The big news today is David Boies’ Op-Ed, “Gay Marriage and the Constitution,” in The Wall Street Journal. Boies is the lawyer who represented presidential candidate Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, and is now, along with former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, whom he faced in Bush v. Gore, suing the State of California to overturn Prop 8.
Boise makes some eloquent and sound observations, which I’ll share, but I also thought it would be interesting to share with you a few of the almost 300 comments readers made on the Op-Ed.
It’s important to note that The Wall Street Journal is, perhaps, if not the last bastion, certainly the largest mass media representative, of America’s conservative financial elites. For such a “liberal” attorney to appear in the Journal’s hallowed pages is itself a triumph for us, and for his words to be so clear and inarguable, and read by millions of American conservatives who actually has the ability to make change in the fabric of this nation’s thinking is, perhaps for us, the greatest triumph.
That said, I give you a few selections from Boies’, “Gay Marriage and the Constitution”:
“…this is not a Republican or Democratic issue, not a liberal or conservative issue, but an issue of enforcing our Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection and due process to all citizens.”
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to marry the person you love is so fundamental that states cannot abridge it.”
“The occasional suggestion that marriages between people of different sexes may somehow be threatened by marriages of people of the same sex does not withstand discussion. It is difficult to the point of impossibility to envision two love-struck heterosexuals contemplating marriage to decide against it because gays and lesbians also have the right to marry; it is equally hard to envision a couple whose marriage is troubled basing the decision of whether to divorce on whether their gay neighbors are married or living in a domestic partnership.”
“The ban on same-sex marriages written into the California Constitution by a 52% vote in favor of Proposition 8 is the residue of centuries of figurative and literal gay-bashing.”
“…the ban on permitting gay and lesbian couples to actually marry is simply an attempt by the state to stigmatize a segment of its population that commits no offense other than falling in love with a disapproved partner, and asks no more of the state than to be treated equally with all other citizens.”
Now, an array of comments from readers of the Op-Ed:
JAMES WRIGHT: “When I say I am married people assume my spouse is of the oppisite (sic) sex as that is what the term has always meant.”
Juan Diaz: “When someone tells me they are married, I assume they are married to the person they love. Why are people so obsessed with sex and sexual acts that they cannot think of marriage as having to do with two people who love each other and are legally committed to each other?”
Bill Jones: “The only solution here is choice and free markets.”
Joseph Lewis: “When Mr. Boies says that choosing to engage in homosexuality is like being black, at what point does the homosexual become a black person? When they are born with the potential to choose homosexuality? When they first experiment? When they become addicted to homosexuality? Are white people like heterosexuals in your analogy? What about people born with anger management control issues, what race are they like? Are people who choose to turn from homosexuality to heterosexuals like white or black people?”
David Grossman: (quoting another reader:)”If any homosexual couple, civil or otherwise, find that they require the legal imprimatur of the state as a condition for the success of their relationship, they need a lot more help than the state can or should offer.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(commenting:) So why exactly do heterosexual couples require the legal imprimatur of the state and not homosexuals?”
Murdoch Bird: “So let me get this straight, Gary (no pun intended). You want undisputable scientific proof that gays are “born gay”, but you forcefully believe that “God placed Adam and Even (sic) in the Garden of Eden.”
You’re funny.
If we have to explain precisely why gays are gay before they are entitled to equal rights, perhaps we could also strip away all of Christians’ equal rights – and for that matter, special rights to things like tax exemptions for their churches – until we’ve conclusively determined the cause of Christianity and satisfied ourselves that it is not a lifestyle choice. After all, we give away a tremendous amount of our tax dollars to faith-based initiatives and there are lots of Christians out there who ADMIT their lifestyle is a choice!! Why should people who chose a ridiculous lifetyle that believes that the human race decended from a couple named Adam and Eve get a dime of my money?”
Nicholas Divita: “…heterosexuals have done a fine job, all by themselves, of corroding marriage as an institution. To suggest that same sex marriage will destroy marriage is silly. Divorce, adultery, alcoholism, drug abuse, piles of debt, and other rampant forms of dissolute individual behavior over the past 50 years have done a superb job of undermining marriage with little or no help from the homosexuals of the world.”
Bill Jones: “It is a FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTION to be for free markets, free people, and liberty, and to be opposed to gay marriage.
It makes no sense.”
Mike Chambers: “Do you think attempting to get a majority of southerners to vote for integration would have been a better way to go then by judicial “fiat”?”
Michael Schmidt: “Gay people just can’t seem to get a break. For years, they were castigated as sex-crazed abberants engaging in a non-stop orgy of multiple sex partners and hedonistic behavior. Now they seek to marry, set up committed relationships, raise kids (gasp!) and basically pursue the traditional version of the American dream – and they’re still criticized!”