Not To Choose pt 2

No pastor in the Seventh-day Adventist church has to bless the marriage of a member with a non-member. I disagree with the refusal. It is founded on a view of insularity that I don't share and it does little to strengthen marriage, even less to benefit the culture. But it's a policy based on a view of marriage that the government has no reason to challenge or affirm. The stance and practice need not be addressed by the state. The constitution stays silent on this topic and it should remain silent.

Here's the entire text of California's Proposition 8 (found here). The text is an important factor in evaluating Ron Osborn's argument for abstention from a vote.

PROPOSITION 8

   This initiative measure is submitted to the people in accordance with the
provisions of Article II, Section 8, of the California Constitution.
   This initiative measure expressly amends the California Constitution by
adding a section thereto; therefore, new provisions proposed to be added are
printed in italic type to indicate that they are new.
   SECTION 1. Title
   This measure shall be known and may be cited as the "California Marriage
Protection Act."
   SECTION 2. Section 7.5 is added to Article I of the California Constitution,
to read:
   SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized
in California.

Distilling Osborn's argument to its basics:

1. He supports, without reservation, the civil and human rights of same-sex couples.
   
   
2. He does not support the right to state affirmation recognition or sanctioning or codifying or categorization or validation of sexual identity.
   
   
3. He believes government must not limit the right of religious communities to preserve and label their institutions.

In his view:
Voting “Yes” violates #1 and #2.
Voting “No” violates #2 and #3.

Such a violation by a “No” vote relies on Osborn's argument that the vote not to approve the proposal is a legislative overriding of traditional cultural and religious norms. In fact such a vote is stopping the legislative branch from making any such statement in favor of or against those norms.

Osborn's next concern is that the lack of limitation of the word marriage is necessarily an avowedly 'secular' redefinition. In fact it's not a definition at all. It's a refusal to define. It's an acknowledgment that a word may be defined by many groups in many ways. Still he suggests that we let this language be something other than the language religious traditions have long claimed as their own.

Even if we agree that religious communities use these labels with certain limitations there is no encroachment on the rights of those communities to say that the government shouldn't impose those same limits. And tho Osborn can't abide by government redefinition of the word marriage, he doesn't explain how a refusal to define is a redefinition. A 'No' vote doesn't redefine the word and he should be fine with that. But even if the state did allow a group to use a new definition of the word, there is no religious right to un-contradicted use of a word. In the Seventh-day Adventist religion the word baptism refers to full immersion under the water. Just today in my office a colleague was insisting that full immersion as a cleansing of sin in his religion would have to be called something else. This difference of terminology is acceptable. And should the government have any say over what is not allowed to be called a baptism? Of course not. And not even if the government was to recognize certain rights that corresponded to a religious rite of passage.

Unless we want to get into patent law the government has no business regulating such basic language use. Setting apart a word like marriage as sacred is not the government's business. The most generous reading of the bill is that it allows the government to grant equal rights to heterosexual and homosexual unions but it denies homosexual unions the right of a label.

Osborn argues that refusal to vote is a creative way to avoid being trapped in the false dichotomies of America’s culture wars. It's a valid way but it's certainly not creative. He suggests that the reasons for refusal are important. I agree. But I have to point out that the argument as he presents it is not a false dichotomy. There are decisions that truly are either for or against. And in this case the vote is not between the government should say A or B. If so, Osborn could claim a false dichotomy because the option would be available that the govt should say neither: that perhaps the government should stay silent. But here the choice is government should say A or should not say A. We can argue later whether there is something else the gov't should say but it is fair to vote on whether or not the government should say at this point that marriage is only between man and woman. For the government to say so takes away a right. A right that so far when investigated has only been objected to either on religious grounds or based on an unwillingness to respect equal rights.

But we can't simply move on from one point. In so many of these arguments it is assumed that any definition of marriage that includes same-sex unions is a definition that disregards religion. But this overlooks a very important point: that some religions would use this freedom to use marriage to identify unions between individuals of the same sex. If this proposal were to pass, every religion would be denied the right to recognize these unions as marriages. Proposal 8 limits the right of all religions.

As Osborn suggests towards the end of his argument, government should remain neutral on the issue and view homosexual and heterosexual couples the same. A vote against Proposition 8 is the first step to take towards that. If he wants to make sure that the state doesn't itself use marriage as a label for any union, he should vote to keep the constitution from doing just that. It's not a vote to make any statement of affirmation to any couple or to extend any further power to the government.