has the right to have the state recognize their coupling.
You, and many other people, assume rights exist where it is not so. American’s have the right to engage in sexual relationships with as many consensual partners as they wish within the privacy of their home. They have the right to live with as many people as they wish. Homosexual advocacy groups, and people that just don’t understand what a right is, ignore the fact that they can live how they want when they want with whomever they want and it is a protected right to do so. But these same people want to take it a step further and say they have a right to a state reconized union. Guess what? Heterosexuals don’t even have that right. No one does because it does not exist.
So, when homosexuals go public about their desire for same sex marriage they are asking the public to judge the merits of their case and render a verdict. To this point, in America, the people have overwhelmingly stated how they feel.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Kevin,
I don’t want to get into a debate about gay marriage, something tells me neither of us are going to win that one.
However, I never asserted it was a right. I’m merely questioning the government treating a segment of the population as different in an ostensibly purely civil contract, where there is no real basis for doing so.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
But they don’t treat them differently, Zach. We’ve been through this before! All humans are given the right to marry one person. Marriage is a word that has meaning. The meaning is to be wed, joined in matrimony, etc., etc. with another person of the opposite sex. All persons, including homosexuals, have the right to this benefit.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Ron,
If you want to get technical, isn’t the “meaning” of marriage a religious ceremony? Once you separate it from that mooring and speak about the purely civil contract, then isn’t your reading excessively narrow?
All the more reason to get the government out of the marriage business.
March 14th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Kevin,
erratum to last comment, I think I did actually make the inference that marriage was a right, and then somehow (conveniently!) forgot, so you got me there. perhaps the statement i made would still work if “freedom” was inserted instead of “right”? if you don’t like that, well, then consider the other half of my argument :p
March 14th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Nice bowl of spaghetti you’ve got there, Zach. Anyway, if it’s a purely civil contract, the courts can enforce it. No problem. But it isn’t; there is a special status that the law in every society recognizes. Clergy is given the power of the modern state to act as a deputy for purposes of solemnizing marriage, but no, it is not for our purposes a fundamentally religious act but a legal one.
March 14th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Removing the power of the clergy to solemnize marriage clearly violates the spirit of the First Amendment. You may not make religion illegal, Zach, nor seek to render it powerless and irrelevant.
“You may print anything you want, sir! We just forbid that you use ink!”
Yours,
Wince
March 14th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Kevin, I think you are oversimplifying in #4. Many, if not all, of the people advocating for state recognition of same-sex marriages live in communities in which all of their friends and family believe that marriage is a union of two individuals, and that there is no difference between same sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage. They aren’t asking the state to create something new; they’re asking the state to recognize something which they believe already exists.
That’s what makes the issue so contentious: in my world, it’s perfectly normal and commonplace for two men to get married, so why should the state differentiate between their marriages and other marriages? In your world, it’s not normal and commonplace, and it looks like i’m asking for an innovation.
March 14th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Wince:
Removing the power of the clergy to solemnize marriage clearly violates the spirit of the First Amendment. You may not make religion illegal, Zach, nor seek to render it powerless and irrelevant.
I agree. In fact, just privatize marriage altogether. Get government out of the matrimony business!
March 14th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Wince, how does disambiguating between religious marriage and civil marriage violate the rights of the clergy? I would think it would make the rights of the clergy *stronger*.
March 14th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Wince,
what you wrote clearly misunderstands my point. I am not seeking to remove religious power to do anything, nor do I seek to destroy religion. Where on earth did you get the idea that I wanted to do anything of the sort?
Ron,
sorry about the early incoherence, I was at work. In any case, I am not advocating dissolving the special nature of the marriage bond or marriage union. I am saying that having the government recognize the civil aspects of the marriage contract as special above and beyond any other civil contract is preposterous. It is not the government which makes your vision of the ideal marriage special to you, and government attitudes towards marriage seem wholly irrelevant to the morality point you seem to be trying to make. I trying to argue, however feebly, that although marriage has a special meaning of a union between one (or more than one) man and one (or more than one) woman in a religious context, what the united states government calls marriage carries none of the special qualities of the religious union of the same name, and thus the special dispensations you apply to it may not be so applicable.
March 14th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I agree. In fact, just privatize marriage altogether. Get government out of the matrimony business!
We don’t agree. If the government either gets out of the matrimony business, or removes the ability of the clergy to decide, it dramatically decreases the power of religion. That is contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment.
Yours,
Wince
March 14th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Wince: so how should the government handle gay marriages which are solemnized by clergy? Failing to recognize them would be problematic, wouldn’t it?
March 14th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Well, Aphrael, part of the problem is that the state is very happy to delegate this extremely ministerial task to clergy or virtually anyone who pays clergy on TV. But maybe they should notary publics do it.
March 14th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Ron: I’m not sure I agree. I think that civil marriage and religious marriage are *different things* which happen to be conflated. A clergyman should be able to perform any marriage authorized by his religion, and have it binding within the context of that religion, and the state shouldn’t get to say anything.
