An interesting discussion

I received an email this morning from Pete with a link to the site Knowthyneighbor.org. Along with the link, he poses the question,

While obviously I support same-sex marriage (otherwise how could I ever live happily ever after with Ernie?) I find the below site interesting... just to play devil's advocate, if my vote in the voting booth is private, why does my opinion on a referendum have to be public?

Then came a reply from our mutual friend Sim, who stated,

I believe the idea is that if you are going to petition to change the constitution, petitioning is a public act which is very different from voting for a representative. They are not voting to change the constitution, they are petitioning their legislature to vote on changing it. Just like when you sign a petition to put a ballot initiative to a public vote. I think it's a pretty reasonable threshold for such important changes; there need to be enough people willing to publicly acknowledge their desire for a constitutional change or ballot initiative.

Pete's response,

Would you say the same if the change to the constitution was to remove homosexual acts from the books as a crime? In that case, the likely signatories would be gays -- a class probably wouldn't enjoy being forced to "out" themselves just to have a basic right to privacy. It's tricky.

As I always do, I have my initial gut reaction, but I'm learning to keep that in check and to wait for a couple of hours/days to try and put logic behind it. So after some thought I'm going to look at it from a different perspective. I took a look at the amendments to the US Constitution (didn't have time or desire to look at each states so I hope you get my drift). In all cases, except for those dealing with the office of the president, the amendments are increasing the rights of citizens. Prohibition, the only one that was taking away rights, was repealed as we all know. So, to look at it from the perspective of discrimination, there really hasn't been a precedent to write in the denial of some right granted to one group, but not to another. If this this called "marriage" were simply a religious issue, then the US Constitution should be removed from the discussion. However, our economic status, as in how our taxes our calculated or how we file a will, to life issues (medical decisions) are governed outside the sphere of basic religion or houses of worship and for that reason the right for gays to marry needs to be addressed. With that established, assuming that obtaining the names of those who sign any petition is available to anyone (true?) then why should the medium the internet be a question? Perhaps I am missing something?

I also agree with Sim's point that taking a public stand to your views is important. Hell the marriage ceremony itself is simply the two persons public declaration of committment! It is all to easy to mouth the words that we think people want us to say but in private be two-faced about it. So knowing that signing a petition means public declaration of your beliefs will hopefully make people really take a look at why they are signing something either to look good to others or simply to get that person out of your face as you leave the grocery store.

Lastly, I want to include an editorial piece about the inevitability of gay marriage written by CW Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle. He's saying what I've been saying for years.