|
|
|
|
Here is the text of an editorial published in a prestigious American newspaper. It is a welcome change from the sort of stuff we usually hear.
Editorial: Reasonable Rights
Los Angeles Times
July 6, 2005
The passage of gay marriage measures last week by Spain's parliament and Canada's House of Commons carries groundbreaking implications. Although Belgium and the Netherlands previously legalized gay marriage, the populations and global influence of Canada and Spain are greater. The newer laws are also more progressive, giving gay marriage the same full legal protection and adoption rights as traditional marriage.
The reasoning and demographics behind the two votes are just as significant.
In both nations, particularly in Roman Catholic Spain, religion plays an important part in citizens' lives. Yet lawmakers in Spain and Canada alike made their decisions on the grounds that civil rights — the rights granted by the state — should not be trampled by religious beliefs, though churches, of course, may carry on as they see fit regarding their recognition of marriages. That reasoning, vital to protecting the rights of small groups from the will of larger ones, is increasingly absent from U.S. debates and decisions on gay marriage and other fraught issues, including abortion.
Canada's population is divided over gay marriage, and its prime minister, Paul Martin, is a Roman Catholic who has stated his concerns on the issue. Yet Martin supported the measure for the right reasons. "In a nation of minorities," he said, "it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights. A right is a right."
In Spain, where 90% of the population is Roman Catholic, the church came out swinging against new rights for gays, using the familiar line that gay marriage imperils the traditional institution of marriage. This has always been a difficult argument to follow logically. Assuming that marriage is the binding of two people in a committed relationship, possibly to create a family, gay marriage adds to the institution. Even granting most religions' insistence that the two people must be of different genders, gay marriage does nothing to discourage or belittle heterosexual unions.
The church's public arguments in Spain were undermined by its insistent stances against birth control and the use of condoms to halt the spread of HIV. Given Spaniards' indifference to these church mandates regarding sexual behavior, Catholic leaders were unable to gain attention on the more divisive issue of gay marriage.
Now church leaders hint that Spanish civil officials who oppose gay marriage should refuse to conduct such ceremonies. Once again they misunderstand the nature of civil rights. The church retains every right to tell its priests what sort of marriages they can conduct. The state retains the right to tell its civil officials what marriages they must honor.
That Canada, and particularly Spain, can understand this division of rights so thoroughly should give pause to lawmakers in the United States.
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
 |
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
|
|
|
There is hope. My ex employer had enshrined in its staff policies an equal rights for same gender partnerships clause globally, too. It was not a particulalry enlightened corporation, but it was a US corporation with global reach.
At the same time Kevin, whom we have not seen here for ages, was struggling with Toyota in the USA because they dismissed him for being gay without ever actually stating it. And they had then no such policy then at least (and are not, oviously, a US corporation).
The news article shows that a deeply religious nation like Spain can resist a direct order form the Pope to remove this legislation from its statute books, too. The USA is a deeply religious nation, certainly by comparison to the UK. With enlightenment its lawmakers may notice Spain and hear Canada. They may even hear us here, too.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
Goto Forum:
|
] 
A Place of Safety
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
