I’ve been avoiding doing a post on California’s Proposition 8 for two reasons. First, I’m not a Californian. While I certainly have on opinion about it, it was not my state constitution that was up for amending. Second, I tend not to blog about news items that get plenty of coverage in other blogs. That’s why you’ve seen zero presidential election posts (and their associated Sarah Palin posts).

I’ve changed my mind about posting about gay marriage partially because I’ve been involuntarily thinking about it since November 5th but also because of the community of bloggers and podcasters I pal around with online. I’ve read and heard a few good thoughts on this issue and read multiple good discussions on Twitter and elsewhere. So I’m caving to peer pressure. This post also serves as a reference I can link to in my comments to other blogs.

The first thing I notice about this issue is that there seems to be widespread support for gay civil unions but widespread opposition to gay marriage. Civil unions grant the same legal benefits as marriage, but given a different name. While this seems to satisfy the equal protection clause of The Constitution, I would argue that it amounts to “separate but equal”, but this is not the focus of this post.

Taking the opposition’s perspective for a moment, what is it that is different between “marriage” and “civil unions”? It’s certainly more than just semantic since passions over the difference runs high. It’s that “marriage” represents both a legal and a spiritual union whereas “civil union” is purely legal. This brings up an interesting question: what business does the government have codifying any spirituality. Considering the spiritual connotation, I can understand why Christians would want to own the term. From their point of view, authority to grant a spiritual union comes from God and not any Earthly governing body.

Read the rest of this entry »