Do I like the idea of gay "marriage"? No. Personally, I confess that I can't quite stomach the whole concept.
Next question: Should we clutter up the Constitution of the United States with amendments outlawing everything that I don't like?
The answer to that one is an even louder "no."
I doubt that many supporters actually expected the gay marriage amendment to pass when they brought it up in Congress a few weeks ago. The flag-burning amendment that the Senate is likely to vote on in the next few days (the House has already passed it) may have a better chance. It's looking like a toss-up.
But I suspect that for many of their promoters, the odds for or against passage of such grandstanding amendments are a secondary concern. The important thing in this election year is to force a public vote on them, giving President Bush and other "conservatives" a chance to stake themselves out on the side of the angels -- while gleefully painting their opponents into a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't corner.
I put the word "conservatives" in quotes above because I believe that true conservatives would be against both of these ill-considered and unseemly attempts to cheapen and compromise our Constitution for transparently political reasons.
If they believe in nothing else, aren't conservatives supposed to be in favor of maximum individual liberties and against government attempts to restrict them? Shouldn't they be the ones raising the alarm about attempts by the federal government to squelch our freedom of expression and extend its tentacles of control into citizens' private lives -- into their very marriage beds?
I love the American flag. I have been known to choke up when returning from a foreign land and seeing it proudly flapping in the wind over an airport terminal. It is the symbol of our Republic. But that's all it is -- a symbol. A piece of cloth or paper or plastic. And when some stupid protester sets it on fire to make some twisted point, he is merely making a symbolic statement. He is not hurting anyone. However misguided he may be, he is expressing an opinion.
Freedom of expression is guaranteed in the very first amendment to that Constitution. And as the courts have repeatedly held, freedom of expression means nothing if we bestow it only on those expressing ideas with which we're comfortable.
If we want the First Amendment to protect what we say, no matter how we say it, then we sometimes have to swallow hard and recognize that it also protects expressions that we may find vile and unfair and offensive.
On a more practical level, I can't imagine how the law could ever settle on a definition of what a flag is.
If I sketch a crude representation of the Stars and Stripes on a wrinkled piece of paper and then set it on fire, am I burning a flag? What if I draw it with 52 stars and 10 stripes? Or what if it has green and black stripes and orange stars? Is it still a flag? What if I superimpose some crude words over an image of Old Glory and then use it as a screen saver on my home computer screen? Am I risking jail? I can see the courts tying themselves in knots over such questions.
As for the gay marriage thing, some have advanced the radical idea that perhaps governments at all levels should get out of the marriage business altogether. It is much too sacred an institution, they say, to be in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians.
They propose issuing civil certificates for all committed couples, gay or straight, for purposes of insurance and inheritance and such -- and telling them that if they want to get "married," they have to go see their priest, minister, rabbi or imam.
I'm not sure if we're ready for that, though I do think it makes a kind of sense.
In any case, I do wish we could all agree on the principle that the Constitution, the charter of our cherished freedoms, is too sublimely important to be watered down every time we turn around by some office seeker out to get votes the cheap and easy way.
Leave our Constitution alone, I say. Quit trying to -- well -- desecrate it.
Steve Bouser is editor of The Pilot. Contact him at sbouser@thepilot.com or (910) 693-2470.
