Dear Linda Harvey:
I saw some commentary on the web that said you said 'Homosexuals
are not persons.' This fits very neatly into the usual psychological
profile of bigots dehumanizing the people they hate, denying that the 'less
than human' have rights that we need respect. So I wanted to see what
you'd actually said.
Happily, when I looked an MP3 of the broadcast in question was
still online, although you've since taken it down for some reason.... Anyway, I transcribed the relevant paragraph.
Linda Harvey, 'Mission America' radio broadcast, 12/12/12:
"Supreme Court to Consider Marriage" (excerpt):
"Why should the equal protection argument be made in favor of homosexual behavior, which is changeable? People are not naturally homosexual. So the definition of person in the 14th Amendment is being twisted to make this assumption. Many legal cases have been argued to try to pile all kinds of questionable characteristics into that word. But 'person' should be understood based on historic, beneficial or at least neutral, and fact-based traits. It should not be twisted to incorporate behavior that most religions and most cultures have said 'no' to."
(Transcribed from audio file, no longer available online as of 1/11/13, accessed at http://www.wrfd.com/MissionAmerica.aspx)
So, Ms. Harvey, the conservative position is 'a corporation is a
person in the meaning of the 14th Amendment, but a homosexual isn't?'
Only a lawyer could make an argument like that. Try not to listen
to lawyers too much, Linda--leave that to the judges who are paid to endure it.
Really, you went astray right when you started dividing the human
race into groups, and thinking of group rights. So, you're right,
'homosexuals' are not a person. But each and every individual homosexual
is. Civil rights are individual rights, and a homosexual is as much an
individual as you are. The 14th Amendment* says all persons are entitled
to equal protection under the law. Period. There is no definition
of 'person' in the amendment to argue about, or to be 'twisted' as you claim.
What we have to argue about is what 'equal protection' means.
Equal protection, of course, does not mean that anything one wants to
do is protected. Lawmakers may make behavior illegal largely as they see
fit, subject to constitutional limits. We are familiar with many of these
limits, such as the Bill of Rights provision that "Congress shall make no
law...abridging the freedom of speech." (1st Amendment) But what the 14th Amendment makes
explicit is that if Congress can make some behavior illegal, and does so, it
must be illegal for everyone. Likewise, if rights are provided in law,
they must be provided to everyone on an equal basis.
The 14th thus clearly requires that all persons have an equal
right to enter into marriage, as marriage may be legally defined. The
only question remaining is whether an equal right--equal protection--requires
that the definition include same sex couples.
So, what is marriage? Where does it come from? Leaving
religion out of it, as we must in our civil society, marriage is the legal
structure in which modern human societies recognize and regulate the natural
human behavior of pair bonding. All human societies recognize 'marriage'
as a particular status, entered into with some degree of social recognition and
ritual. Still, fundamentally, marriage is an act that takes place between
two individuals, as recognized in our own legal tradition as the 'common law marriage.'
So, can gay couples fall in love? Can they commit to each
other, and agree to enter into permanent, intimate cohabitation, mingling their
lives as heterosexual couples do? What reason is there to say their
natural cohabitation, or common law marriage, is not perfectly correspondent
with such behavior of heterosexual couples?
Linda, I expect you may answer that they cannot intend to have
children. But we do not deny or invalidate marriage when heterosexual
couples cannot or do not produce children. Biology can deny heterosexual
couples the ability to themselves produce children as surely as it does
homosexual couples, but we do not see such disability as touching the right of
heterosexuals to bond, to love, to enter into marriage.
So again, what reason is there not to recognize the love, the
natural desire to bond as a couple, of homosexuals as we do that of
heterosexuals? What reason is there to impose social disability on them
where no natural disability exists? Their natural right to love, to live
as persons as good as any other should be recognized by affording them 'equal
protection of the laws.' 'Equal protection' must mean these person may not be
denied the right afforded to others: the rights to be the equal of all other persons
in the social recognition and protection afforded them when they bond with a
person they love.
The only reasons to stigmatize these persons are religion, or
bigotry. To a non-believer, and to a nation that protects religious freedom by
not privileging any particular religion in law, what is the distinction between
these two?
I'll be happy to offer you all the space you wish on this blog to
answer this question, Ms. Harvey.
DonQuixote99
* Text of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, Section 1:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html
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