I hear from and write to many people. Among them are fellow conservatives, Libertarians who want to challenge my opinion, and liberals who strongly disagree with my views. I recently received an e-mail from a young man who was lamenting the Bush victory. I responded to his e-mail, offering my perspective on the election and the electorate.

He responded with the following: “I just wanted to write you and tell you that I appreciated your letter, it felt really open when I read it. I understood exactly what you were saying…I agree with you on many levels…one thing I can’t understand is the allowance of same-sex marriages being against morals. I feel as if this ban only puts those people on a lower level of class in our society. This is not fair and I still have not been able to find a Republican to better explain the rationale behind this.”

I’ll try to explain it as best I can. The issue of gay marriage is really two issues. One is a religious issue, and the other is a civil issue. They must be discussed separately.

First, the religious aspect. Modern relativists and revisionists aside, most people accept the fact that the Bible condemns homosexual behavior, so I will not argue that point. Secondly, it is likewise clear to most people that the Bible plainly describes the marriage relationship as between a man and woman. Christ not only addresses the whole person aspect of man and woman, but He specifically mentions gender in the physical sense when he describes them “male and female.” This statement pertains not only to mankind, but also to the whole of creation. The natural order is the sexual union between opposite, not like genders. The purpose for this order is evident in the creation mandate – “Be fruitful and multiply.”

If the Bible condemns homosexuality, it is incumbent upon the church to oppose it, and to oppose any institution which would legitimize that which God calls “an abomination.” A Christian can no more condone homosexuality than he or she can condone any other sin. Therefore, as long as there are Christians, there will be a voting bloc that opposes the attempted normalization of homosexual relationships.

I was born at night, but not last night. I realize that not everyone accepts the Bible as the ultimate authority in their lives, and that many people don’t believe it or accept it as any authority at all. To their way of thinking, the civil authority is the only authority. That’s fine. Christ told us to take the Gospel into the whole world, but He never told us that everyone would accept it.
So we must discuss the civil aspect of the argument. It seems to me that proponents of the issue approach it from a civil rights perspective. Benefits are derived from marriage, and homosexuals are denied those benefits. But to argue that premise is to assume that people marry in order to receive benefits, and not that the benefits exist in order to encourage marriage.

Marriage, as a civil institution, evolved over time for specific reasons. The man-woman-children family unit is the most stabilizing influence in society. The natural instinct of men to be polygamous is restrained by marriage. The natural desire of women for a stable and safe environment is met by marriage. The natural need of children for physical and emotional nurture is fulfilled when that child lives with two married parents of opposite gender.

Some will take exception to one or more of my previous statements. Most of you will not. You know, both intuitively and through experience that this is the case. And civil government has known this as well, hence specific policies designed to encourage the nuclear family. The family receives financial incentives for staying together and functioning as a unit, while civil society receives the reward of functioning families – stable, productive, and law-abiding citizens.

Do not infer that I am saying homosexuals aren’t stable, productive, or law abiding. However, they cannot produce stable, productive, and law-abiding children, hence they are not entitled to any benefit that was designed to encourage the continuity of the family any more than I am entitled to a tax credit for a loss I never suffered or an investment I never made.

Critics cite divorce rates and other social ills as evidence that heterosexual marriage is no more beneficial than homosexual marriage or civil unions would be. Those failings reflect on the people involved, not the institution of marriage itself. Bad spouses and parents no more invalidate marriage than bad doctors invalidate the practice of medicine.

Traditional marriage is beneficial to civil society. The civil benefits of marriage must be reserved for and limited to men and women, for the same reasons today that they were devised in the past.

(Mike North writes a regular op-ed column for six newspapers in the southeast Tennessee, northwest Georgia and northeast Alabama region. He is a professional land surveyor with True Line Company, Land Surveyors. He is a former Walker County School Board member and a student of history and political science. He can be reached at
Mike@myhumbleopinion.net
His columns are at
Mike North Columns )

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In response to Mike North's column. I hate to break this to him, but some people can't have children; either by choice or for medical reasons. So in his narrow view they don't deserve to be married. How about seniors who remarry after being widowed? They're too old to have children, so I guess they don't count either. People do not get married for procreation (unless it's a shotgun wedding).

