Did you see what just happened in Oklahoma? Republican State Representative Todd Russ introduced a bill to get the Oklahoma State government out of the marriage licensing business and into the marriage recognition business. Readers here will recognize this as the “Michael Schwartz” plan: government should record marriage documents rather than issue them. From Reason.com:
He (Russ), too, claims to be confused by objections to this legislation. While it is true that the legislation is a direct response to the federal courts striking down Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage recognition and the likelihood that the Supreme Court will uphold those rulings this summer, Russ said his legislation is intended to take the state out of the fight, not to perpetuate the conflict. He said Oklahomans likely wouldn’t even notice a difference in the legal status of their relationships under his bill.
The Oklahoma State House just passed Rep. Russ’ bill and the institutional Left and Big Gay are freaking out. From Think Progress:
It’s unclear whether lawmakers are willing to get behind these bills that clearly target the LGBT community for harm, discrimination, and unequal access to government services, nor whether they would be upheld in a federal court. Republicans do enjoy supermajorities in both the Oklahoma House and Senate, so passage cannot be ruled out.
Say what? How does reducing the State’s involvement in marriage, to one of recording (like a deed on a house), rather than licensing (like the AMA does for physicians), “target” anyone? If anything, it is true “equality under the law.” I would guess that it would expand rather than restrict government services, certainly in the areas of taxation, visitation, and inheritance (the original arguments offered FOR gay marriage).
Is it possible that the same sex marriage movement was never about equality under the eyes of the law but rather a movement designed to deploy force (government) upon everyone, to accept a new definition of marriage? Stated differently, was the same sex marriage movement simply a canard, to get the Church to abdicate its authority to the State, so that when regime change happens, the State could force the Church to act against its principles?
That’s what I thought when I opposed Prop 8 in 2008. I saw opposing it as a defense of Church-defined marriage because regime change always loomed on the horizon. I sensed that same-sex marriage activists saw Prop 8 as a defining moment, a chance to ultimately change the idea that Christians and homosexuals could hold competing definitions of marriage and still live in harmony.
The reaction to Oklahoma’s movement to get out of the marriage business, leads me to believe that I was right on both counts.