[Durham INC] marriage is a fundamental right

[John Martin]

Christine,
You say:  "The same-sex marriage movement, by contrast, is grounded in the denial of a fundamental truth: we are created as equal , male and female. That duality has always been the starting point for marriage. The newly fashionable claim that marriage can ignore that duality is akin to the claim, back when lunch counters were segregated, that America was a land of liberty and justice for all."
Have you ever heard of Loving v. Virginia (1967)?  It was a unanimous Supreme Court decision that struck down Virginia's miscegenation law which prevented interracial marriage.  (This is "judicial fiat" in your parlance, which I assume you're opposed to.)  The lower court judge who had upheld the constitutionality of Virginia's law wrote this:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
Do you agree with this? Ideas very much like this have almost "always been the starting point for marriage," and the notion that interracial marriage should be allowed was a "newly fashionable idea" in the mid-twentieth century.  Earlier courts had ruled  the way you're arguing:  there's no denial of equal protection because whites and non-whites are equally prohibited from marrying people of a different race.  Do you find that compelling?  I don't.  I see the facts of male and female, just as I see the facts of black and white, but how that leads to some sort of conclusion as to the nature of marriage escapes me.  What I do see is people imputing their own preferences to the deity.   
Finally, I find it puzzling that you express such opinions while operating a charter school.  I support charter schools, and I favored lifting the cap on the number of charter schools in North Carolina.  Call me crazy, but I think that more choices, as long as people are not harming others, is good.  I've always liked the libertarian slogan that you sometimes see on bumper stickers:  Legalize Freedom. 
I'm sorry you don't concur.
John






--- On Tue, 9/13/11, Christine Chamberlain <christinebbd at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Christine Chamberlain <christinebbd at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Durham INC] marriage is not a civil right
To: "Kelly Jarrett, DISC " <kjj1 at duke.edu>
Cc: "inc-list at rtpnet.org" <inc-list at rtpnet.org>
Date: Tuesday, September 13, 2011, 2:06 PM

You already have full civil rights, the same as every other American.  You have not been deprived of the law's equal protection, nor of the 
right to marry  —  only of the right to insist that a single-sex union 
is a "marriage."  You want marriage on entirely new terms. You want it to be 
given a meaning it has never before had, and prefer that it be done
 undemocratically  —  by judicial fiat, for example, or by mayors 
flouting the law. Whatever else that may be, it isn't civil rights. 

 
    But dare to speak against it, and you are threatened, called names and are branded a "racist". 

 
    In one state, when lawmakers prepared to debate a 
constitutional amendment on the meaning of marriage, the state's leading
 black clergy came out strongly in support of the age-old definition: 
the union of a man and a woman.  They were promptly tarred as enemies of
 civil rights.  "Martin Luther King," one left-wing legislator barked, 
"is rolling over in his grave at a statement like this." 

 
    But if anything has King spinning in his grave, it is the indecency 
of exploiting his name for a cause he never supported.  The civil rights
 movement for which he lived and died was grounded in a fundamental 
truth: All of us are created equal.  The same-sex marriage movement, by 
contrast, is grounded in the denial of a fundamental truth: we are created as equal , male and female.  That duality has 
always been the starting point for marriage.  The newly 
fashionable claim that marriage can ignore that duality is akin to the 
claim, back when lunch counters were segregated, that America was a land
 of liberty and justice for all.




 Christine Chamberlain


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