(SAME SEX) MARRIAGE: THE WORLD CATCHES UP TO YOURS TRULY

7/5/15

For those of you who are even the least bit interested in the issue of marriage, gay or straight, ought to read the article entitled “Chicago priest protests same sex marriage, won’t sign civil marriage licenses,” on page 4 today’s (i.e., Sunday, 7/5/15’s) Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-orthodox-priest-refuses-marriage-licenses-met-20150702-story.html#page=1

Father Reardon (which strikes one as an odd name for an Antiochian Orthodox priest, but the article explains that) has a terrific idea.   But the article points out that the Reverend Tony Jones, who supports same sex marriage, has had about the same idea since 2010.

However…

Long time readers of mine are completely familiar with Father Reardon’s, and Reverend Jones’, brilliant solution to this controversy.   Back in 2012, I wrote the following Insightful Pontificator piece, which referred my readers to a letter I wrote to Steve Chapman, who is surely one of the best columnists in the opinion business, back in 2006:

“…AND IF THERE’S NO OTHER BUSINESS TO DISCUSS, I’D LIKE TO ATTEND MY DAUGHTER’S WEDDING.”

2/8/12

The lead story on many news outlets yesterday was news that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriages in the nation’s largest state.   The Ninth Circuit’s decision thus set the stage for the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of gay marriage, or at least on the right of states to ban gay marriage, perhaps as early as next year.

Why this story should have been the lead story anywhere, on a day when Syria was almost literally on fire, Americans were effectively being held hostage in Egypt, the Congress continued to wrangle over the payroll tax break, which directly affects every American who works and which will expire in three weeks, and the Catholic Church and the Obama administration were duking it out over a mandate for contraceptives, is beyond me.   Gay marriage is a very important issue for gays, and especially for gays who would like to marry, and for those who consider gay marriage an abomination before God and man.   Both groups feel very passionately about this issue, and understandably so.   But, for most of us, this is not a non-issue but not a burning issue, either.   While all of us care, or at least should care, about the rights of others and all of us have moral and/or religious sensitivities and sensibilities, most of us are not gay and don’t really care all that much about the sexual orientations of other people.   Whom people choose to sleep with is none of our business and we prefer to keep it that way…please.   So why the brouhaha over this story?  One supposes the media think anything even remotely connected with sex (and it’s hard to imagine many things more remotely connected with sex) sells.   And, in our increasingly strange and superficial society, they may be right.   But I digress.

Gay marriage has been an issue for a number of years.   Back in November, 2006 (and the issue was not new then), I sent a letter to Steve Chapman, who writes for the Chicago Tribune, is one of my favorite columnists, and shares my libertarian tendencies.   In it, I proposed a solution to this controversy.    Here is a reproduction of that missive:

11//5/06

Hi Steve,

I enjoyed your observations on gay marriage in your 11/5 column and have a hard time disagreeing with any of your arguments.   However, I have another take on the gay marriage issue.

Why should the government be involved in the institution of marriage?   Shouldn’t marriage, which many, if not most, Americans consider a sacrament, be the exclusive province of churches, leaving civil unions and the legal rights that would attend thereto, to the government?    The government would then decide legal rights and obligations and the churches would decide sacramental rights and obligations.   Why should the government have the right to decide who conforms to religious rules and parameters?  Why should churches decide who conforms to legal rules and parameters?   Those who belong to a religion and wish to proclaim their fidelity before their church could opt for both civil unions and marriages.  Those gays and heterosexuals who have no religion, and who don’t care to abide by the current hypocrisy exhibited by many who are completely unfamiliar with the interior of a house of worship but go through a church marriage  strictly for appearance’s sake, could opt only for civil unions.

With the government’s having lost its role in dabbling with religious definitions, at least in this application, gays who wish to have all the legal rights currently reserved for  married people in most jurisdictions would encounter less, albeit still considerable, opposition to achieving those rights.   Those gays who wish to marry, in addition to being granted civil unions, would surely be able to find a church who will marry them, and it will be strictly their business and the business of that church and its congregants.

