Civil Rights: Now Brought To You By Plurality Voting And The Letter Q
Ahh, the Defense of Marriage Coalition, where would we be without them? From where else could we get this particular gem:
Theyre saying Oregonians dont have the right to determine what is a civil right and what isnt, Nashif said.
Well, in fact, that’s exactly the point of a civil right. That the other, perhaps pernicious, memeber of the electorate can’t decide who gets them and who doesn’t.
Interestingly, I would agree with the man that state marriage isn’t a civil right. State marriage is a particular form of the right of contract, conferring certain obligations and rights upon the participants, that sprung from a generations-old, largely religious practice. As such, that makes state marriage a privilege, and therefore the electorate (or its duly elected representatives) has every right to decide who is and is not covered. That said, my own views on this issue are already well known. Just to reiterate: there’s no logical reason to withhold this particular contract from any two consenting adults wishing to enter it. For practical reasons, I think a limit of two (2) participants makes sense. If you insist on seeing all the old state/federal stuff again, go here and scroll around a bit.
The point is that this particular state-sponsored contract need not even exist, but as it does and we must deal with it, approaches from both sides strike me as pretty irrational. On the one hand, you have purported conservatives thinking of amending the US Constitution so that good ol’ 28 (XXVIII) can be “HAHA FAGS! No marriage for you” in spite of marriage never being a federal issue. On the other, you have purported liberals going through court actions which will only embolden the “conservatives” and perhaps give the FMA more momentum.
I say we scrap the whole state marriage thing and allow people to negotiate on their own who gets covered on the health insurance, who gets custody of the kids, and we let individuals file their own damn tax returns.