What I’m asking Wince about is this: how can the state say, well, *these* marriages performed by clergy are automatically state marriages, while *those* marriages performed by clergy are not — without violating the 1st amendment?
March 14th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
If the government …gets out of the matrimony business…it dramatically decreases the power of religion.
How and why? If anything it seems to me that it would do just the opposite.
March 14th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
The answer, Aphrael, is that any “bona fide” clergyman — without regard to what religion — can be authorized by the state to perform a marriage. But not all are; it is not automatic.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
It’s evident that marriage law is discriminatory by design. We can bring homosexual couples on board, but we still will be discriminating against people in other alternative living arrangements, and against people who aren’t involved in any kind of marriage or union whatsoever!
All arguments for making the marriage license accessible to homosexual couples in the interest of equality can be ignored unless they address the fundamental question of what the legal institution of marriage is trying to accomplish in the first place. Ditto for arguments to the effect of getting government out of marriage altogether (a position I happen to favor).
March 14th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
I’ll have more to say in another post, but I wanted to respond to Wince:
The First Amendment is a law, not a person; what matters is its legal meaning and scope, not its spirit.
Now, that aside, the First Amendment does not guarantee “power” for any religion. It guarantees the right to exercise the religion, not to have the government endorse it. Of course, clergy have the First Amendment right to religiously solemnize marriage; indeed, many liberal churches have been conducting “gay marriages” for years. But clergy don’t have the First Amendment right to have government take official note of those religious marriages. (Although they may have an equal protection right to be treated the same regardless of what religion they belong to.)
March 14th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
So I guess you don’t want to even hear about penumbras and emanations, huh.
March 15th, 2007 at 1:16 am
David: they may have an equal protection right to be treated the same, and they may have an argument that having the government take note of the solemnization of some sects while ignoring the solemnization of some sects constitutes an establishment.
There’s fairly strong precedent for the sense that the establishment clause requires state neutrality; and recognizing the marriages of some sects while not recognizing the marriages of other sects seems to be to be inconsistent with that.
March 16th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
The First Amendment is a law, not a person; what matters is its legal meaning and scope, not its spirit.
Sure, which is why I doubt the Court would support my reasoning. But if you claim to be devoted to the First Amendment, you should consider government actions which violate the spirit of the First Amendments with a jaundiced eye. The spirit of our Constitution is protected by the people and our elected representatives.
Personally, I would rather horse trade with you. I’ll give you same sex marriage. You give me these things:
1. No more no-fault divorces.
2. Adultery should be a misdemenor (it is a form of contract fraud), and people should often be jailed for it like they are for drunk driving, kiting checks, domestic violence and other common crimes. As frauds go, it is extremely destructive to innocent children. And I’d rather my wife broke a couple of my ribs then she step out on me. Not a victimless crime at all.
3. Bring back alienation of affection lawsuits.
Let’s really strenghten marriage, and let’s do it no the backs of those who have weakened it the most – heterosexuals.
What I’m asking Wince about is this: how can the state say, well, *these* marriages performed by clergy are automatically state marriages, while *those* marriages performed by clergy are not — without violating the 1st amendment?
The same way that Catholic priests were allowed to drink wine as part of the church service during Prohibition, but religions which promote the use of peyote were not allowed to make an exception for thier beliefs. IANAL, but the government is allowed to restrict our First Amendment rights if it passes a test called strict scrutiny.
Yours,
Wince
June 15th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
This may not be the most coherent post, please forgive me. Oh, and IANAL, just a layman with opinions.
As I see it, the civil contract portion of marriage is mostly a set of implicit contractual agreements, provided by the state as a bundle for various reasons. There are also be some special privileges granted which have nothing to do with contract law. It would be better (or at least freer) all around if there weren’t this default provision, and every single marriage thing were based on an explicit written contract. Why can’t I designate some random roommate as a dependent, who has rights to my medical records for instance? Why can’t a non-married individual adopt?
It’s the bundling that’s the biggest problem, because it leaves people unclear as to what’s involved, and people will try to impose their view of marriage on everyone else, and often in a way which alters existing contracts. It would be better all around if only the individuals involved decided what is or is not part of their partnership. Of course, to remove marriage’s special status and allow regular civil contracts to dominate would also require contract clauses involving sexual access rights, which might require legalizaing prostitution. This sort of clause is one of the reasons SS couples can’t work around the marriage system currently, because such clauses are almost certainly illegal.
Wince, an explicit contract helps with some of what you want, but not all
1. Why not if there is mutual consent?
2. It would be a contract violation if it’s written into the marriage contract.
3. Again, if it’s in the contract, you could sue in civil court for a contract violation.
Note that none of this would require me as an individual to give any special recognition to couples who claim they are married if I don’t like some aspect of their marriage or civil union contract. Effectively, you convert all marriage contracts to civil unions, make them variable, and whether one qualifies as marriage or not is in the eyes of the beholder. As long as people aren’t required to treat all civil unions equally, this is the version of marriage causing the least grief for everyone.
November 5th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
[...] must be some state, California. What else do they have in that constitution of theirs? Makes France look more backward than ever. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Happy marriage in [...]