scrivel

Like many of you, my feelings of euphoria after the Nov. 4 presidential election were mixed with bitter disappointment over California’s passage of Proposition 8. Since then, there’s been plenty of finger-pointing, from the left’s complacency leading up to the election, to the influence of the Mormon church, to supposed attitudes of African-American voters. In a previous blog post, I attributed support of Prop. 8 more abstractly to a mixture of hate and puritanical nosiness.

But since the vote I’ve been mulling it over, and I’m not sure any of that adequately explains what happened. It’s led me to larger questions, like where does hate come from anyway? And why hate homosexuality, when there are so many other things for us to collectively disapprove of?

I don’t pretend to have any real answers. But at the risk of trivializing a serious thing, I’ll admit that, whenever I consider the issue, I can’t help thinking that maybe Yoda was on to something: “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” (Of course, “Yoda” is only cribbing various, more-terrestrial spiritual traditions here, but sadly it’s Star Wars that I’ve internalized.) In other words, hate is both a cause and an outcome. We know what “suffering” it’s caused (Prop. 8), but I think we need to consider its own causes.

So. Fear. But fear of what? Why would somebody be afraid of same-sex marriage? I have to admit I’ve still got trouble wrapping my head around this. There’s rhetoric out there about churches fearing litigation if they don’t perform same-sex marriages, or of schools “teaching homosexuality,” whatever the heck that means. But these are just red herrings, bugaboos designed to lend an air of legitimacy to outright discrimination. They mask rather than reveal the root fears.

In a recent Salon interview, Richard Rodriquez argues that what religious conservatives fear is not so much same-sex marriage or homosexuality, but rather perceived changes in the nature of families and gender relations. So, the chief anxiety is not over whether two men or two women marry each other, but instead over what it means to be a man or a woman in a committed relationship. Imagine the confusion same-sex marriage must cause anyone who subscribes to clearly-defined roles for husbands and wives: if two men marry, then who is the husband, and who is the wife? Do they (*gasp*) both wear the pants in the family? Which partner is subject to Paul’s inexplicably popular injunction for “wives, [to] submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” (Eph. 5:22)? Maybe same-sex marriage is only the most extreme (or most vulnerable) threat to traditional gender roles. Other perceived threats — like women in the workplace, or even contraception — have too much popular support these days to attack in the open. So same-sex marriage becomes a convenient scapegoat for a whole collection of perceived ills.

Maybe. Or maybe it’s both less complicated and more insidious than that. I recently read about a study suggesting that politically conservative people are inherently more fearful than their liberal counterparts. The authors of the study caution against reading too much into these results, but I have to say that the idea has a certain amount of explanatory power. Surely some people voted for Prop. 8 out of hate, and others out of the fears Rodriguez outlines, but maybe there’s a good portion of the “yes” vote who simply fear change of any kind. For people who are ruled by fear (and I think we’ve all known people like that), something like same-sex marriage represents yet another unwanted change in the status quo, another sure sign that society is going straight to hell in a handbasket. A vote for Prop. 8, then, might have just been a relatively easy way for these folks to temporarily delay the inevitable apocalypse always lurking just around the corner.

Of course, fear also goes hand-in-hand with ignorance. I suspect that a good number of the people who voted for Prop. 8 either don’t personally know any gay people, or they think they don’t. One solution, as Harvey Milk is supposed to have put it, is to “come out, come out, whereever you are.” Still, I think it’s important for us all to disabuse the fearful of their misconceptions. My own wife, who has yet to submit to anything, has written a brilliant post along these lines.

I’m not a big fan of California’s proposition system. I know some folks like it as a way for average citizens to participate in the democratic process, but I’m not entirely convinced that’s always a good thing. Writing legislation is tricky business. Or rather, writing good legislation is tricky business. And determining whether a piece of legislation is good or not is equally tricky.

My beef with the proposition system is that it puts me in a position of having to sort the good, the bad, and the ugly. Isn’t that what we pay legislators for? I feel like this legislation by referendum is just a dressed-up way of subverting the democratic process. Think schools get way too much money? Put it on the ballot. Hate immigrants? Put it on the ballot. Think minorities are getting too “uppity”? Put it on the ballot.

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I hear that there are quite a few of you out there thinking about voting for California’s Proposition 8, the so-called “California Marriage Protection Act,” which would effectively write a ban on same-sex marriage into the state constitution.

I have to admit, though, that I’m having trouble understanding why you’d vote for something like that. I’ve been in a heterosexual marriage for over 14 years, and that’s long enough to have experienced marriage both before and after the advent of legal same-sex marriage. I can honestly say that same-sex marriage hasn’t had much of an effect on my own marriage. If anything, the fact that same-sex couples want to get married is a kind of validation. It can’t be all that bad if everyone wants to do it.

If same-sex marriage has negatively affected your marriage, then I suggest that perhaps your marriage isn’t as resilient as it could be. Seek marriage counseling.

“Ah,” you might say, “but homosexuality is wrong.” I don’t agree, but it’s certainly your prerogative to feel that way. You might have deeply felt beliefs about which sexual organs should go where, based on what some really old book or really old guy in a pointy hat says.* Fine. So don’t get married to someone who’s got the same parts as you. That seems like a pretty easy-to-follow rule. You don’t need a constitutional definition to keep you from accidentally marrying the wrong person, do you?

What it comes down to is this: You’ve only got one reason to vote for Proposition 8, and that’s because you like to tell other people what to do. There’s a strong puritanical tradition in this country of poking our noses in other people’s business, but it’s always run counter to the value we (claim to) place on freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The truth is that, if you’re a heterosexual, same-sex marriage doesn’t affect you.

Or rather, it only affects you to the extent that you let it. If the mere fact that loving, same-sex couples can express their commitment and devotion to each other through marriage fills you with fear and disgust, then I think that’s your problem, not theirs.

* I am not, of course, referring to Dumbledore.

I don’t claim to know much about economics, but I know enough to understand that doing nothing about the current economic crisis would be a huge mistake. I know that people are pissed at Wall Street. I’m pissed, too. But I’m appalled by those who seem to think the best course of action is just to let banks and investors twist in the wind. These statements made by Mitchell Bard on the Huffington Post are typical:

…a big part of me just wishes that Wall Street is left to solve (or not) its own mess. Yeah, I know that people would be hurt, and I would hardly be happy with that. But, again, maybe we would be better off in the long run, with a better understanding of the importance of governing the right way.

There has to be consequences for actions. Without them, a society can’t function. If Congress manages to overcome today’s setback and pass a Wall Street bailout this week, those who have profited from advocating a system that was always destined to implode will, in the end, pay no price for their actions.

Yes, we’d love to hold those fat cats responsible for the reckless way they’ve gambled with our economy, but this idea that “people would be hurt” is a gross understatement. It’s not just bankers and investors who’ll be hurt — it’s everyone. Like it our not, there’s not a clear way to punish Wall Street without punishing ourselves (or our pensions, or 401ks, or whatever).

If, through negligence, your neighbor allowed his house to catch fire, would you stand idly by while it burned to the ground? After all, it’s his own damn fault, right? But what if his house was so close to yours that you were certain that the fire would spread to your own house? Wouldn’t you help him put out the flames then? Wall Street is perhaps closer than you think.

Or, as this dumb campfire story from my youth says, “when the log rolls over, we’ll all be dead.”

Today, Barack Obama made the rather gutsy move of encouraging everyone to support the economic rescue plan that’s having trouble making it through Congress. Maybe we should listen to him. I don’t know if the “bailout” is the best of all possible solutions, but the consequences of doing nothing are simply too terrible to contemplate.