The Land of Nod is the land Cain (biblical guy, kills his brother) settled in and is east of Eden. It is also often referred to as that land of dreams, e.g. as we "nod" off to sleep.
It's the land where I go when I want to live in a fantasy world. It is where my mind wanders, my farcifal spirit walks, when I want to consider what the world could be like, good and bad, if we did silly things.
Last week, the Mayor of Enoch, in the Land of Nod, suggested we vote on whether left-handed people are allowed to breathe. After all, if they breathe, the rest of us likely will have less air in the Land of Nod, where air might possibly run out some day. And the Governor of the Land of Nod, well he last week had us vote on whether children should be allowed to grow, because after all, if they grow, their parents will be denied the right to keep their cuteness for as long as they want. Finally, the Dinosaurs are roaming around the "Big Dig" in the Land of Nod, looking for people to scare (RAWR!!!) into doing whatever the powerful people need, because after all, powerful people need a lot of help becoming even more powerful, in the Land of Nod. You see, in the Land of Nod, tyranny of the majority is entirely acceptable, and trickling money upward is a workable economic model. Whatever the majority wants today, they get. If the rich want to use Dinosaurs and scary stories to influence the majority into stripping away basic liberties, well, that's perfectly fine, because "that's how it ought to be", there are no moral imperatives nor anyone who worries about them, in the Land of Nod.
Back here in the real world, MN Gubenatorial candidate Tom Emmer (a Republican state House member), has begun running an add saying that we should vote on whether gays should be allowed to marry. In these commercials, he goes on to say that in Massachusetts, they've "begun to teach 1st and 2nd graders about gay marriage." Ooooo, scary, are you scared kids?
I think it is perfectly appropriate to vote on basic rights (OK, I'm being facetious, I absolutely do NOT think that's OK). Perhaps next we should vote on denying Jews the right to vote, or perhaps we should vote on denying Blacks the right to assemble? What Mr. Emmer fails to grasp is when he demands a vote, he is demanding that basic equality be voted on (for Gays), and further, that we vote on whether we are going to allow churches to exercise their basic liberty to determine which sacraments they will perform and for whom. Now, what he should know but apparently either doesn't no or care, is that these liberties are not something which can be taken away without manifestly changing the Constitution. We can pass laws saying gays can't marry and churches can't freely exercise their views, but those laws, as the Federal Court's ruling on California Proposition 8 (baning Gay Marraige) showed, well those laws will be struck down unless we are willing (as a nation, not just a state) to fundamentally change our Constitution to begin denying basic liberties to our citizens. The reason is that, as the judge so eloquently pointed out, absolutely no good purpose is served by banning gay marriage, and consequently, short of amending the Constitution, there is no way such laws will stand. We, cannot, and do not strip liberties just because they are being granted to unpopular people. Tom Emmer should know that or he darned well shouldn't be running to be Governor of Minnesota, a position where guaranteeing the liberties of all of his constituents would be one of his foremost responsibilities
Not to put to fine a point on it, but it is illogical in the extreme to put to a vote something which is an individual right, in fact it allows for the worst sorts of abuse to think that it is even possible or correct to try. It is totally foreign to anyone who claims to stand up for individual freedoms. We do not allow the majority to whimsically strip away the freedoms of those people we don't like while granting them to those we do. For example, there was a time when slavery was allowed, it was even (for a time) supported by the majority of people, does that mean we should have put the abolition of slavery to a vote? Was slavery ever moral or correct? As another example, in some nations on this Earth they do not allow any other religion than the state religion (often Islam), clearly the majority in those countries support that primary religion. Are they right to deny religious freedom to others simply by virtue of being in the majority? I wonder how Christian Tom Emmer would feel about that.
It is time for us to put to bed the idea that we should vote on basic rights, for that matter it's long past time. Emmer and those like him put this out there to both potentially create a scenario where people who otherwise would not vote will show up at the polls to support his position (if he EVER got this on a ballot). What's worse, he is attempting to pointlessly and needlessly scare people over the issue. If in Massachusetts they are teaching that sometimes men marry men, and women marry women, what is so decidedly wrong with that? It is after all the truth in Massachusetts. It is time these dinosaurs and their paleolithic ideas were left in the forgotten antiquity of the miserable history of mistreatment of minorities. It is time their outdated and unethical views were repudiated, it is also beyond time that these farcifal, often offensive (non) issues were left in the land of Nod, moldering where fantasy dinosaurs and their fantasy issues go to die. Our political campaigns should be about things that matter, like jobs, financial recovery and reform and an honest debate on whether giving money to the rich does any good. We don't need paper-dinosaurs like Emmer to scare people into helping the rich or creating fictions like that we should be voting on basic decency because most of all, we don't vote on basic human decency in the United States, we do not now, nor should we ever.
