An open letter to the Irish Independent
Nov. 7th, 2008 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbWhen I opened your paper on November 7, I was taken aback to read the piece by Mr David Quinn, "Like California, we should ban same sex marriages." I am always disappointed to find bigotry in the newspapers, and more so to find it in the Independent, which has always seemed to me reasonably balanced when writing about the issues.
I am sorry to have been mistaken.
When I realised on Wednesday evening that Proposition 8 had - with the support, help and funding of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons - passed in California, writing prejudice into the state constitution and calling into question the validity of the thousands of marriages that have been performed in the last five months, I was sorely disappointed. I am Irish, and straight, but I have many gay or otherwise queer friends: seeing yet another corner of the planet - and one which had, briefly, granted them full and equal rights - decide that they were to remain (in California's case, become again) second-class citizens, was heartbreaking to me.
Reading Mr Quinn's article, today, is infuriating. His prejudice is clear, and his argument for the merits of so-called 'traditional marriage' is vile and fallacious.
Why do I say so? I hope you will attend me carefully while I explain. What follows immediately may seem like a digression: believe me, it is not.
There are three main arguments which some people use to contend against the justice of same-sex marriage. The first is the argument from religion, the second is the argument from nature, and the third is the argument which I will term the 'argument from tradition'. Let us dispose of the first two arguments before moving on to Mr. Quinn's objection, the argument from tradition.
The argument from religion, or at any rate, the argument from Christian religion, is invalid on grounds of hypocrisy. Christian opposition to queerness is justified on the basis of some verses of the Mosaic law. But any reading of the Mosaic law - Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Numbers - reveals that many things we forbid are therein permitted: indeed, animal sacrifice is a requirement, and likewise mutilation as punishment for the commission of certain sorts of crime. Likewise, the Mosaic law forbids many things that we consider normal: we eat shellfish, for example, and pork. We wear clothing made of mixed fibres. These are all equally termed 'abominations'.
There are other examples. Therefore, by what logic can anyone claim that the verse concerning men lying with men (and indeed, no mention is made of women lying with women) is more important than the others? Unless one follows the Mosaic law to the last detail, it is rankest hypocrisy.
The argument from nature is less hypocritical. Unfortunately, it displays more ignorance: there are examples of homosexual pairings within bird, animal and reptilian species that have been reported in scientific journals.
This leaves aside the dichotomy that is human civilisation: on the face of it, much about the life of the modern urbanised (or semi-urbanised, or even small-town) human is unnatural. Electic light? Unnatural. Motorised transport? Unnatural. Computers? Unnatural. And yet we are accustomed to these things, and they no longer discomfit us. Indeed, many of us consider them net goods.
Is it natural to fight each other? To go to war? Judging from how frequent an occurence it is, historically speaking, it would appear to be. And yet we do not consider human violence to be in general right and good: mostly we decry it as wrong and unnecessary.
In all logic, therefore, what is natural is not always right and good, and what is unnatural is not always wrong and bad. To argue on this basis is to argue on the basis of a false dichotomy: it is therefore an invalid argument.
As for myself, I believe that love in all its consensual forms is the most natural and right of things in existence.
The argument from religion and the argument from nature dealt with, let us turn our attention to the argument from tradition. This is Mr. Quinn's argument, and the whole of Mr. Quinn's argument: that allowing persons who are not heterosexual to enter into a contract of marriage, or of a civil partnership that confers the same rights and protections as marriage, somehow 'undermines' marriage.
Let me ask a very simple question. If Sean is married to Mary, and their friend Anne marries James, is Sean and Mary's marriage in any way made less by it?
Sean and Mary are still married. They still have all the rights and protections of marriage in our society: they can visit each other in hospital; they can adopt each other's children from previous marriages; they are considered to be each other's next of kin. If they have or adopt children together, and one of them dies, unless the other is obviously incompetent, there are no sticky issues of guardianship.
