Thinking to Believe

I often report on where courts go wrong. It’s easy to do with so much judicial activism going on these days. But if I am going to report on bad decisions, I should report on good decisions as well. So here’s a good report. Well…a good report is coming. First I have a bad report, but not about the courts.

On September 30 the governor of CA, Arnold Schwarzenegger (a.k.a. the Governator), signed a barrage of bills, including a very important bill affecting the fight for marriage. If you follow the mass media, you probably didn’t even hear about it. The bill allows for same-sex couples in CA to file their state taxes as a married couple. Why does that matter? Melinda Penner of Stand to Reason explains:

[T]he people of California passed Propositions 22 several years ago making it the law of the state that marriage is between a man and a woman. Did that law protect the word “marriage” or a privileged recognition by the state? The Governor and the representatives who passed this law are playing word games.

Marriage, in the legal sense, is a government-recognized status marked by privileges and responsibilities given by the government. When the legislators an [sic] the Governor start handing out those privileges that constitute the government recognition of marriage they are treating same-sex partnerships as married without legally using the word. They’re treating marriage as only a word, not a status. They apparently think that by not using the word “marriage” that they aren’t violating the people’s wishes. When the voters of California passed Prop. 22 we weren’t just interested in protecting the word marriage – we weren’t playing word games. We were protecting the thing – the government-recognized status.

Governor Schwarzenegger has stated in the past that Proposition 22 was the will of the people and it had to be respected, even if it wasn’t his personal view. The governor has now violated that will he professed to respect by playing this game started by the state legislators. And here’s the larger game: If they cane [sic] gradually parcel out the privileges and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex partners, one of these days they’ll declare that we might just as well use the word “marriage” since we’re already treating them as married.

Marriage from the government’s perspective isn’t just a word, it’s a recognized status. It’s the status, the recognition, that is at issue here. Lawmakers should stop playing word games.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–>

That’s the bad news. In my next post I will give you the good news.

<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–>Melinda Penner, “Word Games”; available from http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2006/10/word_games.html; Internet; accessed 03 October 2006.