17 December 2004
What Business Do We Have?
Just when you thought the debate was finally over and done with the Fates play their little tricks on you and brings it right back to the forefront. This time, the subject is gay marriage.
In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada has decreed that it is unconstitutional to deny homosexual couples the right to get married. Of course the outcry for a decision like this is substantial. On the one side of the fence you have all the supporters of the ruling and on the other side of the fence you have the opposition to the ruling. The supporters generally tend to be liberal and somewhat free spirited in their political views (if they have them at all) while the opposition generally tends to be Christian, and politically conservative in nature.
You know what this means, don't you? The homosexual community is fighting with the Religious Right for the hearts and minds of Canadian citizens. They want acceptance, and I can't really blame them. To me it makes a certain amount of sense to accept gay marriage as an accomplished fact. I mean, we've supported more problematic things in our history. We accepted the French, for starters.
What I don't understand is why the government should be involved in this business at all. It makes no sense to me. The issue of marriage as a civil union should matter to the government only for the purposes of licensing (which is really nothing more than registration) as a means of managing taxation. Beyond those two concerns, which really amount to nothing more than checking a couple of boxes on your yearly paperwork, the government shouldn't really care who or what you're married to. Your partner for life could be a sheep and the government would have no reason to question you as long as the paperwork was in order. As long as you kept the proper paper trail than you and your mate could enjoy all the tax benefits of a married couple and, as an additional bonus, you'd never need to buy another sweater again.
But people aren't satisfied with that kind of government non-interference in the day to day goings on of our lives. People think that the role of government is to define what is accepted as right and what is denounced as wrong by our society. People want the government to legislate what is moral and what is immoral, and the standard they use for these comparisons is being derived from their Christian belief systems. Just to make matters worse, the government is actually listening to these people, which results in a state of affairs in which the separation between Church and State grows narrower and narrower with each passing year.
Of course the whole affair is a lot simpler than that. On the one side of the fence you have a group of people who aren't engaged in any kind of wrongful activity and simply want to be accepted for what they are, and on the other side of the fence you have a group of religious fascists who want to deny them that acceptance because their God says that homosexuality is an abomination. I mean, everyone knows that God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, right?
My issue with the whole thing derives from the fact that the opposition to the gay marriage legislation are basing their entire argument on the notion that they're right and the rest of the world is wrong because God told them so. To me that says that these people are making no attempt to think for themselves. They're making no attempt to look at the issue and draw their own conclusions because they don't have to. They have religious and political leaders who are more than willing to do their thinking for them, and all they have to do is enjoy the ride.
Now, don't get me wrong. I have no issue with the presence or absence of religious belief. I have no problem with the idea that people derive comfort from their complete and belief in and surrender to whatever brand of religious doctrine they decide to attach themselves to. In fact, if anything, I applaud these people's belief in God for the simple reason that I find that the code of conduct taught through this kind of doctrine generally tends to produce much more civilized citizens than those produced by a system which made no attempt to teach this kind of code of behavior. People who take their religion seriously in their daily lives simply tend to be more civilized in their dealings with other people, and given that our society is in the middle of a decline I think that this can only be a good thing.
But there are limits to what I'm willing to accept. Teaching me that it's socially acceptable to behave in this manner instead of this manner is one thing, but encouraging me to stop thinking for myself and allow my religious leaders to do my thinking for me is something that I simply am not willing to accept. Our ability to think and reason for ourselves was given to us for a reason, and to my way of thinking that means we're supposed to be able to use it. That means we reach out into the world and look at all sides of the issues that cross our paths before we make our judgment calls about what we think or feel about what's happening. To me that means we're supposed to form our own opinions, not let others do it for us.
People don't want to do that, though, because that kind of thinking is too much like work. It's so much easier to ride through this life relying on what we're told than it is to think for ourselves. The fact that this kind of attitude only makes us more ignorant, and therefore more like the French with each passing day, is lost upon these kinds of people because they are unwilling to make their own decisions, think for themselves, and take responsibility for their actions.
And that's really what this whole thing comes down to. We all make our own decisions. The decisions we make affect aspects of our lives because all actions have consequences. We have a responsibility to deal with those consequences and a further responsibility to learn from them. But learning requires thought and taking responsibility requires effort and todays society wants to avoid those two circumstances at all costs. And that's the kind of Christian that I have a problem with. I simply cannot abide people who are not incapable but are unwilling to come up with a better argument for their position than “I know I'm right because God told me so."
We live in a democratic society, and the core of what defines a democratic society lies in the process of debate. Debate is a series of reasoned arguments intended to establish a proposition, followed by a reasoned and intelligent rebuttal of that position. The process is then repeated until a middle ground is reached and people can go on with their lives. But they key to this process is intelligent discourse, and the person who believes what he believes because God tells him to has no interest in intelligent discourse. He's already made up his mind and he pities you because you haven't yet seen the light.
Religion has no place in government, and government has no business regulating morality. It's that simple. But religion is going to become more and more commonplace in governmental dealings and more legislation will be passed to regulate what is considered right and what is considered wrong. The masses will look upon this as a good thing and go about their business, secure in the knowledge that they've once again preserved their right to do absolutely nothing at all.
Practitioners of apathetic democracy get exactly the government they ask for, and they get it in spades. I hope you people are ready to reap what you sow.