Although I’m not convinced that the protests serve a strategically useful purpose – and I wonder where the heck everybody was before Nov. 4 – I don’t buy accusations (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/) that these are mob justice or disrespectful of “the people’s will.” Insofar as the mob justice canard is concerned, Prop. 8 not only revoked a legal right, it did so on the basis of portraying gay marriage as harmful to children and a threat to social stability. When somebody calls you a threat, immoral and the like, then pulls a stunt like Prop. 8 to interfere in your life, getting upset and exercising free speech rights strikes me as a natural human response. Prop. 8 supporters may not like being the object of anger, they may not like being called intolerant and bigots, they may not like these protests and boycotts, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. People don’t like to be insulted and treated like second-class citizens, and it was, after all, the Prop. 8 people – who don’t seem to understand or care about the pain they are causing – who started it. They could have left well enough alone, living their lives according to their beliefs and leaving others to theirs, but no.
The Tyranny of Culture
I’m not so much interested in this mob justice non-starter as I am in the bigger issue, and that’s “the will of the people.” The problem with democracy is that the majority can be tyrannical and unjust towards the minority – unless there are real checks and balances provided by entities such as the legislature and the judiciary. An easy example: Nazi Germany. When the Jews were rounded up and sent to the death camps, it happened with the consent of the politicians, the business people, the clergy, the workers. It happened because the majority, aligned with the political powers, allowed and encouraged it. It happened because checks and balances failed. Just because something is the “will” of the people doesn’t, in and of itself, make it right, or just, or desirable.
But I don’t need to go on about the argument made elsewhere about how the will of the people is far from infallible. More interesting is going beyond government authority, which is obvious, and economic power, which is similarly obvious – just don’t say the words “class warfare” to another form of authority that deserves: culture.
Of course, we’re fortunate in that we don’t live under the Taliban or another regime in which deviating from cultural norms can result in death. Yet culture, even among Western countries, can be insidious and coercive – a psychological twist of the knife, if you will. There are plenty of cultural “rules” that are enforced, not by physical violence per se, but simply through the pressure of interpersonal relationships; ridicule, ostracism, emotional blackmail. The way we dress, for example. And this is far from trivial; culture affects how we construct and express our own identities. The question is: how does the cultural drive for conformity actually cause psychological harm? To what extent must people shoehorn themselves into the boxes of cultural labels and prejudices?
This all leads up to the question of why authoritarian culture is somehow more acceptable than authoritarian politics or economics. And again, ethics is the deciding factor. When we remove ethical considerations from gay marriage, from homosexuality itself, because there is, in fact, nothing detrimental to the public good that arises from either, we are left with a kind of aesthetic cruelty. I don’t like it; you don’t do it.
This is very much what the battle over Prop. 8 represents; some people don’t like gays, don’t like gay marriage, and they want everyone else to feel the same. Part of it is simply fear of what is unknown and different, but there is also a spiritual weakness: the inability to be true to one’s self without the rest of world’s endorsement. Prop. 8 asked people, and civil government, to conform to the beliefs of the Catholics and Mormons who sponsored the measure. But they, like voters, have no real right to ask, no real right to engage in culture wars.
It’s not like this is even a battle over semantics, over the right to use the word “marriage.” Registered domestic partnerships are not legally identical to marriage, as this document put out by Equality California explains (http://www.eqca.org/atf/cf/%7B687DF34F-6480-4BCD-9C2B-1F33FD8E1294%7D/AB205FAQ.PDF). But even if it were, since when is language subject to policing by the government and “society?”
Mormon Hypocrisy
The (tragic) irony is that the Mormon church itself recognizes a distinction between civil marriage and its own religious interpretation of marriage: “If a man and woman have been married only by a civilly recognized authority (such as a government or religious representative), their marriage will end at death.” This, followed by: “They can, however, work towards gaining permission to enter a Mormon temple and be sealed together so that their marriage will be "bound" on both earth and in heaven.” That’s what Mormons call a celestial marriage. (http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/mormon/marriage/)
So by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ own admission, their most sacred marriage is the one performed and sanctioned by their own temples, not by the government or other religious institutions: "the man and woman must be sealed, or bound, by one holding the authority of God to perform such sealings, which can only take place in Mormon temples.”
The hypocrisy is astonishing. The Mormons fought to change the Constitution for civil marriages that don’t affect their concept of celestial marriage. If ever there was cause to question cultural authoritarianism, there it is. And people are surprised that gay rights activists take to the streets!
Frédérik invites you to discuss this week's column and more at his blog (frederik-sisa.blogspot.com).