Column for Nov. 18, 2010

When a topic comes up more than once in a week, I figure it is something that may be worthy of my attention. I was reading an article in a Winston-Salem newspaper the other day with the headline, “Is N.C. now ripe for gay-marriage vote? Conservatives want GOP to put ban on ballot". I have also had conversations on the legality of constitutional measures, federal courts, and about homosexuality all in the past week.

I don’t hate homosexuals. I personally find their behavior repugnant, but I personally could not care less what they do with their private lives or in their own bedrooms. I do, however, take issue with ascribing legitimacy to their relationships under civil law as if equal to heterosexual marriage. What I do hate is the attempts by homosexual activists at forcing the majority of people to accept a deviant behavioral choice as normal. Again, I don’t care if someone engages in that lifestyle. Yes, I do have homosexual friends, relatives, and acquaintances. I do not treat them as less than human beings or without common courtesy. I just don’t want those who speak for their cause to force the government sanctioned indoctrination of my children and society in general towards acceptance of their behavior.

I have to laugh at most right wingers who make the claims that once homosexual marriage is passed, people will want to marry their pets or inanimate objects. Though I understand the thought process, it is indeed flawed language and an over-reactionary extrapolation. It is, however, a fundamental redefinition of marriage. Marriage, since the beginning of the human race, has been between male and female. There has obviously been some variations in cases of polygamy, but they have always been marriages between those of opposite sex. Male and female is the natural, God ordained order of things, both in human kind and in the animal kingdom.

There are plenty of civil reasons I have besides my religious values that go into my opposition to homosexual marriage. Note that I do not use the word “gay”. I despise the use of the word in this context. I hate that several good, wholesome things such as the symbol of the rainbow and “civil rights” have also been hijacked by the homosexual activists just like the word gay. I can’t listen to “The Flintstones” theme song anymore without cringing.

I take great exception with theologians who are accepting of homosexuality as anything less than a sin. I also take great exception with any politician who thinks that we should all be accepting of homosexuality as something intrinsically normal and should treat that behavioral choice just as we would the color of some one's skin or their national origin. That is why I even take issue with someone like Rush Limbaugh, who does not support homosexual marriage but does accept the idea of “civil unions”. That is tantamount to calling table condiment catchup as opposed to ketchup. They are both the same thing, just under a slightly different name.

Now that a Republican majority controls both houses of the NC State Legislature, I do hope for a ballot initiative to formally codify a ban on homosexual marriage in the state constitution. However, I also have a fear that if we did so, some foolish judicial activist federal judge would attempt to strike down the measure. Just within the past couple of weeks, we have seen the State of Oklahoma voted overwhelmingly to affirm a constitutional amendment that would ban the state from considering the use of Sharia (Muslim) or foreign national laws in determining legality in their state. That is only common sense and how a sovereign state works.

Simply put, a sovereign state has the right to determine its own laws. The Tenth Amendment does still apply in that the powers not specifically granted to the national government are reserved for the states. After all, it was the states that created the national government, not the other way around. If a state (which derives its power from the people thereof) that has the right to sanction and dissolve marriage chooses to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anything but the natural order, fabric of society, moral principle of marriage being equal to one man and one woman, then that is their prerogative. A state should also be able to refuse to recognize marriages sanctioned outside of those parameters as sanctioned by another sovereign state. If you don’t like the marriage laws of a state, you don’t have to live there.