More importantly, however, the government will have been removed from an area in which it should never have had any business:  deciding who is married before God and the church.

Mark Quinn

To clarify this proposal, under such a system, everyone who wishes to enjoy the legal rights and privileges that now attach to marriage would apply for a civil union, which would confer such rights and privileges.   Those who, in addition to obtaining a civil union, wish to marry inside their church, synagogue, mosque, temple, etc., would get married according to the rules and guidelines of that institution.   The marriage would confer no legal rights and the civil union would not have to conform to any religious rites.  

I suppose, by the way, that one could have a religious marriage without a civil union if one wished to proclaim his or her marriage before God but cared nothing for the legal rights of a spouse, but one suspects that such circumstances would be rare.   Who knows, though?

The solution I proposed in 2006 has withstood the test of time on at least three fronts.   First, it preserves the sacramental nature of the institution of marriage and a faith’s right to determine who is, and can be, married before God.   Second, it respects and furthers the rights of gay people to access all of the legal and familial rights that society formerly, and, in many cases, still, reserves for heterosexuals.   Third, it keeps government out of the business of telling faiths on whom they must confer the rites of matrimony (Think it can’t happen?   See today’s other post, “IT’S THE BISHOP!”) and faiths out of the business of telling government on whom they must confer legal rights.

PAT BRADY SURVIVES, MIKE MADIGAN SHRUGS

3/10/13

The effort to oust Pat Brady as chairman of the Illinois state Republican Party has fizzled; a Saturday meeting of the state Central Committee was cancelled, ostensibly because Mr. Brady couldn’t make it, but really because the votes to oust him weren’t there.

 

Mr. Brady was in trouble because he endorsed legislation to legalize same sex marriage in the Land of Lincoln.   Mr. Brady was careful to stipulate that he was speaking for himself, not as chairman of the Illinois party, but his denial of speaking in his official capacity got as much attention as, say, a papal declaration that the pontiff is not speaking ex cathedra.   Since Mr. Brady is chairman of the party, he is presumed to be speaking as chairman of the party whenever he says anything even remotely related to state politics or policy.   

The charge against Mr. Brady was led by Jim Oberweis, best known for his meretriciousness in seeking a spot at the public trough and purveying overpriced, though admittedly quite delectable, ice cream.  After having failed miserably, despite spending millions of his personal fortune, in attempts at offices he really wanted…U.S. Senator, Illinois governor, U.S. Congressman…Mr. Oberweis finally won a consolation prize, an Illinois Senate seat, last year.   Humility never having been his most salient quality, Mr. Oberweis has taken it upon himself, as a freshman senator, to challenge the state GOP’s leader, and one suspects that Mr. Oberweis had someone in mind to replace Mr. Brady had his attempt succeeded.

The reaction from yours truly to the Brady kerfluffle is multi-faceted.

My first impulse is to ask why in the world we are even talking about such issues as same sex marriage.   Mr. Oberweis argued that Mr. Brady’s endorsement of same-sex marriage “badly hurt the state party,” shifting attention away from weightier issues like the fact that we are broke.   Mr. Oberweis, however, did not mention that those who obsess on such issues from the other side similarly ignore issues that are both more pressing and more properly in the purview of the politicians, especially for a Party that prides itself in its full-throated defense of limited government.   Normally, I would say that fixation on either side of such relative political fluff as same sex marriage is a good thing because it diverts the pols’ attention from important issues where these popinjays can do real damage.   But with the state teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, we need some action now.   (See my 3/7/13 post,   NEWS FLASH:   GOVERNOR QUINN IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!)  Unfortunately, we have put ourselves in a position in which we have to rely on the same poltroons who got us into this mess to take measure to extricate us from the mess they have created, but right now it’s all we have.  One suspects the pols get themselves all worked up about such piffles as same sex marriage and licenses for illegals to avoid the immediate problem.   See my 1/28/13 post on the now defunct Rant Political entitled WOULD THE LAST GUY TO LEAVE ILLINOIS PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS?, which I have reproduced below.

