July 10, 2005
Krusin' For A Bruisin'
Armageddon And The Will Of The Voters
As we said in our pointer-filled item on the Oregon Senate's passage of a civil unions bill, we haven't been tracking that story very closely. But we have to return to it because of what's being reported about the comments of Senator Jeff Kruse (R-Roseburg).
One part of his comments was highlighted on the front page of yesterday's Oregonian, but let's take the quotes as offered by the Associated Press for our purposes here.
Republican Sen. Jeff Kruse on Friday called the Senate bill "another step down the road to Armageddon" and questioned whether pedophiles will want equal rights.
"This is dangerous ground, colleagues," he said. "This is a blatant attempt to overturn the will of the voters."
While most people, we're sure, will focus on the bits about Armageddon and pedophiles (why do all these righteous-winger types devote so much of their thinking to obsessing over the end of the world and people who sexually abuse children?) we want to address the last part, about the will of the voters.
It's not so much that civil unions thwart the will of the voters as it is that the will of the voters is difficult to execute in quite the way that the Special Rights for Heterosexuals Coaltion crowd would prefer. The reason, as has been discussed many times before, is the fact that this debate at its root is one over semantics, religion, and prejudice.
When Measure 36 was adopted by voters last year, it inserted a statement into the Oregon Constitution establishing that "only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or legally recognized as a marriage."
Whether supporters of that measure like it or not, that's the only direction it gives. No "marriage" for anyone other than between one man and one woman. The fact that the civil unions bill in its essence extends the same state-level rights received through what the state calls "marriage" to same-sex couples doesn't violate what Meaure 36 established.
If the backers of the measure truly wanted to outlaw any separate secular institution for same-sex couples, then they should have said that in their ballot initiative. They didn't, because as even The Oregonian understands, "support for the compromise position, civil unions, is much higher."
That they try now to assert that civil unions "overturn the will of the voters" is both misleading and revealing -- the former because, as already said, there's a more general support in the state for civil unions, and the latter because it shows that the hardest of the hardcore pushers of Measure 36 weren't after a defense of marriage, but an offense against same-sex couples.
(We'll set aside for the moment our argument that we have the mushy middle to thank for being just challenged enough in the rationality department to be incapable of distinguishing between secular "marriage" and religious "marriage," voting for the measure, and thereby emboldening the hardcore righteous wing to try this sort of rhetorical trickery against civil unions now.)
Which is ironic (and hypocritical) in Kruse's case, since his own legislative website claims (with the emphasis added by us) that his job as a state Senator is to abide by the following: "State government should address only legitimate needs of the people of Oregon, in a cost effective manner, so Oregonians can have the freedom and personal resources necessary to run their own lives."
Comments (1)
Bob R. on 13 Jul 2005
I couldn't let this slide after so long, B!x - This (until now) was your first post ever on Gay Marriage that received absolutely NO comments. :-)