If he has read the Constitution, the 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law and no law can be made to deny these rights. As defined in the 1967 Supreme Court ruling Loving v. Virginia, Marriage is" a fundamental civil right."

There are 1,049 federal benefits denied to gay couples. If I was hurt in an accident, my partner couldn't make medical decisions for me or even see me in the emergency room or in ICU. Inheritance rights, Social Security benefits, tax advantages, and other rights most people take for granted are routinely denied to us. Wills can (and have) be contested and overturned in favor of families who have disowned gay and lesbians for years suddenly to swoop in like vultures when a partner dies.

I am a taxpaying citizen who will not be a second class citizen. I have an idea. Since marriage is for procreation (according to Mike North) I can't get married. And since I can't get married is denying me a civil right (according to the USSC and the Constitution), I should get a refund on my taxes for being denied my rights as a taxpayer. Since I don't have kids, why should I have to pay for them? My property taxes, sales taxes, and various tax increases are "for the children."

Aulcie Smith
AULCIES@aol.com

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In response to Mike North’s column I believe his opinion was naïve and closed-minded. One of North’s main points was that the main purpose of getting married was to “be fruitful and multiply.” If everyone could only married for the sole purpose of having children, many perfectly happy, successful, long-term couples would not be together right now. There are many couple who either adopt children, choose not to have children, or physically cannot give birth to a child. Most of these couples are happily married and lead perfectly respectable lives.

The idea that children can only get physical and emotional nurturing from a heterosexual couple is an absurd way to think. Any loving couple, heterosexual or homosexual, can provide nurturing to a child. There are currently between eight and 10 million children being raised in gay households in the United States. Many of these children were adopted and would otherwise be orphans. It can be assumed that these children are getting more nurturing in their homes than they would in an orphanage.

The problem is, if homosexual couple can’t get married, and they live in states that don’t permit co-parenting between gay couples, one of them has no legal rights over the child. This seems entirely unfair – that a couple could not have joint custody over a child that they adopt together because they are not allowed to get married. It is in a sense a favor to these children that people are adopting them and giving them a better life. The couple shouldn’t be punished for helping a child.

North implies that if a couple can’t produce a child, they should not be entitled to the rights that are given to child-bearers. This opinion excludes any couple acting as legal guardians of a child that they did not physically bear. He has put people into two categories: “child-bearing” and “homosexual.” That assumption could not be further from the truth.

The way North addresses gay couples in his article reminds me of the way people in the 1950’s spoke about black people. It was tradition back then, black people were just thought of as inferior. And women – of course they couldn’t vote, that’s just the way society worked, and people wanted to stick with traditional, societal ideals. Presently, the majority of people can’t even imagine enslaving someone, or being denied rights because they are “inferior.” That is essentially what is happening to gay couples today.

In 20 years, people will be shocked that gay marriage was once illegal. People will be amazed at a society depraved of equal rights and protection under the law. If the United States prides itself on being a “free” country, everyone should be free to love and marry whomever they choose. There will be gay couples no matter what, living under the same roofs, adopting children, engaging in sexual relations with each other just like heterosexual couples do. Will it really harm anybody for these couples to have a marriage ceremony and gain the rights they are entitled to? Will it make a difference to anyone in the neighborhood if the gay couple down the street is married or just living together? Why not let them be happy?

People aren’t going to just stop being gay because of all these inequitable rules. Just as the Civil Rights, Anti-Slavery and Women’s Rights acts passed years ago, someday gay marriage will be legal everywhere, and those opposed to it will see what its like to be the minority.

Jenny Sansouci
JennyMS2@yahoo.com

Jenny Sansouci is a senior Public Relations and American Studies major at the University of Maryland, College Park.