Let me ask the same question, but this time, let us say that their friend Anne is marrying Jane. Are Sean and Mary any less married?
Human rights is not a zero-sum game. Giving some people access to the same rights and protections as the rest of society does not in any way devalue those rights and protections.
Same-sex marriages or civil partnerships with a varying degree of rights and protections, have been available for some time in Andorra, parts of Australia, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary (unregistered co-habitation since 1996; registered partnership from 2009), Iceland, Israel, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. They are also available in some parts of Argentina, Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul), Mexico (Federal District and Coahuila), the U.S. states of California (it still has civil partnership), Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.). The sky has not fallen. Heterosexual marriage is still happening in those places, much as it always has.
This bullshit over the desirability of a 'traditional marriage' or a 'traditional family' is just that: bullshit. As the only child - correction, as the bastard child - of a single mother, I call foul.
My mother has a Business degree from UCD. I am an honours student undertaking a degree in Ancient History and Biblical Studies at TCD, who has won minor prizes both academic and sporting since primary school. If we speak of 'undermining', or of devaluation, I am downright tired of the media narrative that undermines and devalues women like my mother, and their children, for making the best choices that are in their hands to make.
The same people who want to keep my gay friends beyond the full and equal protection of the law would not, I have little doubt, be unhappy to do the same to women like my mother, for declining to subscribe to their single model of how a family should be.
There should not be one law (one set of rights, privileges, and protections) for me and another for thee. My gay friends deserve to have the same choice to marry, or to adopt, or to have the automatic right to visit their sick or unconscious partner in hospital, as my straight friends. Your gay sons and daughters deserve the same rights and protections as their heterosexual siblings. Our gay fellow-citizens deserve the same rights and protections as we, their straight counterparts, possess.
All adult citizens deserve equal rights and protections before the law. And if we deny that to a section of our fellow-citizens, out of unease over the unfamiliar, or self-justifying hypocrisy, then we are not even trying to be a just society, or a moral one.
Human rights is not a zero-sum game. When it comes to human rights, by giving, we do not take away: rather, we all gain.
Thank you for reading.
I am sorry to have been mistaken.
When I realised on Wednesday evening that Proposition 8 had - with the support, help and funding of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons - passed in California, writing prejudice into the state constitution and calling into question the validity of the thousands of marriages that have been performed in the last five months, I was sorely disappointed. I am Irish, and straight, but I have many gay or otherwise queer friends: seeing yet another corner of the planet - and one which had, briefly, granted them full and equal rights - decide that they were to remain (in California's case, become again) second-class citizens, was heartbreaking to me.
Reading Mr Quinn's article, today, is infuriating. His prejudice is clear, and his argument for the merits of so-called 'traditional marriage' is vile and fallacious.
Why do I say so? I hope you will attend me carefully while I explain. What follows immediately may seem like a digression: believe me, it is not.
There are three main arguments which some people use to contend against the justice of same-sex marriage. The first is the argument from religion, the second is the argument from nature, and the third is the argument which I will term the 'argument from tradition'. Let us dispose of the first two arguments before moving on to Mr. Quinn's objection, the argument from tradition.
The argument from religion, or at any rate, the argument from Christian religion, is invalid on grounds of hypocrisy. Christian opposition to queerness is justified on the basis of some verses of the Mosaic law. But any reading of the Mosaic law - Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Numbers - reveals that many things we forbid are therein permitted: indeed, animal sacrifice is a requirement, and likewise mutilation as punishment for the commission of certain sorts of crime. Likewise, the Mosaic law forbids many things that we consider normal: we eat shellfish, for example, and pork. We wear clothing made of mixed fibres. These are all equally termed 'abominations'.
There are other examples. Therefore, by what logic can anyone claim that the verse concerning men lying with men (and indeed, no mention is made of women lying with women) is more important than the others? Unless one follows the Mosaic law to the last detail, it is rankest hypocrisy.
