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historical definition of marriage cannot justify denying homosexuals the right to
marry: “The state’s protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified
simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional.”
Immediately the Christian Right sprang into action with another of their
favorite stereotypes and myths—“activist judge!”—and began the usual barrage
of name-calling. The Christian news service AgapePress’s March 15, 2005,
story about Judge Kramer’s ruling made the point: “Groups Say Calif Judge
‘Arrogant,’ ‘Irrational’ in Marriage Ruling: Decision Labels Prop. 22
Unconstitutional, Trashes Peoples’ Vote.” The piece quickly documented that
“using words like ‘irrational’ and ‘arrogant’ to describe the judge—and
‘nonsensical’ and ‘crazy’ to describe the ruling—^the [‘pro-family’] groups see
the whole situation as another example of judicial activism.” The “activist
judge” stereotype and myth have become a mainstay of the Christian Right in
their war against equal civil rights for gays and an independent judiciary for
America.
Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs
If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see
distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a
sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not
make you anti-religion. If you accept but don’t celebrate
homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.
—Charleton Heston
Thomas Sowell is a noted African American author, conservative
columnist. Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute. I
mention Mr. Sowell’s race because, as George Chauncy pointed out in Why
Marriage^ historically:
Many people regarded gay life as simply one more sign of the
growing complexity and freedom from restrictive tradition of
a burgeoning metropolitan culture. Gay and straight men
casually interacted in the crowded streets, saloons, and
speakeasies of the early twentieth-century city, and gay life
was especially visible and accepted in working-class
immigrant and African-American nei^borhoods. (15)
and because some clergy and other activists in the African-American community
have been particularly vocal in their use of stereotypes and myths in campaigns
against equal civil rights for gay Americans. In a December 31, 2004 article
entitled “Gay Marriage ‘Rights,’” Mr. Sowell used the molesting recruiter and
AIDS stereotypes when he argued that “What the [gay] activists really want is
the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that