This summer has been host to an increasingly sweltering marriage debate, with conservative traditionalists embarking on the ""Summer for Marriage: One Man, One Woman"" publicity tour, while more progressive gay advocates respond with 1967-esque ""Summer of Love"" protests and ideals. Same-sex marriage is clearly a hot button issue that's temperature has been rising in recent years, but the sizzling end to the summer of 2010, has engulfed the country in fire. It was already getting hot, but with Federal Judge Vaughn Walker striking down Proposition 8, it is getting ugly.
On July 27, Madison witnessed this radical clash when the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) came to State Street to advocate the protection of the ""sanctity of marriage"" and America's traditionally acknowledged heterosexual society. A much larger number of Madisonian protestors met NOM's presentations with loud chants like ""Gay or Straight, Black or White, Marriage is a Civil Right,"" drowning out NOM's attempts to preach the anti-gay word.
Pro-gay protestors have continuously outnumbered NOM's supporters throughout the tour. Yet Madison's overwhelming response prompted NOM's chairwoman Maggie Gallagher to blog about bigotry, in what seemed to be a fabricated ploy to demonize gays and victimize NOM's ""one man, one woman"" cause. She whined that gays ""come to our peaceful marriage rallies in city after city to harass and intimidate us,"" and noted abuse and threats aimed at women and children. Her blog all but urged NOM supporters to grab their pitchforks and hunt down devils wearing rainbows. Gallagher's highly exaggerated accounts are simply a veil masking her fear that the protestors advocating equality and love are winning the war.
Eight days after Madison protestors cried for NOM to ""Get [their] hate out of our state,"" Walker ruled that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional. Not only was this a controversial decision for Americans split on gay marriage issues, but it was a slap in the face to NOM, which was initially created to support Proposition 8 financially and hold its hand on the road to becoming a successful ballot measure. The judge's decision sparked debates questioning the legitimacy of his constitutional interpretation and Walker's sexual orientation.
In an interview with USA Today, NOM's Gallagher expressed her fury that Walker, who is rumored to be gay, should not be able to rule on a case involving marriage and sexuality. ""Here we have an openly gay federal judge...substituting his views for those of the American people and of our Founding Fathers who, I promise you, would be shocked by courts that imagine they have the right to put gay marriage in our Constitution,"" she said.
Just like her account of Madison's protests, Gallagher's allegations are not supported in any way. First of all, determining whether or not a judge can rule on a case based on his or her sexual orientation is unlawful discrimination. Other personal characteristics like race or gender do not invalidate a judge's decision, even when dealing with race or gender related cases, so why should sexual orientation? If, by Gallagher's accusations, judges substitute their personal views for those of the American people, than neither a heterosexual judge, divorced judge, religious judge, conservative or liberal judge could justly rule on this case.
As far as the Founding Fathers are concerned, they would obviously be stunned if confronted with America today. The institution of marriage itself has evolved, from allowing women to own property, to interracial marriage, to no-fault divorce law. History is constantly made over and over again as America progresses. Shucks darn it, today we have a black president and three of the Supreme Court justices are female.
These monumental changes propelling us forward have all come through the Founding Fathers' evolutionary system of checks and balances. In the case of gay marriage, Walker was well within his right, indeed his duty of judicial review, to rule on this case and base his opinion on something more everlasting than those dead guys. His opinion was based on the Constitution of the United States and the notion that all men are created equal. That notion goes beyond the summer of love, and hopefully will govern the decisions of the Supreme Court when the issue inevitably arrives.
Melissa Grau is a sophomore intending to major in secondary education and communication arts. Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
