The Problems with the Gay Marriage Case

I saw Ted Olson’s interview yesterday on Fox News with Chris Wallace. He made an impassioned an articulate argument for gay marriage. As I listened I was shocked and a little disappointment at some glaring errors in his argument. I will try to explain them. His main argument was that from the founding of our nation everyone has had the right to marry whomever they wished. He used a case that had gone to the Supreme Court of interracial marriage as his main argument. He makes several glaring errors in his logic that I want to address.

Watch it here.

www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday/transcript/ted-olson-debate-over-judicial-activism-and-same-sex-marriage


1. He assumes that a man and a man can get married (or woman and woman). He is presuming the redefinition marriage. A big presumption based on the moral belief that a relationship between a man and a man (or woman and a woman) is the same as a relationship between a man and woman. He starts his argument based on this presumption that they are the same. He presumes himself to be right and his belief more informed than ours. The problem is that a vast majority of American disagree with him. They are not the same and have never been considered the same in American History by anything close to a majority. From this assumption he tells Americas we have no right to disagree with this assumption.

If these two differing views were decided between at the ballot box there would be no controversy.

2. He used a court case challenging an interracial marriage ban to say that it used to be against the law for people of different races to marry. He again makes the assumption that same-sex marriages are the same as interracial marriages. Again, a huge presumption based on a moral belief that interracial marriage is the same as same-sex marriage, a belief never held by anything close to a majority of Americans; a belief that cannot be supported by history or science.


3. In this stance he is presuming that sexual preference is in the same category as race. This is a dangerous presumption. Sexual preference is a matter of behavior, not genetic expression. To make this assumption that sexual preference is the same as race in regard to legal or moral issues is a dangerous one. To establish that one has a right to a harmful behavior based on a preference is to undermine our legal system. One could then say I have a right to steal because I prefer to steal rather than work for my living.



4. So what about traditional marriage, isn’t it a preference and based on behavior. Yes, but there is also genetic expression that is obviously required. This genetically expressed difference of gender has been the foundation for societies from the dawn of civilization. Everyone that is, is because of this difference, even those practicing homosexuality. There is a difference and we have the right to make the moral distinction. Mr. Olson is fighting to take that right from us. What makes his moral belief superior to the majority of Americans? He has nothing in history or science to prove his position is morally superior to the one we have held since our founding.



5. www.philmon.blogspot.com/ gets it right when he explains that Mr. Olson and Judge Walker are in essence saying that the California constitution is unconstitutional; that states do not have the right to establish matters of morality; that only lawyers and judges have this right. He has set his own opinion and the opinion of his clients above the state of California’s.



If gay marriage (or unions for that matter) is recognized by our legal system, the status of wholesome and proper will be conferred on it (without our consent or discussion.) This is in direct contradiction to the stance of the Catholic Church and a vast majority of protestant churches. Their opinion will then be considered discriminatory and illegal. They will have to recognize and potentially perform gay marriages contrary to their moral conscience or be sued for discrimination. Any discussion in church against gay marriage or homosexuality will be ruled discriminatory. (It will have to be if this issue is deemed equivalent to race.) It will happen if this ruling stands. Good and decent people who hold to the proven standards of our Founding Fathers will then be persecuted for their stance against a harmful behavior.

We have the right to make moral distinctions and enshrine them into our legal system Mr. Olson. We have the right to saythat you have no right to enshrine your moral distinctions over ours through judicial fiat.

This blogger holds to the belief that we are all humans of equal worth. That standards are for the improvement of us all. The highest of these is to love each other as we love ourselves. Allowing the standards to be lowered hurts us all.