Blue America made so many political victories during the most recent elections in the US. However, one stunning loss truly took my breath away. The passage of Proposition 8 in the State of California.

During the forties and fifties, when homosexuals were still considered perverts and mentally disturbed, homosexuals left the small hometowns of Middle America and joined the army seeking their own autonomy in a world that entirely rejected them. The army placed placed most young people in the major urban centers of America (New York, San Francisco, San Diego, etc.). Naturally, California ended up with a net amount more than any other state. However, New York has more homosexuals in terms of cities. California elected the first openly gay City Manager Harvey Milk, which was groundbreaking. 

After lots of fighting in court, the California State Supreme Court ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. The issuances of gay marriages started on June 17th, 2008 and was halted after the vote of November 4, 2008 in which the population of the State of California voted it down by an incredibly narrow margin.

It seems to me that this is a logically inconsistent position to take especially in terms of the United States Constitution. Legally, opposition to same-sex marriage is hard to justify. There is no reference to God’s Law specifically within the Constitution. There is no proof any of the principles of the American Constitution are based on Biblical values as opposed to Enlightenment values, which there is plenty of evidence for. The Constitution does say that all individuals should be treated equally under the law (fourteenth amendment). And that the government shall make no establishment of religion (first amendment).

The best conservative argument against this stance is that marriage seems to predate organized religion. However, the full value of marriage today is religious, proven by the content of all their arguments. However, by definition, marriage as a legal institution part of the United States government, is a secular institution. As a branch of the US government is subject to all the regulations and principles of the Constitution. Therefore, the US government has to open up it’s institution of marriage to everyone because everyone is entitled to have equal rights under the law (fourteenth amendment). 

For those of you who think that the mixing of religion and government is inconsequential. I would like to point out all of the atrocities committed by the two combined throughout all of human history everywhere. There  is a reason it is not in our Constitution or any of the foundations of our government.  

If the government wants to avoid this inconsistency, it could get rid of the institution of marriage. Technically, it should not even be there in the first place because of the fundamental secular nature of our government. The government should replace marriage with civil unions for legal and tax-related reasons and marriage should be fully in the religious world. This is the only logically consistent argument I have seen in this debate supporting any side of it, and I fully support this position.