rights and wrongs

I just read that the judge who overturned Proposition 8 in California, Judge Vaughn Walker, said this of it: "Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians."




Well, yeah.

What's moral? From where does morality come? I don't particularly buy that we take our morality from what it says in the bible. Sure, our principles of morality are based around what Jesus taught, but he taught a lot of good things. About responsibility and authenticity and understanding, rather than an older model based around revenge and punishment.

Still. I'm not sure that gives us the right to point to random 'laws' that allow us to trample the rights of others, no. 'It says so in the Bible!!' Well, maybe, though I'd like to see you point out where and then translate it into socio-cultural context for me, but it also says that we must not eat the meat of shellfish or cloven hoovéd animals. Or get our hair cut. We seem to have let those ones slip into the past, why not this?

All the hysteria about gay marriage threatening hetero marriage. Come on. For a start, what a blatant hypocrisy to suggest that gay lifestyle threatens yours, while stomping all over theirs...

 I can't really understand why a gay couple would wish to marry in a church that has rejected and denounced them, so in essence their marriage would be a purely legal and emotional bond and how does that threaten Christian marriage at all? It does not.

My mil's friend's son died of a brain tumour in London last year. His boyfriend stayed by his side throughout his long illness and, it seems, married him at his death bed. Initially the son didn't want his mother to come over, perhaps because the boyfriend was there. It's a sad story, made sadder by the fact that his father didn't come near him, because of his gayness.

Apparently there was some memorial mass said for him in Bray recently, and the mil's other friend alerted her to the fact that the Husband from London had posted a notice that said something along the lines of, 'to my darling husband, I will always love you' etc.

They didn't tell his mother. Though surely she will have heard about it. Why did he need to do that? Why embarrass the man's father?

And in the same conversation, my mil has no problem with gays, though why they have to flaunt it in the street, she can't understand. This from a woman who has never in her life seen two men kissing anywhere off the television. Never mind flaunting it. She discusses Pride day with distaste, can't understand it, flaunting it in the street.

And I sigh, and fail to find convincing words to tell her that the husband's notice in the paper is political, in its way. It seems like he has the right to make that statement, awkward as it may be for his 'inlaws'.

Where were they all before, she wonders. And agrees that they were always there. And it's cruel, but I point out a truth: a lot of young men in Ireland killed themselves.

Morality. Show me a definition that really defends something like Proposition 8.

** I really should have mentioned something about psychological morality theories and the fact that it's generally concluded that advanced moral thinking departs from an establishmentarian stance and develops its own individual moral codes that can be adapted applied to differing situations. There is never one blanket answer.