John Hattaway

I found a second blog I was reading that I will no longer be following. This makes two in just under a year where the author moved sufficiently (and consistently) away from the reasons I would read their blogs into areas that I don’t agree, feel that the individual is wrong, and where the individual has chosen to take a “high road” approach to the argument, when in reality they are taking a standard and rather low approach to their argument.

Case in point: Marriage in California. I am to believe, by reading different blogs, that marriage should be extended to everyone regardless of personal choice. The wording used is bigotry. Went to the OED and this is the definition:

A. n.

1. A religious hypocrite; (also) a superstitious adherent of religion. Obs.

2. a. A person considered to adhere unreasonably or obstinately to a particular religious belief, practice, etc.

b. In extended use: a fanatical adherent or believer; a person characterized by obstinate, intolerant, or strongly partisan beliefs.

B. adj. (attrib.). Of or characteristic of a bigot; bigoted. Also fig. Now rare.

A bigot, and I like this, is someone who works in opposition to stated religious beliefs. In the case of same-sex marriage, a rather large percentage of the population believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. As a result, the bigot is literally the individual who states that belief and then doesn’t act according to that stated belief. Unfortunately, a person who adheres too strictly to stated beliefs is also a bigot. There is a pattern here: don’t act the hypocrit and don’t act the fanatic. The final definition (2b) states: a person characterized by obstinate, intolerant, or strongly partisan beliefs. From here we can get the argument people use for bigot.

Whether or not California or any other state legally define marriage as anything other than between that of a man and woman isn’t the issue. What is the issue is that people use language of intolerance to define people whom they consider intolerant. In the case of this argument, the writer whose blog I will no longer read, decided to describe anyone who disagrees with him as a bigot and that in time those bigots will see the error of their ways and come to his point-of-view. The outcome of this is that he is invariably expecting to be right and does not allow for any faults in his argument, which are actually easy to break. For this author (who is heterosexual), the same-sex marriage issue has only one answer and there is no gray space in the argument.

The reason this is an argument is because of religious beliefs. Now, I don’t care what his religious beliefs are. I don’t care what brought him to the point in opinion where the only right answer is that one-half of the population and their religious beliefs are wrong. More, I don’t care how one can ignore that all of the major religions of the world with hundreds to thousands of years of experience and history are suddenly wrong and by extension how billions of people should have dictated to them that thousands and (potentially) millions of people are more correct in such a short span of time.

What gets me is that he does the same thing that other’s do. He has attribute the speech of hate to those who oppose him. He might as well play from the Republican playbook (he is not a Republican) because his opinion and his approach mirror what the RNC have been doing for a lot of years. It mirrors what both sides of the abortion argument have been doing since 1973. His words mirror the negative arguments shot out by any piece of legislation or ammendment or anything else where the different sides are polar opposites.

Here’s what’s sad to me, neither this author nor I live in California. Granted, there may come a time when I have to decide whether to move to California as a result of the decisions being made by the people. This is an emotional argument. This is something that matters to a lot of people. This is both religious and political and even though we tend to try and tell people that we separate church from state, we don’t. Not sufficiently. And having billions of people be opposed to something that affects thousands of people directly and tell them they are wrong and apply the lexicon of hate to that group is, inherently, wrong.

As a result, do I care what happens in California? Yes. I hope proposition 8 passes. Why? Because the California Supreme Court created legislation and I don’t believe they have that right. Because the people in California have already said through a passed law that they want marriage to be defined as only between a man and a woman. Because I personally believe the object of marriage is offspring and if you cannot naturally produce offspring between the genders of both parties you negate the purpose of marriage. Because I believe that the LDS Proclamation to the World is revelation because I believe that there is a prophet who lives, who guides us, and who had the foresight to release the official statement of what marriage is more than a decade before this question came up. And I believe what is in that document.

Call me what you will. That’s fine. What I really am, though, is someone who realizes that the case in California is much larger than just the definition of marriage and someone who doesn’t care for the beliefs and opinions of a majority of people and who choose to call me something simply because they feel that they are more right than everyone else.

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