The argument from nature is less hypocritical. Unfortunately, it displays more ignorance: there are examples of homosexual pairings within bird, animal and reptilian species that have been reported in scientific journals.
This leaves aside the dichotomy that is human civilisation: on the face of it, much about the life of the modern urbanised (or semi-urbanised, or even small-town) human is unnatural. Electic light? Unnatural. Motorised transport? Unnatural. Computers? Unnatural. And yet we are accustomed to these things, and they no longer discomfit us. Indeed, many of us consider them net goods.
Is it natural to fight each other? To go to war? Judging from how frequent an occurence it is, historically speaking, it would appear to be. And yet we do not consider human violence to be in general right and good: mostly we decry it as wrong and unnecessary.
In all logic, therefore, what is natural is not always right and good, and what is unnatural is not always wrong and bad. To argue on this basis is to argue on the basis of a false dichotomy: it is therefore an invalid argument.
As for myself, I believe that love in all its consensual forms is the most natural and right of things in existence.
The argument from religion and the argument from nature dealt with, let us turn our attention to the argument from tradition. This is Mr. Quinn's argument, and the whole of Mr. Quinn's argument: that allowing persons who are not heterosexual to enter into a contract of marriage, or of a civil partnership that confers the same rights and protections as marriage, somehow 'undermines' marriage.
Let me ask a very simple question. If Sean is married to Mary, and their friend Anne marries James, is Sean and Mary's marriage in any way made less by it?
Sean and Mary are still married. They still have all the rights and protections of marriage in our society: they can visit each other in hospital; they can adopt each other's children from previous marriages; they are considered to be each other's next of kin. If they have or adopt children together, and one of them dies, unless the other is obviously incompetent, there are no sticky issues of guardianship.
Let me ask the same question, but this time, let us say that their friend Anne is marrying Jane. Are Sean and Mary any less married?
Human rights is not a zero-sum game. Giving some people access to the same rights and protections as the rest of society does not in any way devalue those rights and protections.
Same-sex marriages or civil partnerships with a varying degree of rights and protections, have been available for some time in Andorra, parts of Australia, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary (unregistered co-habitation since 1996; registered partnership from 2009), Iceland, Israel, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. They are also available in some parts of Argentina, Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul), Mexico (Federal District and Coahuila), the U.S. states of California (it still has civil partnership), Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.). The sky has not fallen. Heterosexual marriage is still happening in those places, much as it always has.
This bullshit over the desirability of a 'traditional marriage' or a 'traditional family' is just that: bullshit. As the only child - correction, as the bastard child - of a single mother, I call foul.
My mother has a Business degree from UCD. I am an honours student undertaking a degree in Ancient History and Biblical Studies at TCD, who has won minor prizes both academic and sporting since primary school. If we speak of 'undermining', or of devaluation, I am downright tired of the media narrative that undermines and devalues women like my mother, and their children, for making the best choices that are in their hands to make.
The same people who want to keep my gay friends beyond the full and equal protection of the law would not, I have little doubt, be unhappy to do the same to women like my mother, for declining to subscribe to their single model of how a family should be.
There should not be one law (one set of rights, privileges, and protections) for me and another for thee. My gay friends deserve to have the same choice to marry, or to adopt, or to have the automatic right to visit their sick or unconscious partner in hospital, as my straight friends. Your gay sons and daughters deserve the same rights and protections as their heterosexual siblings. Our gay fellow-citizens deserve the same rights and protections as we, their straight counterparts, possess.
All adult citizens deserve equal rights and protections before the law. And if we deny that to a section of our fellow-citizens, out of unease over the unfamiliar, or self-justifying hypocrisy, then we are not even trying to be a just society, or a moral one.
Human rights is not a zero-sum game. When it comes to human rights, by giving, we do not take away: rather, we all gain.
Thank you for reading.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-07 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-07 11:33 pm (UTC)Sadly, as Mr. Quinn demonstrates with such eloquent fail, there is still a long way to go.