Huh?
Posted by Joshua Claybourn on 13 March 2005 | 6 responses
In a rally for a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage that drew thousands of supporters, Indiana state representative Woody Burton stood in front of the huge crowd to offer these words in support of the amendment: “The institution of marriage was not created and cannot be defined by government. Only God can create a marriage.” Catch that? A politician who believes marriage “cannot be defined by government” wants the government to define marriage. Irony was unavailable for comment following the rally.
6 Responses to “Huh?”
It sounds to me that what he’s saying is this:
Only God can create a marriage, therefore only God should define it. I don’t read it as him saying that government should define marriage, but rather that government should only recognize it based on the way God has already defined it.
Whether this is right or not is certainly debatable (I am inclined to agree with him), but I don’t really see that he’s contradicting himself here.
Point well-taken, Joshua.
The fact is that now that “conservatives” have control of the White House, Congress, and so many state governments, they suddenly think it’s okay to depart from “strict construction” principles when it comes to legislation and court rulings. They are “big government” conservatives who want to use the coercive powers of government to engage in what they once derided as “social engineering,” only on behalf of their own ideological and social preferences.
It turns out that many of these folks wanted “limited government” only when it was the other guys’ government that was getting limited.
So a state government should attempt to define marriage based on an interpretation of a 1900-1800-year-old document by a subset of the people who believe in the divine origin of said document? First, what about the Christians that don’t believe that? I don’t want the government arbitrating or taking sides in theological disputes. That’s precisely what the Free Exercise Clause was trying to prevent. Second, I think we owe the non-Christians in the U.S. more of a policy explanation than “God said so.”
“I don’t want the government arbitrating or taking sides in theological disputes.”
Exactly. If Church X does or doesn’t want to marry two people for whatever reason, that’s their business. We don’t need government involvement period.
In view of what is happening in other States that have runaway judicial systems, reining in dumb ass lawyers(judges)would seem to be a good thing to accomplish in Indiana.
Just let the fags get married.