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March 12, 2008

An open letter to Oregon Conservatives

Dear Oregon Conservatives:

Equal rights is coming. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. You can continue fighting it and that may delay the inevitable for a while. But ultimately your efforts to preserve special rights just for yourselves will be but dust in the wind because it's the blindfold that distinguishes Lady Justice from a petty tyrant.

One by one your arguments have been debunked and exposed. Perhaps most damning of all has been the very sad, very public spectacle more commonly known as Brittney Spears and Kevin Federline. The very notion that they are somehow deserving of special rights under the law on the basis of their former attraction to each other is absurd. Surely even you can see that.

So here's the situation. You basically have two choices:

1. Gay Marriage

or...

2. Civil Unions for everyone.

Now, if I were still one of you then I would go with the later choice because that would at least leave you with the thin veneer of your religious institution's exclusionary rules. But then that would be between you and your God, which is where it belonged in the first place.

You're probably wondering why I'm writing you now. After all, you're in the midst of trying to roll back Domestic Partnerships here in Oregon and probably don't want to hear any of this. Well, it's because I've been watching as your peers in California have had their legal arguments to the California Supreme Court turned into mincemeat and I'm hoping that you might be beginning to grasp the long-term futility of your quest.

Oh, and just between you and me and... well, Blue Oregon, that Gary George fellow is a huge liability to your cause. Seriously! He makes Brittney and Kevin seem like desirable neighbors. I mean c'mon!

But back to the topic at hand, I know that the French aren't exactly your favorite people, but then do you really like anyone but yourselves? Ah but I digress... The French..., they've got this "marriage" thing figured out about as well as it can be in a society that's both religiously conservative and dedicated to democratic principles. Everyone gets what is effectively a civil union document from the government and then the happy couple goes to the church of their choice to get marriage rites performed, and only then are they actually "married." I think you'd have to agree sooner or later that that's the only way you're going to be able to restrict your brand of religion to just those who agree with you. Of course there are churches that would be only too happy to perform marriage rites for gay couples. But then that's really none of your business is it?

You'd have to learn some new qualifying words like, "my Baptist wife and I" or "my Mormon husband and I" depending on how you take your tea. But hey... at least you'd be able to cling to your illusion of exclusivity in a way that still holds out the proverbial snowball's chance in Hades of not having it taken away from you.

Folks, you're holding a losing hand. Best play it real smartly or the choice will be taken away from you. Personally, I think that gay marriage as a civil institution is inevitable. But if you're going to have even a chance of avoiding that eventuality in your lifetime then you damn well better stop fighting gay rights and belly up to the table where you can at least have an opportunity to steer our collective future. Obstinantly tilting at windmills as your California peers have done is the surest way to guarantee that the choice is taken away from you whether you like it or not. And hey... who knows, maybe if everyone got used to to having Civil Unions then the whole "marriage" thing would receed back to the religions from whence it came. But either way, full equality under the law is coming, and soon! You can work with it or you can work against it. Preventing it simply isn't an option available to you out here in the real world.

Think about it...

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself." -- Thomas Paine

Posted by Kevin at March 12, 2008 08:03 PM