AN ARTICLE BY DAVID BOIES: GAY MARRIAGE AND THE CONSTITUTION

Gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters, our teachers and doctors, our friends and neighbors, our parents and children. It is time, indeed past time, that we accord them the basic human right to marry the person they love. It is time, indeed past time, that our Constitution fulfill its promise of equal protection and due process for all citizens by now eliminating the last remnant of centuries of misguided state discrimination against gays and lesbians.

The argument in favor of Proposition 8 ultimately comes down to no more than the tautological assertion that a marriage is between a man and a woman. But a slogan is not a substitute for constitutional analysis. Law is about justice, not bumper stickers.

[For the full article, see here.]

This is an excellent article by David Boies who, along with Ted Olson, has filed suit on behalf of all Gay couples who seek and deserve full and equal civil rights. Here, he is arguing about the mandate of equal protection and due process for Gay people, asking the federal courts to strike down the nefarious Prop. 8 that prohibits marriage between same-sex couples who wish to make a lifetime commitment to each other.

In this same article that I hope you read in its entirety, Boies writes:

There are those who sincerely believe that homosexuality is inconsistent with their religion -- and the First Amendment guarantees their freedom of belief. However, the same First Amendment, as well as the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses, preclude the enshrinement of their religious-based disapproval in state law.

Anyone who feels that same-sex love is inconsistent with Christianity clearly doesn't understand the Gospel of Jesus!

The institution of marriage has taken many forms throughout human history, and it is a sin to discriminate against anybody and/or to deprive Gay couples and their children of the basic civil rights and benefits that accrue to citizenship in society.

Since when did Jesus condone discrimination? Since when did Jesus condone prejudicial, discriminatory, and downright hateful rhetoric from those who claim to represent Him? Since when did Jesus condone His disciples' alliance with the most reactionary forces of the State to consign LGBT people, or anyone else for that matter, to second class and pariah status in society?

And since when did Jesus ever condemn His Gay children? As recorded in Matthew 19:12:

"For there are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother's womb...Let him who is able to receive it, receive it."

All too many professing Christians refuse to receive this message from our Lord!

As Faris Malik has written, regarding men:

The willingness to engage in homosexual activity (particularly intergenerationally) was widespread among men in the ancient Mediterranean region. Women and boys were considered equally tempting sex objects for those whom we would call heterosexual men. Therefore, homosexual activity could not have provided a means of distinguishing certain men as "gay" the way we do in the modern world. However, the ancients did differentiate based on an unwillingness or incapacity for heterosexual sex. Certain men were known to fundamentally lack arousal for sex with women, and men of this kind were distinguished from the majority of ordinary men on that basis. The innately and exclusively homosexual men of the ancient world inhabited the category of eunuchs. What we moderns think of as a eunuch, namely a castrated man, was simply an artificially manufactured homosexual....

Exclusively homosexual men, or eunuchs, to use the ancient term, were not considered "male," because maleness meant the aptitude to play the male role in procreative sex, which they lacked by definition. [Here]

Malik also states:

Think about it. Jesus spoke specifically about gay men in Matthew 19:12. He even said people might become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He did not anywhere say eunuchs should avoid their own kind of sexual expression. The church's condemnation of gay sexuality thus falls into the same category as its former hatred of straight sexuality, namely the category of irrelevance. In fact, you could even call it complicity in genocide, given the number of gay people who have been tortured and killed, either by the church or with its condonation. [Here.]

Clearly, the spiritual underpinnings of same-sex love, although very relevant to a true understanding of its biblical relevance, is irrelevant to the mandate of equal protection under the law and the fact that separate is not equal as are currently enshrined in our Constitution.

It is, therefore, unconstitutional, and a disgrace, to discriminate against Gay people!

And it is an even greater disgrace to reduce Jesus and the Gospel to a bumper sticker mentality that promotes discrimination against God's gay and lesbian children in their names!

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