Anti-gay activists spend millions of dollars every year to promote the idea that “change is possible”. Although there is no empirical evidence to support their claims and although their most touted “study” only claims that a miniscule percentage of gay people might be able to reorient, countless hours and small fortunes are spent to give the impression that gay people could be heterosexual if they just tried.
The reason for this deceptive effort is demonstrated in a decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Washington today. Writing for the majority in a 5-4 decision that gay couples are not entitled to equal protection under the Constitution, Judge Barbara Madsen justified her upholding of discrimination based on ex-gay arguments:
Laws challenged on the basis of race or sex discrimination are generally subjected to more searching review. But Justice Madsen wrote that the plaintiffs were not entitled to such review because they had not demonstrated that homosexuality is an immutable characteristic like race or gender.
It is for this reason that it is ever more necessary that XGW continue to point out the lies, distortions, and deceiptful efforts employed by those who make claims about reorientation. And too, as the ex-gay movement continues its direction towards a purely political machine, we need to be ready to help and care for those wounded struggling individuals who are cannon fodder in the anti-gay culture war.
Amen, brother, you go!
Dead solid perfect.
I’ve said it before, but my problem is less with the “I did” aspect than the “You should.”
In reading the decisions, Anderson etc, I started at the top of the list: the majority’s are first.
I hadn’t got very far before thinking:
With Bowers, the SCOTUS majority specifically — deliberately — narrowed the “question” before them to one of whether someone has the right to engage in homosexual sodomy. In doing so they sidestepped having to consider the broad privacy question of the fundamental liberty of everyone to make these intimate decisons for themself.
With Bowers, they then relied on the historic fact of anti-gay sex laws to answer that there was no right to engage in homosexual sodomy.
17 years later… Lawrence overturned Bowers because it had been wrongly decided on that narrowed question, a narrowing that threby avoided considering the violation of a wider, deeper and more fundamental right. Lawrence went back to the fundamental privacy rights, rather than finding a way of ignoring them.
Loving v Virginia was a similar finding. Previously the decisions had narrowed the question to whether someone had the right to marry someone of a different race. Loving went back and examined whether someone had the right to marry someone of their choosing. (They also found anti-miscegination laws violated on race grounds. But would have hurled them privacy grounds even without that extra examination.)
As with Bowers, the majority in Anderson also failed to examine the rational basis either. They said they didn’t have to because the legislators had presented them a “reason” — that of encourging heterosexuals to procreate within a marriage.
While correct that the rational basis test must show great deference to the reasoning of the legislators, this itself is certainly not intended to stop the actual examination. (It would gut the very provision of rational basis if legislators could escape scrutiny by the mere presention of any “reason”, regardless of how ridiculous or unrelated or invented after the fact that reason was.) The logic of the majority behind their refusal to examine this question is tortured, at best. An almost pulpable desire not to actually conduct an examination — and one wonders why.
One thing did pop out of the write-up by three of the majority. These words…
Without going through all the submissions by the plaintiffs I’m not sure what “request” this refers too specifically, but it begs the question assuking that they did: what if the plaintiffs had not done that? It seems a little odd given that Massachusetts was decided with those grounds mentioned. Why would a plaintiff deliberately exclude a factor that had already been successful in another place?
The additional write-up by Johnson (Sanders concurring) is almost beyond words, relying on a submission by Satinover via the Family Research Council. Johnson and Sander haven’t just noted the distortions made by Satinover, but actually claimed them to be CORRECT!!!.
One wonders what Johnson and Sanders did with the submission by the American Psychological Association? Why on earth did they chose to grandstand a virulently anti-gay individual from the unrespectable fringes knowing full well that Sationover’s claims were categorically contradicted by the professional body? I don’t doubt that there’s more to this than meets the eye. Truly mind-boggling.
The saving grace remains the 4 person dissent authored by Fairhurst. It goes right for the jugular, raising all that we’ve written above. It foretells a similar history as the sorry one from Bowers and Lawrence.
So good we could have written it ourselves 🙂
grantdale said:
The additional write-up by Johnson (Sanders concurring) is almost beyond words, relying on a submission by Satinover via the Family Research Council. Johnson and Sander haven’t just noted the distortions made by Satinover, but actually claimed them to be CORRECT!!!.
This opinion is one of the most disturbing things I have read in a long time. That a State Supreme Court Judge would so shamelessly and completely rely on the rambling propaganda of a Jeffry Satinover is indefensible. There is so much legitimate, qualified research on which to draw.
And Timothy is correct, this is the reason for this site, but even beyond XGW we need to become active with the truth. I’m convinced that we won’t win this without honestly opening our lives to those around us. This is the most potent antidote to the lies coming from FOTF, et al.
When politicians are involved in decisions like this (e.g. DOMA, FMA), it is often a cop out to gain favor or avoid losing votes. In this case, it’s obvious that Johnson and Sanders are “true believers” and as such will not allow fairness and fact to enter the equation.
None of the arguments are making any sense any more.
Arguing that being gay is immutable or not without considering ALL the factors that keep a gay person from disclosing or pursuing their normal orientation.
Or without considering the other facts around mixed color marriages and the ‘mongrel’ issue from those unions that society felt it rational to prevent and not legitimize.
Or how about mixed religious marriage?
One’s religious pursuit is DEFINITELY mutable, yet is protected under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, regardless sometimes of how abusive religious laws are for females witin those marriages.
Give me a break!
Legislating what characteristics can preclude qualifications for marriage is only being implemented against GAY people.
Not the serially divorced or adulterous, child abusers and murderers.
So all of a sudden, homosexuality is the wild card.
I’m so sick of this.
Like I said before, it’s never going to come out, rationally.
These bans only illustrate one or all three of hypocrisy, illogic, or contradiction.
I don’t see where mutability has anything to do with it anyway. A person should have the right to pick which sex they marry, for the state to tell a given individual they can’t marry either a man or a woman is sex discrimination. The state needs a good reason to allow this discrimination and it doesn’t have one even wrongly assuming gays could change.