The Global Conversation

Tag: Defense of Marriage Act

  • Love explosion!

    I have two good friends who, on the night they got married a few years back, placed a large custom sticker on the back of the window of their car which boldly and playfully exclaimed “Love Explosion.”  I have always thought it to be so wonderfully fitting to describe their relationship as a “love explosion” and still find myself smiling, even today, many years later, at the mere mention of it.

    At this moment, I can’t think of a more appropriate phrase than a “love explosion” to describe what has happened in our country today, June 26, 2013, as the Supreme Court of the United States of America overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law passed on September 21, 1996, which allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed under the laws of other states, effectively barring same-sex married couples from receiving federal marriage benefits. The victory means the federal government must recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples married in the 12 states that allow same-sex marriage, plus the District of Columbia, and give them the same benefits that they had been previously denied under the DOMA.

    This landmark decision is cause for celebration not only among those in the gay community, but for anyone who counts themselves among those who yearn for the day when all human beings on our planet will be able to freely express and experience love, absent judgment, absent restrictions, a day when everyone will be afforded equal opportunities in every aspect of their lives. And this historic ruling today by the United States Supreme Court is a very good indicator that we are indeed headed in that direction.  Perhaps not as swiftly or speedily as many of us would truly desire, but, yes, the shift is definitely happening.

    Events like this in our human experience help us to understand more clearly just how vast and limitless and immeasurable Love is.  How silly for us human beings to think for one nanosecond that we could contain Love inside any kind of container, and somehow then attempt to keep it there by sternly guarding it with our narrow rules and stiff laws.  How naive of some people on this planet to believe that we could place boundaries on that which is boundless and eternal.  How peculiar that so many people thought they could define in human terms that which has demonstrated itself time and time again to exist outside the limited parameters of our language.

    Love.

    Love is all there is.

    There is nothing but Love.

    And try as we might to control, manipulate, restrict, quell, morph, or ignore the ways in which Love is choosing to be expressed in our lives, Love will pour forth, Love will radiate from the heartbeat of the universe, and Love will explode from the purest place of peace and joy.  It will not differentiate between a man and a woman or a man and a man or a woman and a woman.  It will not subdue or enhance its presence based on differing skin colors or countries of origin or religious preferences.  It simply cannot.  We can imagine that it can.  We can believe that it can.  And if we do not stop the insanity of thinking we get to choose who is allowed or who is denied Love, then our experience of Love will be one that reflects those narrow choices.

    Thankfully, on this day, these revolutionary words were authored by United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, reflecting the New Tomorrow that we here at “The Global Conversation” are honored and overjoyed to stand witness to and share:

    “DOMA undermines both the public and private significance of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages; for it tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition. This places same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage. The differentiation demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects, see Lawrence, 539 U. S. 558, and whose relationship the State has sought to dignify. And it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples. The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.”

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • OBAMA: TREAT GAY MARRIEDS
    THE SAME AS STRAIGHTS

    Should gay married couples have the same rights under the law as heterosexual married couples? The administration of President Barack Obama says yes — and is going to the U.S. Supreme Court to argue its case.

    Administration lawyers are asking the Court to declare Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. Section 3 is the part of the current U.S. law that says that same gender couples are prohibited from eligibility for certain federal benefits, such as the ability to qualify for and file  joint income tax returns, or to receive federal employee benefits.

    In papers filed with the high court, the Administration said there are more than 1,000 federal statutes and programs arising out of current law that depend on a person’s marital status. Treating gay married couples differently than straight married couples should be illegal in all of these areas, the Administration said.

    The Defense of Marriage Act, in fact, singles out gay people specifically, the Administration’s lawyers said, including couples who are legally married, having met all the requirements to achieve that status in the states in which they reside. Targeting them as this law does, the Administration says, is “a harsh form of discrimination that bears no relation to their ability to contribute to society.” As well, the present law violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection, its filing before the Court said.

    The court filing comes as little surprise to people who heard the President’s remarks about gays in his recent State of the Union message. On that occasion he said: “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

    Opposition to any change by the Court in the Defense of Marriage Act comes in the main from Republicans in Congress, who say that the courts should stay out of the issue of gay marriage rights and let the people decide at the ballot box how they want these matters handled.

    The Obama Administration told the Supreme Court, however, that there is a long history in America of discrimination against gays and lesbians. It also argued that sexual orientation bears no relation to one’s ability to contribute to society as an active member of the citizenry, and should therefore not be the basis of laws that fail to grant equal rights to those citizens.

    As well, said the filing, sexual orientation is a core part of a person’s identity, and there is broad scientific evidence that this is not a voluntary choice — which is, the filing asserted, another reason why discrimination based on such orientation should be declared unconstitional.

    But the Obama Administration filing saved its biggest argument for last. Gays, it said, have very limited political leverage, and what progress has been made on their behalf has not been uniform, and where it has taken place, has more often than not been the result of “judicial enforcement of the Constitution, not political action.”

    The New Spirituality, of course, is very clear on this issue. Gays should not be discriminated against in any area of civic, public or private life, from housing to employment to legal rights and benefits. And same sex married couples should be accorded exactly the same social and legal benefits as opposite sex married couples. I can’t imagine a single spiritual reason why that should not be the case.

    There are those, of course, who believe that gay sexual activity violates the law of God, and on that basis should be temporally illegal as well. Regarding this aspect of human behavior, everything should be “on earth as it is in heaven.”

    But is it this way in heaven? Are same gender sexual expressions of love an “abomination,” as some declare that the Bible asserts – and so, therefore, that God says?

    Is the Bible the infallible Word of God — on this or any other topic? If so, which topics? Every subject brought up in this Scripture?

    Do you agree with the Obama Administration’s actions in requesting the Supreme Court of the U.S. to declare portions of the Defense of Marriage Act, widely known as “DOMA,” unconstitutional because they fail to protect gay married couples from discrimination?

    What is the spiritual basis of your position, one way or the other? Let this be part of The Conversation of the Century.