Church-State Separation, Sexual Freedom, and the Most Liberal States in the U.S.

I recently came across an interesting blog post on the most liberal U.S. states based on 25 indicators concerning reproductive and sexual freedom. The project, Mapping Our Rights: Navigating Discrimination Against Women, Men and Families, is the work of a coalition consisting of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and IPAS, a Chapel Hill, N.C. abortion rights organisation. A comprehensive explanation of the methodology and other details of the study can be found at this blog. The ten most liberal states were (1) New Mexico, (2) Washington state, (3) New Hampshire & California, (5) Oregon, Vermont, & Hawai'i, (8) New Jersey, (9) New York, and (10) District of Columbia. States with the same numeral ranking tie with one another, but I am unsure why certain numeral rankings (such as (7)) are skipped. Needless to say--and I am very reticent to boast about anything--the results of this study make me proud for once to be a Washingtonian, and especially a Seattleite.

Curiously, as you will find here, the trend in the northeastern United States seems to be the pursuit of marriage equality and the neglect of comprehensive employment protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, while the trend is the reverse on the west coast. For example, in Massachusetts one can marry a member of the same sex, but it is legal to fire an employee because they are transsexual, while in Washington state, registered gay and lesbian domestic partners have all the statewide rights of married couples except for the word marriage, and it is illegal to fire an employee because they are transsexual. Iowa is the only U.S. state which both grants marriage licenses to same-sex couples and protects all of its employees--whether public or private--against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. But it has no ocean.


As is usually the case, I could not refrain from being incited by what I perceived as one of the more ignorant posts on the blog, and I have provided this post as well as my rather trenchant and protracted response to it below. I have always believed that the backlash against lengthiness has been unreasonable, and that the length of a tract is justified if proportional to its depth. It is just a shame I came so let to the discussion, as the original posts are far older than mine.

"3. Ed Rockford - July 25, 2008

'Gay' people have the same rights to marry as the rest of us. Anyone can marry someone of the opposite sex. The real issue is that the homosexual aggenda wants to redefine what marriage has been since recorded history begain. Marriage is between a man and a woman. That relationship often naturally results in having children.

Its really pretty simple.

'13. B. Arkell - December 2, 2009

Ed Rockford—-

The United States is not a theocracy–it is a secular state and endorses no single religion over another. This is why it is unethical for Congress-members to pass laws which represent the specific interests of one religious group, such as the anti-homosexuality stance of evangelical Christians. Consider Art. 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the U.S. Senate and signed by founding father President John Adams in 1797:

“Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

Whether God intended marriage as a legally recognised breeding program between opposite-sex individuals to propogate the species is the subjective opinion of a specific religious group (the premiss of which, moreover, would nullify the unions of opposite-sex infertile couples, opposite-sex couples the female member of which is post-menopausal, or opposite-sex couples (let alone same-sex couples) who choose to adopt biologically unrelated, needy children rather than procreate); other groups believe that God intended marriage as a union between two individuals–regardless of sex–who love each other; others believe that there is no God to define marriage for us; others yet believe that God allows us to define marriage for ourselves. Your view does not trump these others just because it is your own–for these other groups have as much reason to use this argument themselves against you; your view is on equal par with theirs, since the United States was founded with the intent that no single religious view should dominate. And the simplest, most efficacious way to ensure this is to maintain that the United States is an absolutely religiously neutral entity.

I provide you this simple syllogism:

It is unconstitutional for a United States legal entity to endorse the subjective opinions of a specific religious group. Any government act or proclamation that marriage is intended by God as a legally recognised breeding program between opposite-sex individuals for the purpose of propagating the species constitutes the legal endorsement of the subjective opinions of a specific religious group. (For another religious group might believe that marriage is not just for reproduction, but also for romantic love.) It is therefore unconstitutional for a United States legal entity to proclaim that marriage is intended by God as a legally recognised breeding program between opposite-sex individuals for the purpose of propagating the species. The United States was founded on the secular Enlightment and revolutionary principles of the French and of thinkers such as Thomas Paine, not on the bigoted and manipulative doctrine of the church and religious zealots such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell. (It was the French revolutionaries who legalized gay sex in France in 1791.)

Moreover, it is unreasonable to argue that it is good to keep marriage between one male and one female just because it has always been this way: that a custom has always existed a particular way does not mean that it is better than a new one. It is just as valid to argue that one custom is better than another because it is innovative. How do you know something works just because it is old? This is relative–of course you don’t know how oppressive an institution can be without comparing it to a new way. If we clung to tradition just because it has never changed, we would never have made any innovations which improve our lives–we would still be honing stone arrowheads and living in caves with sputtering flames for heat. In short, a custom isn’t good because it is old–it is good because of how happy its qualities make the people. Change is (often) good.

Finally, in anticipation of an argument I believe you would make anyway, it is unjust in a true democracy to give the majority rule over an issue which concerns not them, but only the minority. A democracy is a system in which the citizen has the right to voice their own opinion on issues which directly concern them–specifically BECAUSE such issues directly concern them; it is NOT a system in which the citizen has the right to voice their own opinion on issues which to NOT directly concern them. With respect to same-sex marriage, it does not directly affect a marriage heterosexual couple whether their homosexual neighbours marry one another–this is a private act concerning only the homosexual couple. It therefore is undemocratic to allow the heterosexual majority to rule on a minority issue such as same-sex marriage.

Your notion of marriage as a breeding program intended by God to propagate the species is merely one of many subjective definitions of marriage which are continually weaving in and out of existence, ever obsolescing and being born. It is, in my opinion, a stubbornly primitive, irrational, and uncivilized system which seeks to dictate people’s private domestic lives through a personal belief system–religion–in order to control women’s bodies and soullessly mechanize the act of human reproduction, as if we were rabbits in a warren and it were perpetually Spring; it extols fear and intractability as virtues and overlooks some of the most quintessentially human principles of all, those which we cherish in their own right: love, happiness, and respect for the self-sovereignty and self-determination of our fellow human being.

So poo on you.' "

One afterthought I should include here as a sort of post-script, and which I overlooked because of my excited tangents on other points, concerns what appears to be a straw-man fallacy which Mr. Rockford weasels in to give the illusion that gay marriage advocates are mistaken about the state of gay-straight equality. He asserts, " '[g]ay' people have the same rights to marry as the rest of us. Anyone can marry someone of the opposite sex." Mr. Rockford clearly misrepresents the position of gay marriage advocates: they obviously do not posit that straights possess the right to marry the opposite sex while gays lack this right; they posit that straights have the right to marry members of the sex they are attracted to, while gays do not. In other words, it is irrelevant that gays and straights have equal marriage rights in that both groups can marry members of the opposite sex, because this is not the inequality which gay marriage advocates have pointed out (and to which Mr. Rockford responds) in the first place. What is relevant is that (1) nobody--gay or straight--can marry a member of the opposite sex (which is just another form of sexism), and (2) straights can still marry members of the opposite sex, to whom they are attracted, while gays still cannot marry members of the same sex, to whom they are attracted. In short, the inequality lies not in the fact that anybody can marry a member of the opposite sex, whether they are attracted to that person or not, but in the fact that only straights are allowed to marry people they are attracted to. To miss this point and divert attention to an irrelevant one seems like a sophomoric, shamelessly blatant sophistry which fails to further Mr. Rockford's argument in the least.