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I'm a Tennessean currently living in New York who could not help but respond to Mike North's piece on gay marriage. First of all, I'm not going to dispute Mr. North on the religious issue of gay marriage – I believe that members of religious communities have the right to believe what they want about the nature of marriage, and to uphold
those beliefs in their own practice in their own facilities. I do happen to believe that the marriage between two people of the same sex is not offensive to God, but I understand that I take a very liberal interpretation of the relevant Scriptures, and I have a very liberal religious sensibility that others may not share.

I appreciate Mr. North's separation of the "religious" nature of this issue, versus the "civil" debate which every American has the right to participate in. If only more religious conservatives would understand this distinction, perhaps dialogue about this issue would be more productive. It is on that note that I'll respond to his argument about the "civil" nature of marriage.

His argument rests solely on one assertion that he makes in your article – that homosexuals "cannot produce stable, productive, and law-abiding children". The way this article is written makes Mr. North's argument a little vague and there are two main interpretations possible here:

1.) Is he arguing that homosexuals have no right to marry because the main purpose of marriage is the production of offspring, and because homosexuals cannot physically create children, they should not be allowed to marry?

2.) Or, rather, is Mr. North arguing that homosexuals, by virtue of their being homosexuals, are going to produce offspring which are naturally inclined to be unstable, unproductive and not law-abiding, because that is the only thing that homosexual parents can yield?

In terms of this first interpretation, other respondents to Mr. North have already made this point, but I'll say it again: it is not feasible to state that the purpose of marriage is the production of children, and those who cannot perform this function should not marry.
Many people who choose not to have children also get married, and should not be denied that right. Should we deny marriage to infertile people, or to elderly persons who are beyond the age of reproductive capacity? Do people who want to adopt children (who would otherwise be without parents) not also deserve the right to be married? Other
respondents have made this point more eloquently than I, so I won't belabor it. Simply put, establishing the production of offspring as the main purpose for marriage is not only untenable, it negates many thousands of marital unions based upon something else besides children.

However, I suspect that the more insidious message that Mr. North is trying to convey is my second interpretation of his argument; that is to say, homosexual parents will create children who are unstable, unproductive and inclined towards criminality. Are there any
statistics to support such an assertion? (Statistics, I should say, which are not generated under questionable conditions by "researchers" for the conservative religious movement.) I think Mr. North will find that this kind of data simply does not exist. There is absolutely nothing to support the idea that gay parents are going to produce unstable, unproductive and criminally-inclined offspring, simply because they are gay. His argument rests upon his (unspoken) assumption that homosexuality begets criminality, an assertion which is impossible to prove if a person looks at actual demographic data about the criminal behavior of the straight vs. gay population.

But there is another, perhaps more important way in which his argument is fundamentally unsound. For example, he asserts the following: "Critics cite divorce rates and other social ills as evidence that heterosexual marriage is no more beneficial than homosexual marriage or civil unions would be. Those failings reflect on the people involved, not the institution of marriage itself. Bad spouses and parents no more invalidate marriage than bad doctors invalidate the practice of medicine."

But he has just made the point, in the paragraph above this one, that homosexuality does reflect on the institution of marriage, because it imparts a predisposition towards criminal behavior in the offspring it produces. And yet heterosexual people, who openly display criminal and/or immoral behavior, should still be allowed to produce offspring, who are much more likely to commit crimes? If Mr. North's concern is for the stability, productivity, and law-abiding nature of children he has done them a grave disservice by not condemning heterosexuals who openly practice drug addiction, child abuse, infidelity as well as a whole host of other sins which many commit. If gayness reflects on a homosexual's right to create a nuclear family, then certainly drug addiction or serial infidelity should reflect on a heterosexual's right to be part of one as well.

Instead of focusing on homosexuality for a moment, let's talk about another issue for which there is a tremendous amount of data: divorce. Divorce has been shown to have a devastating effect on the psychological development of children. And yet Mr. North mentions nothing of this much more wide-ranging and serious problem in his column. If he really feels that children should be raised in a stable nuclear family, then I suggest he starts by promoting this idea: if gays can't get married, then straight people should only be allowed to marry once. I wonder how many conservative religious evangelicals (among whom the divorce rate is actually higher than the national average) would sign up for that.

