Hiding Hatred Behind Tradition

Gay marriage is an important issue for the Christian Right in America - they often rely on "cultural" conservative issues like abortion, evolution, and the use of the Confederate flag, but this issue may outshine them all. Equal rights for gays could be a cultural shift not alike those created by artificial contraception and women's suffrage. It undermines the power of some traditional groups, so it's not unexpected for conservatives to fight it.

Valerie Sherman writes for The Progress Report:

Bush's main issue is religious tradition. ... Bush wants to "protect" marriage from same-sex couples. Look at his language. The use of the word "protect" denotes that same-sex couples are subversive, wrong and dangerous. Why else would the dominant heterosexual practice need protection? And that brings me to my point. Those who would claim that same-sex couples should be denied marriage rights on equal footing to those of opposite-sex couples are advocating discrimination, not to mention perpetuating the hatred of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. To put it bluntly, they hate gay people. They might tell you they don't, maybe even insist upon it. They'll tell you same-sex marriage goes against tradition, as if there has never been a tradition that was discriminatory. Slavery? Anti-Semitism? Racism?

As a proponent of equal marriage rights, I'm disgusted by opponents of same-sex marriage hiding behind tradition or religion in discriminating against same-sex couples. If people admitted to their bigotry, particularly politicians, at least others would be aware of their biases. If you deny gays the rights and benefits of marriage, you are tacitly admitting that you think they are undeserving of it. And if you think they are undeserving of it, at best you are saying that they are not equal to the "straight" majority. Discrimination on this level is tantamount to admitting that either you have not thought about the subject and are blindly falling into line with a prejudicial "tradition," or that you did think about it and you do hate them -- enough to treat them as second-class citizens.

Whenever discrimination, prejudice, and bigotry are defended, it just about always seems to be based at least in part on "tradition." Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with traditions - on the contrary, there is a lot of good that can be said about having stable traditions in society and in personal relationships.

However, when a tradition is challenged and when here are reasonable allegations that a tradition causes harm to people, then "it's tradition" no longer functions as any sort of defense. It's never much of a defense anyway - while traditions may be good at times, ultimately they can only be defended by demonstrating that they do more good than harm.

So far, though, no one has been able to demonstrate that not allowing gays to marry would do more good than harm. Actually, no one has been able to show that it would do any good at all - and the existence of harm isn't really debatable. Yes, not allowing gay marriage may be traditional - but so what?

Read More:

• Ethics of Gay Marriage
• Separation of Church and State 101
• Religious Right
• Evangelical Christianity & Homosexuality