The rights to life, liberty AND the pursuit of happiness

[I'm not going to provide a link to this article in The Advocate because the magazine contains some "adult" material which some people (including me) may find offensive. Google it if you wish to see the source.]

From How the GOP helped bring gay marriage to California by James Kirchick:

In 1978 former California governor Ronald Reagan announced his opposition to the Briggs Initiative, a proposed law that would have not only barred gay people from teaching in the state’s public schools but also allowed administrators to fire any instructor suspected of “advocating, imposing, encouraging, or promoting” homosexuality. Prospects for the initiative looked bright at first: Gay rights measures were being rejected across the country. Reagan, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 as a movement conservative against the more moderate Gerald Ford, was gearing up for the 1980 race and could scarcely afford to offend the “family values” crowd. Nevertheless, he declared that the initiative had “the potential for real mischief” and that “innocent lives could be ruined.” Initial polls showed 61% of voters in favor of the initiative and 31% opposed, but after Reagan announced his opposition the public mood shifted dramatically to 45% in favor and 43% opposed. The measure was eventually defeated by over a million votes.

Exactly 30 years later, another Republican governor of California announced his opposition to an antigay ballot measure. Asked on April 11 at the Log Cabin Republicans’ annual convention in San Diego about his stance on a proposed state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, Arnold Schwarzenegger said, “I will always be there to fight against that.” He labeled the campaign a “total waste of time” and predicted that enactment of the amendment “will never happen in California, because I think the California people are much further along on that issue.”

[...]

Schwarzenegger is the most prominent Republican opponent of the marriage amendment, and his opposition doesn’t come as a surprise to California gay rights activists, especially Republican ones. Log Cabin Republicans president Patrick Sammon points to the fact that the governor has signed more gay-friendly laws than any other current governor in the country. Indeed, Schwarzenegger is just one part, albeit a significant part, of a larger story, one that may come as a surprise to many gays. As much as liberals have been at the forefront of gay rights struggles across the country, Republicans too have played a crucial role in bringing marriage equality to California.

The unlikely story begins with the state supreme court itself, where six of the seven justices were appointed by Republican governors. The court is the most widely cited state supreme court in the country -- not until May 15 had it ever been accused by conservatives of being “activist.”

[...]

Gay Republicans also hope to recruit prominent GOP figures to speak out against the amendment. Ward Connerly, a former member of the University of California board of regents and one of the country’s foremost opponents of affirmative action, is one such conservative icon. Connerly, who is black and grew up in the Deep South, told me that efforts to amend his state’s constitution to ban gay marriage remind him of antimiscegenation laws. “For anyone to say that this is an issue for people who are gay and that this isn’t about civil rights is sadly mistaken,” he says. “If you really believe in freedom and limited government, to be intellectually consistent and honest you have to oppose efforts of the majority to impose their will on people.” Connerly is not a new friend to gay rights advocates; when he served on the board of regents, he championed domestic-partner benefits for gay faculty members.

[...]

That California Republicans are proving to be such allies shouldn’t come as a shock, as a libertarian strain has long existed in the state—an ethos that rejects much of the antigay rhetoric that finds favor in the South.

I'm indifferent to this whole "gay marriage" thing. It's not something that I want or need but I'm not religious so I don't have any serious objections to it other than a sort of knee-jerk traditionalism that thinks of marriage in the old-fashioned way as being between a man and a woman.

I also don't like it being lumped in with "gay rights." I'm not much for any "rights" other than those enumerated in the Declaration and Bill of Rights and I especially don't like any sort of "group identity rights" such "gay rights" or "women's rights" or "black rights." To me the "unalienable Rights endowed by the Creator" are all individual rights not collective rights. But maybe I just don't like group rights because I was born in a country divided into groups.

I also don't like drastic changes so I'm very leery and skeptical about new-fangled things like "gay marriage." But, when people start blaming "gay marriage" for destroying straight marriage, I have a chuckle because straights have done that very well all on their own through divorce.

Fifty years ago, when I was a kid, people simply did not get divorced. I only knew one divorced person: one of my school-teachers. Even though she had three kids and was a devoted mom, she was regarded by the inhabitants of our village as a "loose woman" and called her "the gay divorcee." And, yes, she was pretty "liberated" for the time. She dated men but said that she would never get married again. She didn't need to as her ex was stinking rich and supported her and the kids.

When I was ten, I overheard a conversation between my father and his mother. They were talking about a woman called "Sylvia" whom I had never heard of. I asked my mom about it. She told me to ask my dad. I did and he became very uneasy. It turned out that "Sylvia" was his first wife whom he had divorced before he married my mom. I felt betrayed - or I should say "deceived." I was angry with both of my parents for months afterwards. I couldn't believe that they had not told me about it. The fact is that they were ashamed of it even though dad had divorced "Sylvia" because he had come home from WWll to find her in bed with another man.

Twenty years later I could not bring myself to divorce my first wife even though she had also been unfaithful to me. I simply left her and let her divorce me. Since then divorce has become so common that there is no longer any stigma attached to it. "Serial monogamy" is now the norm not only in Hollywood but in suburbia and marriage is no longer regarded as a sacrament (except by very devout Christians and oddly Hindus too.) Taking the sanctity out of marriage by accepting divorce as normal is what "destroyed" marriage.

Actually "destroyed" is too strong a word. The institution has simply evolved. It's messier and a bit too chaotic for my tastes but modern heterosexuals have decided to put their right to the pursuit of individual happiness ahead of the sacrament of marriage. And that's pretty much what gays are doing too. It's a free country and people can pursue happiness anyway they want as long as it does not encroach on other peoples' rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness