ADF Senior Vice President Jordan Lorence writes about his experience debating marriage at Stanford recently, and debunks a persistent false argument used to promote SSM:
Last week I participated in a discussion sponsored by the Federalist Society at Stanford Law School in California on redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, and its collision with the First Amendment rights of those who define marriage as one man and one woman only. We had a great discussion [... but] what I did not expect at Stanford was a debate on the relevancy of the 1967 Supreme Court decision striking down Virginia’s law banning interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia.
Many who support redefining marriage to include same-sex couples are convinced that this case greatly supports their position. It does not. I have found that many people have not read the decision, or do not understand what the Supreme Court ruled in that case. The decision doesn’t help them. So it is a dreadfully flawed argument and a non sequitur to argue as many do that ”just as a ban on interracial marriage was unconstitutional, so a ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.”
... The Virginia law only banned white people from having an interracial marriage. An African American man could marry a woman of Asian descent under the Virginia law struck down by the Supreme Court. That interracial marriage was OK because it did not include any white people. The obviously uneven application of the law based on race is why the Supreme Court struck it down. These despicable laws did not say, “whites can only marry whites, blacks can only marry blacks, Asians can only marry Asians,” etc., but many wrongly assume that is what those laws said.
... Race has not been a universally-accepted part of the definition of marriage. For example, not all states banned white people from having an interracial marriage. Some states, like Virginia, allowed whites to marry nonwhites for many decades before imposing a ban on whites marrying nonwhites. The existence of miscegenation laws is a sordid historical fact. The court decisions striking down those laws offer no principle of law that compels legalizing same-sex marriage.
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Well, if the marriage law was being unequally applied due to race, it is now being unequally applied due to sexual orientation. And just as some states didn't have miscegenation laws, some states DO have same-sex marriage!
The parallels are very close between "Loving" and DOMA laws.
Sean, you're absolutely right. "Loving" and DOMA are absolutely, closely linked. "Loving" said, "A man is a man and a woman is a woman, regardless of the color of their skin, and marriage belongs between a man and a woman."
DOMA says something very similar... that if one state has SSM imposed upon it through judicial activism, that does not mean that we must overturn "Loving" in every state in the country and claim that a man and a woman's ability to create a special union regardless of race no longer applies.
And keep in mind that the majority opinion of the New York Court of Appeals in Hernandez v. Robles (2006) rejected any reliance upon the Loving case as controlling upon the issue of same-sex marriage, holding that:
“ [T]he historical background of Loving is different from the history underlying this case. [...] But the traditional definition of marriage is not merely a by-product of historical injustice. Its history is of a different kind. The idea that same-sex marriage is even possible is a relatively new one. Until a few decades ago, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex. A court should not lightly conclude that everyone who held this belief was irrational, ignorant or bigoted."
"Loving" reaffirmed the intrinsic ties between marriage and procreation. SSM denies that marriage is a sexual, potentially procreative union, and essentially renders it a neutered union. There are no parallels between race and sexual orientation, especially when one considers the fact that a gay man and a gay woman can get married, have children, and stay faithful to each other and their offspring. Indeed, it would be their duty to do so. SSM denies that value. It is a marriage counterfeit.
But that's not the argument. No one has said that Loving by itself is the legal justification for same-sex marriage so the whole article is pointless. This is the typical strategy of anti-gay activists - they build straw men that are relatively easy to take down because they're incapable of taking on the real arguments of pro-equality advocates. Loving established marriage as a fundamental right. But it doesn't stop there. That right then has be considered within the context of human sexuality and what that right means to a gay or lesbian person. The Iowa Supreme Court is probably the best example of that concept. They got it exactly right. Going off on a tangent about the differences between race and sexual orientation is completely irrelevant to the matter at hand and doesn't address the actual arguments pro-marriage advocates are making when they invoke Loving.
Baker v. Nelson , 191 N.W.2d 185 at 187 (Minn. Sup. Ct. 1971) summarily aff'd 409 U.S. 810 (1972)
Ken, if you don't want us setting up and demolishing the "straw man" of Loving, you might want to tell your fellow activists to stop using the biracial argument in their debates.
As long as they keep setting it up, we'll keep knocking it down. If you want us to stop knocking it down, I suggest you tell *them* to stop building *their* defenses out of straw.
Gothelittle: Our arguments are great and firm. We did not build any straw man argument. Ken is just lying as usual. They build the straw men because we have shown their pro equallity argument is false.
(1) We show that equallity applies to people and not human conduct.
(2) Equallity never meant that a special group in this case homosexuals make up their own special rights and call them equallity. Then everybody simply makes up their own rules.
Notice: His phony argument about Loving establishing a right to marriage and what it means to homosexuals. He is claiming special rights for homosexuals.
(3) Homosexuals are not equal. Their behavior leads to disease and premature death and does not pro create. It is not equal.