Laura Stokes
Research Coordinator, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
laura.stokes@gmail.com

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Ms. Sansouci made a statement "In 20 years, people will be shocked that gay marriage was once illegal." Using this logic, I'll make my own prediction: 40 years from now, people will be shocked that marijuana was illegal. 60 years from now, people will be shocked that sibling marriage was once illegal. And 80 years from now, people will be shocked that polygamy was once illegal.

Please try to see that I am not addressing morals...only addressing the issue in a manner of trying to understand why people would vote a certain way. I am getting to the point of supporting total freedom for all (anarchy), but the problem I have with the gay marriage issue is the fact that there is still this exclusionary feel to the idea. In other words, who is moving this "moral line."

Why stop at freedom of homosexual marriage? Keep going...move the so-called moral line up or down as you see fit. But remember, if you move it just enough to make you comfortable, but still keep the moral line where you want it, you're still making decisions for some other American who doesn't share your ideas or values.

To sum it up, I have a homosexual friend who thinks pot smokers are losers and doesn't see why someone would be a pothead. He doesn't understand. But as I always remind him, they are not hurting anyone except maybe themselves. And they pay taxes.

So just because someone may be against gay marriage doesn't mean they are a bible-thumping moralist. They may be someone who realizes that somehow, someway, there has to be a line drawn. .

Maybe state's rights isn't a flawed idea after all. That way we could all divide into our own personal comfort levels and move to the state that fits our idea of morals. But the South lost the Civil War. We are a Republic. Sometimes the majority vote must be honored.

Peace to all, and maybe someday we will truly be a free country.

Jeff Wilson
tattle04@yahoo.com

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As a regular reader of the Chattanoogan.com online paper (more on this later), I was very pleased to see both your recent article, and the consequent replies published.

For a change, all the participants in the discussion presented cogent and well reasoned arguments for their points of view, whether of religious or civil emphasis.

The discussion is interesting from another standpoint, that being that I reside in New Zealand where we here have recently passed legislation that recognizes "gay unions" together with the subsequent civil legal rights that such confers on other forms of "marriage."

We also introduced a "civil union" that any couples of any sex may enter into/celebrate that again has the same legal standing as the traditional "marriage" ceremony (which after all still ends with a contract signing that supercedes any civil or religious ceremony/words that preceded it).

However, as to my own view? Well, in the words of a well-known singer/songwriter/poet ...."The times are a changing...."

Ricky Berg
Wellington, New Zealand
ricky_nz@compuserve.com

P.S. I was born in Chattanooga, but returned to NZ with my NZ-born mother when I was three years old. My birth-father still lives in Chattanooga.

* * *

Mike North has certainly provoked a great deal of response to his latest column, in which he articulates (with his usual clarity) his position against the recognition of same-sex marriages. While trying to find the time to respond, I was pleased to see that several others beat me to the "Send" button. But, since neither Mike nor any of the previous respondents has addressed what I consider to be the real issue in question, I will go ahead and add my $0.02.

A great debate (not just lately on this site, but nationwide for quite some time) has been and is being waged as to whether homosexual couples should be "allowed" to marry (or enter into "civil unions" or some such euphemism that equates to marriage, but sounds more palatable to the average person on the street). The problem is, this debate completely misses the mark. The underlying question, which no one seems to be addressing at all, is "allowed by whom?" or, put another way, "just why the heck is government involved at all in 'allowing' or 'not allowing' consenting adults to enter into any kind of relationship?"

Here's a trivia question for the reader: In what state (or colony, this is not a trick question) did George and Martha Washington obtain a license to marry? How about James and Dolley Madison? Andrew and Rachel Jackson? The correct answer to all of the above is, "none."

