Definitions

It’s tough to speak convincingly on a subject when the person you’d like to convince doesn’t speak the same language.  Technically you may both speak English, but the definitions of words can mean something significantly different to each of you.

Freedom (in the American sense) means that I’m free to live, worship, work, and pursue my own happiness with the fruits of my own labor.  Freedom to some apparently means being able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, without regard to any common concept of morality, or effect on society.  It would be impossible for me to discuss freedom with someone who holds this point of view.

Compassion to me means that I, as an individual, acknowledge the struggles that other people face, and that I should work to help them overcome their obstacles in pursuit of a better life.  Compassion to some means convincing groups of people that they’re being exploited through no fault of their own, and confiscating the property of another group and giving it to this favored group to pay for their basic needs and keep them dependent on the government.  Objecting to having my property stolen and given to someone else against my will is considered mean-spirited, uncharitable, and lacking compassion.  It’s hard to have a discussion about compassion with such divergent understanding of what it means.

Equal rights to me means that every individual has the same opportunity and access in society.  It’s a framework, a “level playing field”, where each person can succeed or fail based on their own abilities and effort.  Equal rights to others means that outcome and results should be equal.  If you don’t define your terms and agree to them, you can’t have a discussion about it.

Which brings me to this:  Unanimous ruling: Iowa marriage no longer limited to one man, one woman

In our culture and society, marriage is and has always been a union of a man and a woman.  Marriage between two men or two women is not marriage.  It’s contradictory.  Gay marriage is at best an oxymoron, but at least it’s a redefinition of a word that’s always meant something else.

Courts are deciding that gay marriage is legitimate based on an “equal rights” argument.  A handful of attorneys in black robes are deciding against the majority of the populations they represent, in most cases against the duly elected representatives of those populations, in favor or a fundamental redefinition of a fundamental moral and societal institution.  But beyond that, the equal rights argument in itself is a reach.  Every man and every woman has an equal right to marry someone of the opposite sex.  There is NO discrimination.  In order to claim that gay marriage bans are discriminatory, a court has to throw out tradition, historical definition, the moral sensibility of the citizenry, and the principles of representative government in order to make up a new “right” out of whole cloth.

And those of us who dare to disagree with the dangerous imprudence of the courts and the radical refashioning of our society and the (originally) limited government that we’ve consented to rule over us are marginalized as hateful, homophobic, bible-thumping religious extremists.

It is impossible to have a rational discussion about marriage when you don’t share definitions, when all morality is relative, when opinions are based on emotion instead of reason.  Our Republic can’t survive if we continue to marginalize the majority by skipping public debate and permitting an oligarchy of eggheaded lawyers to dictate to us.

Anyway, congratulations to those who fought for this in Iowa.  But your victory was won in the worst possible way.  You won very few hearts and changed very few minds.