In Defense of Discrimination

I am reasonably sure that some people who read the title of this post are either preparing to argue with me, or are bracing themselves for something that is going to make them uncomfortable. That is because discrimination has become a dirty word in our political culture, even though its literal meaning is rather innocuous. Our mindset has become so used to condemning discrimination, or at least tiptoeing around the word, that, if you say it is okay, you can pretty much expect a fight. But please hear me out. Discrimination means: the ability to distinguish between two different things.

What I want to discuss is California’s Proposition 8. Let’s start with the basics: Proposition 8 is not about denying substantive rights to the gay community. In fact, if you want to get down to it, marriage is not a “right” at all, but, in legal terms, a privilege and a contractual obligation. I will, for the moment, leave its sacramental character aside—not for lack of importance mind you, but because you don’t have to go that far or deep to see how utterly reprehensible the Proposition 8 dispute is.

The California Supreme Court’s May 15 opinion made it very clear that California statutory law provides “domestic partners” virtually every privilege afforded heterosexual married couples in California. Indeed, the court cited only nine specific statutory distinctions between the law’s treatment of married couples versus domestic partners, and, notwithstanding the Court’s ultimate decision, it even described these distinctions as “minor.” For example, two of the cited distinctions provided that domestic partners may dissolve their partnerships without going through a court-ordered divorce. In sum, the differences were not necessarily adverse to the gay community.

So what Proposition 8 was about is not the law, at all, but about the word “marriage,” at best, and a few technicalities, at worst. But here is the bottom line: no matter what you call it, a “marriage” between a man and a woman is NOT THE SAME THING as a “marriage” between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are simply different. And before anyone gets all excited about what I am saying, ISN’T THAT THE WHOLE BLOODY POINT?

It is a fact that all heterosexuals discriminate against homosexuals, and all homosexuals discriminate against heterosexuals. Don’t believe it? Okay, try this on for size: the last time you went out on a date, did you care whether it was a man or a woman? Did you care about your date’s sexual orientation? Let’s not worry about who is being hyper-sensitively offended by our answers. Let’s all stiffen our backbones and look the truth in the face.

Here, I’ll confess first, if it will make anyone feel any better: I have never had a date with a heterosexual woman; neither have I ever dated a homosexual of either sex, and if anyone who characterized themselves as any of the above had ever asked me out on a date with a view to romance, I would have unhesitatingly and very firmly answered “no.” Whew. I’m glad I got that off my chest.

Come on! It is not as if George gets up one morning and says, “Gee, Joe, I never really noticed it before, but . . . you’re a man!” Homosexuality and heterosexuality are as different as men and women are different. In fact, that is EXACTLY how different they are, and you cannot pretend that they are the same, or that the differences don’t matter. The very definition of both heterosexuality and homosexuality DEPENDS upon how men and women view other men and women. Is this really that hard for anyone to understand?

All of the poor-mouthing about “second class” treatment is simply bizarre. I mean, I hate to tell the gay community this, but having to stand in a separate line at the county registrar’s office for a domestic partner form as opposed to a marriage license is not what makes you different. And no amount of futzing with the English language, by redefining spouses, husbands, wives, and what-have-you, is going to change the appearance or reality of a homosexual relationship. Indeed, the very fact that the State of California has to modify its licensing forms in order to accommodate gay “marriage” rather serves to substantiate the distinction, does it not?

So when we all finally admit that what we are talking about are two different things here, I have to ask myself: is forcing all of California to call a homosexual relationship a “marriage” somehow going to validate someone’s sexual predilections? Is the gay community so insecure in its embrace of its “alternative lifestyle” that it needs the imprimatur of the California government to vindicate it? Because frankly, the only reason I can see for forcing Californians like me to call a homosexual relationship a “marriage” is to destroy the meaning of the word marriage as that term has been understood since the moment it was first coined.

And isn’t that the irony, here? By calling a homosexual relationship a “marriage,” you are not conforming the relationship to the word, you are conforming the word to the relationship. I mean, you can decide to call a cow a horse, but that does not change the nature of the cow. And frankly, I don’t see how calling the cow a cow instead of a horse is unfair to the cow. Further, even if you decided to treat a cow and a horse as though they are both horses, it neither makes them both horses, nor makes them equal.

A vote for Proposition 8 was, unfortunately, largely symbolic, but absolutely critical, nonetheless. It was an effort to preserve this one vestige of the language, one tradition, one hallmark of a culture, rather than have it sacrificed upon the altar of political correctness, like so many of our other cultural traditions. If that is something that other Americans simply cannot live with, we may as well consign the First Amendment to the garbage heap. Because if we have to bastardize the meaning of an English word that has existed since the 13^th century because its age-old definition is now offensive to someone, we are foolishly forfeiting the ability of the words in our language to mean exactly what we intend them to mean, and, accordingly, the ability to express independent ideas and independent opinions with some notion that others will be able to comprehend what it is we are trying to communicate.

Do not kid yourself that this is not what is going on. This is not about rights or respect. The assault on language here is nothing less than an assault on an idea. This attempt to destroy the heterosexual component of the definition of marriage will leave our language with no word that precisely denotes the union that has been at the foundation of all civilized societies. And now the State of California (and much of the rest of the nation) has been turned completely upside down—lawsuits, multi-million dollar elections, protests, boycotts, demonstrations, defacement of churches, and more lawsuits—not because someone’s “rights” are being infringed, but because the left no longer has a use for the word “marriage” as it has existed since it was first uttered.

If this is “progressive” politics, we are in for a long, bumpy ride, America. Check your common sense and your sanity at the border.

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