All that having been written, Pat Brady does deserve to be ousted as state chairman, but it has nothing to dwith his stance on same sex marriage.  He deserves to go because…well, look at the state of the GOP in Illinois.   The Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the legislature and hold three of the five constitutional offices in the state.   That the GOP holds the treasurer’s and the comptroller’s offices could be considered progress; they hold no constitutional offices prior to 2010.  But what makes Mr. Brady look especially ineffective is that the Democrats won their supermajorities in 2012 despite Mr. Brady’s highly publicized “Fire Madigan” campaign in which Mr. Brady equated a vote for a Democrat in a legislative race to a vote to keep House Speaker Madigan in power.  The result was Mr. Madigan’s tightening his grip on the politics of the state by amassing enough seats in the House and the Senate to make everybody else look irrelevant.  Mr. Madigan’s success, and Mr. Brady’s failure, made Mr. Brady look pathetic.

               

 In fact, rumors are swirling that Mr. Madigan and/or his many people in this state have been working behind the scenes to keep Mr. Brady in power largely because they see him as a very weak opponent, to the extent the GOP can be considered opposition in this state, but I digress on the latter.   The GOP Central Committee’s failure to meet to remove Mr. Brady, some suspect, may be at least partially Mr. Madigan’s doing.  This may be overstating Mr. Madigan’s influence, but one can see why Mr. Madigan, his sidekick Senate President John Cullerton, and even their bete noir Governor Pat Quinn, would like to have Mr. Brady to kick around at least a little longer.

Speaking of Mr. Madigan, he is, besides being Speaker of the House and Committeeman of the 13^th Ward, State Democratic Chairman.   While Mr. Brady may be a nice man with some interesting, though probably doomed, ideas for trying to make the GOP relevant in this state, the contrast between these two party chairmen could not be more stark.  Why do the Dems put their best politicians in charge while the GOPers put up people like Mr. Brady?   Some might suggest dark forces are at work here, namely a GOP that secretly buys into Democratic dominance in the state because, after all, there is only one party in this state and the Republicans are very happy with their subordinate, yet nearly lucrative, role in this arrangement.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

PROMISED REPRODUCED POST:

WOULD THE LAST GUY TO LEAVE ILLINOIS PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS?

1/28/13

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (no relation) signed legislation yesterday allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses in the Land of Lincoln.   The platform on which Mr. Quinn signed this bill into law was crowded with politicians of all ethnicities and of both parties, as if there were two parties in Illinois, but that is grist for another mill.  

Leave aside the merits of the bill, which are, despite the breathlessness of the press coverage, debatable and certainly not self-evident.   What really stunned yours truly about the signing ceremony was that the assorted pols spoke for a combined TWO HOURS in the wake of the signing.   TWO HOURS of being subjected to the bloviations of self-important politicians is enough to make even the most determined, American dream seeking immigrant turn around and head home.  

What is really illustrative about the two hours of self-congratulations, and perhaps about the bill itself, is what it says about the lilliputians we have elected in the Prairie State.   Our state’s major problem is not illegal immigration which, while affecting the lives of many throughout the state, is a federal issue.   Our state’s major problem is that it is growing broke.   Like most states, Illinois is growing broke because the politicians have figured out that, through granting generous, unaffordable benefits to public employees, they can buy today’s votes with tomorrow’s dollars, (See my 1/9/13 post  ILLINOIS PENSION PROBLEMS:   SEND THE CHECK TO MY KIDS.), hence our $95 billion unfunded pension liability.   The politicians on the dais yesterday, breaking their arms patting themselves on the back over passing into a law a bill of questionable importance and efficacy, are the same politicians who have spent the state into oblivion and the same politicians who lack the spine to do anything about the problem they created; again, see my 1/9 post.

Yet these poltroons and popinjays see fit to endlessly and tirelessly congratulate themselves over the licenses for illegals bill…and feel it necessary to take two hours of people’s valuable time to display their manifest wisdom to those on the receiving end of their largesse.   When do they appear before those on the giving end?