When our country was founded, the idea of a "marriage license" would have been considered absurd. If you and your sweetheart wanted to get married, you went down to your local church and asked your preacher to marry you. If you were underage, you had to get your parents' approval ... but you certainly didn't have to fill out government forms or ask some bureaucrat for permission.

As Constitutional scholar Michael Badnarik has so eloquently put it, "If you have a marriage license, what do you have permission to do now that you didn't have permission to do before ... who gave you that permission -.. and where did they get the authority to give you that permission in the first place?" The correct answer is, no one in government has the authority to give or deny permission for marriage. It's none of government's business to decide who can marry and who cannot.

Historically, marriage licenses date only to about the mid-1800s and were originally used as a tool to regulate whether interracial (the original "politically incorrect") couples were allowed to marry. In fact, Black's Law Dictionary defines a marriage license as permission to "intermarry", where intermarriage is defined as miscegenation or marriage between people of different races. Couples of the same race did not need such a license (and still don't, at least not if we were actually following the Constitution).

Laws restricting mixed-race couples from marrying were eventually declared unconstitutional according to the Fourteenth Amendment. To Mike North's chagrin, laws against same-sex couples marrying will likely meet the same fate because they clearly violate the same equal protection clause. Eventually, I hope and believe our courts will recognize that all legislation purporting to require government licensing of marriage is unconstitutional.

Marriage is essentially two things. First of all, to believers, it is a religious sacrament, performed in the sight of God. As such, it is the exclusive responsibility of the religious organization under whose auspices the sacrament is performed. The only rules properly applied to those who wish to marry in a particular house of worship are the rules of that denomination or congregation. If a priest, minister, rabbi or other clergy person does -- or does not -- choose to perform marriage ceremonies for certain people, that decision is not rightly subject to the review of an earthly government. The principle of separation of church and state, a basic tenet of the American republic, demands no less than government neutrality toward all religious ceremonies -- including marriage! Readers -- you wouldn't let the government tell you whether or not you could baptize your child, or have a bar mitzvah, or take communion, would you? Then why would you accept government interference in any other sacrament of your religion?

Secondly, regardless of the religious significance (which does not apply to all couples since non-believers also marry), marriage is a legal contract. Anyone of legal age has an unlimited right (according to the U.S. Supreme Court in Hale v. Hinkel) to contract with another individual of legal age for any legitimate purpose. Mutual support, raising of children, co-ownership of property, medical decision making, and other benefits and duties commonly associated with marriage are certainly legitimate objects of a contractual agreement. Neither the federal government nor any state government has the right to stand between individuals wishing to enter into a contract, whether it is called a "marriage contract" or something else. In fact, one of the chief purposes of government is to enforce the terms of contracts.

Mike North argues for restricting marriage to a man and a woman based on his belief that "traditional marriage is beneficial to civil society" and that, to achieve those benefits, it is acceptable for government to confer certain advantages on those people (heterosexual couples) whose marriage helps bring stability to civil society.

The problem with Mike's argument is that "civil society" doesn't exist as a physical entity with discernible interests of its own. "Civil society" is only an abstraction, and as such has no rights. Only individuals have rights. And the Fourteenth Amendment clearly states that all individuals are guaranteed equal protection of their rights under the law. Not just all straight people, or all gay people, or all tall people, or all short people, or all black people, or all white people ... but all people, period ... have rights. Those rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in any way that doesn't infringe on the rights of others ... and, as stated by the Supreme Court, they also include the unlimited right to contract.

To sum up, marriage is not a mere privilege to be granted or denied at the whim of government. Marrying a willing partner of legal age, like entering into any other contract, is a right ... and you don't need a "license" or a "permit" to exercise a right.

So, while I would never marry another man ... and while I would personally rather never see any man enter into a marriage contract with another man, nor a woman with a woman ... it's none of my business, and none of Mike North's business, and certainly none of the government's business to infringe on the rights of citizens to freely associate and enter into agreements with whoever they choose. In other words, the correct, and constitutional, thing to do is to get the government out of the marriage question entirely and simply "live and let live."

Joe Dumas
joedumas@bellsouth.net