I am ok with allowing churches to marry gays as long as they retain the right to not marry gays. Hopefully the first time a gay couple sues because a church told them we think gay marraige is a sin and will not do it, the judge will toss it out for 1st amendment reasons.
ReplyDeleteTuck,
ReplyDeleteFirst, it's not the 1st Amendment (I don't believe) which says the government shall make no act respecting the establishment of religion or opposing the free expression thereof (paraphrase), but rather is the Establishment Clause itself.
That said, of course the case would be tossed, it wouldn't even be filed except by an utterly incompetent attorney because, due to the Establishment Clause, ANY church has the right to determine for itself who it will marry and who it won't, just as the Catholic Church has done for centuries. No one sues the Catholic Church over it, they could not possibly succeed. In fact, were the government to somehow try (which it won't) the case would get tossed summarily on the above grounds. Likewise, no law preventing a church from marrying gays or lesbians will withstand judicial review.
Fundamentally, that's the point, we decide what constitutes basic liberties in the courts because they AREN'T EVER supposed to be up for a vote. If the courts accept that gays are fully functional/non-ill citizens, there is little legal argument preventing them from marrying other than old standards of defiinition, no common purpose is served.
Tuck - DG here - litigation against church organizations relating to same sex marriages has been widely misrepresented. The most frequent one I have seen was a church in New Jersey a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteThey were sued because the church owned a park / pavillion facility which they themselves used occasionally for events. The rest of the time it was a money-maker for the church - which had non-profit tax exemptions for the propert y and income. The church rented it out -- to other religious affiliated groups for events, to weddings being performed by clergy of other faiths, and for non-religious weddings and events.
That church, as I recall the details from memory, either cancelled a rental or declined a rental, for a same-sex marriage-like committment ceremony, claiming it was contrary to their religious beliefs, which was the basis for subsequent litigation they lost.
The court case was NOT about forcing that church to condone homosexuality or perform a same sex marriage - as has been misrepresented widely. It was a suit against the church for discrimination against homosexuals, asserting (properly, I believe) that the church did not require the other groups to whom they rented that property out, the general public, to adhere or conform to the faith and religious beliefs of that church.
Effectively, although benefitting from their tax-exempt status, the church was using that property as a commercial business, and could not discriminate against homosexuals WITH THAT BUSINESS ACTIVITY any more than they could discriminate against people for being a different religion from their own, say Jewish for example (anti-semitic discrimination being an historic issue), or for reasons of race, or for reasons of disability, or for sexual orientation.
The church had the option of providing their property only to religous groups for religoius events that conformed narrowly to their beliefs. They didn't do that; they rented to Jews, for example, and to atheists, regularly, for religous and non-religious activities. Both of those groups held beliefs which differed from the core beliefs of the property-renting church, beliefs which were far more significant that the views about homosexuality, for the profit of a commercial business.
They were properly not allowed to have it both ways - claiming religious freedom selectively some of the time, but not others when they arbitrarily chose to be bigotted.
If you fact check the claims of religious freedom being violated, or the homosexual agenda being used to force churches to accept homosexuality when it violates their religious beliefs, you will consistently find similar results. I have checked out quite a few of these, and not one single claim of that has turned out to be either true or accurate.
Kinda makes a person wonder if these supposedly religious people have heard about the commandment against lying,or if they expend all their attention and devotion on other things.
After decades (or centuries) of tearing apart the institution of marriage, Christianity now decides to blame an outcast group for marriage's general state of disrepair. Furthermore the community they blame is one that they have explictly excluded from it.
ReplyDeleteIf you ask me, branches of the Chrisian faith would be restoring integrity to the tradition of marriage by including homosexuals.
Tuck is absolutely right, the decision to allow marriage should be up to each individual religion. I just hope they favor the better decision over the poorer.