EDITORIAL

(10/25/2006)

South Dakota Marriage Amendment: Protecting the Hen House

Bedrock institution of marriage vulnerable to activists without Amendment C

By Bob Ellis

Editor

I grew up on a farm, surrounded by farming community, so farming word-pictures come readily to my mind. When I think of the current debate in South Dakota and other states about efforts to protect marriage from revisionists, I get such an image.

Even non-farming people are familiar with the image of the foxes and the hen house. Those hungry foxes are always looking for a way to get in that hen house and eat up what's inside. It's no different with those drooling over the intended corpse of marriage.

There's a door on the hen house of marriage, and it's called a DOMA, or Defense of Marriage Act. South Dakota has one, just as most states do. It is a law defining marriage as between a man and a woman. It's designed to keep the homosexual foxes out of the marriage hen house.

But there are people, unaccountable judges in black robes, who have begun pointing the foxes to some holes in the back wall of the hen house. Those "holes" are the constitutional revisionism tactics many judges like to employ these days. Unless a state constitution specifically prohibits homosexual "marriage," judges are starting to say that states must allow it. They did it in Massachusetts two years ago, and have made a similar appellate ruling in Maryland earlier this year.

Just today, the New Jersey Supreme Court forced homosexual "marriage" on the people of that great state.  The court arrogantly dictated terms to the state legislature, giving them 6 months to put on paper the law the unelected tyrants in black robes created by judicial fiat. 

So while we may have a door on the hen house of marriage here in South Dakota, what good is it if there's a hole in the back wall through which the foxes can raid the marriage hen house and gut it? That's where South Dakota Amendment C comes in; it's the patch for that hole in the wall, and that's what the foxes are desperately trying to get people to believe isn't necessary

The foxes are saying, "You don't need to fix those holes. After all, you have a door on the hen house! We can't get through the door!" Meanwhile, they eye the hen house as they lick their chops, waiting for us to ignore the holes and leave the hen house unguarded.

It's a pity that we need to include something so basic into our constitution, but until we the people and our elected representatives decide to do our job and rein in the activist judiciary, we must take this step, or the DOMA won't be worth toilet paper in the hands of a judge with an agenda.

How many times have I heard recently the mantra from homosexuals and their apologists that "Oh, if only it weren't for that second sentence which reads, 'The uniting of two or more persons in a civil union, domestic partnership, or other quasi-marital relationship shall not be valid or recognized in South Dakota.' Oooh, that's just so hateful and mean."

Well, what's so mean about that, especially since they claim to have no problem with the first part of the simple, two-sentence amendment: "Only marriage between a man and a woman shall be valid or recognized in South Dakota." All the second sentence does is spell out plainly what the first sentence means, so that the foxes can't find any holes through which to get in the hen house.

You see, some judges these days are so obtuse (actually, I'm being nice--they're not obtuse, they know exactly what they're doing) that if you don't make it so clear that a 5-year-old could understand it, they'll make up every excuse in the book why what you said didn't really mean what you intended it to...just like a 5-year-old.

The amendment had to have that language, especially the much-ballyhooed "quasi-marital" phrase, so that homosexual activists can't come up with some new term in the future they can use to hijack marriage.

You see, right now most jurisdictions in the United States understand what "homosexual 'marriage'" or "gay 'marriage'" or "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships" mean, and except for Massachusetts, have prohibited them. Civil unions and domestic partnerships are nothing but homosexual "marriage" under a less threatening moniker. If it gives legal recognition to an illegitimate sexual relationship, then it's pretending to be "marriage."

But what happens when activists start calling homosexual "marriage" something like "man-man marriage" or "analogous marriages" or "identical sex marriage?" Knowing how malevolent...excuse me, obtuse some judges are, it's no stretch at all to imagine them saying, "Your constitution doesn't prohibit 'analogous marriages.' See, no mention of 'analogous marriage' at all in here." But the terms "civil union" and "domestic partnership" are listed as examples of what we don't want, and any other name they come up with is covered by the use of the term "quasi-marital."

Now, a lot of homosexuals and their apologists have told me that they have no dictionaries, and can't even find a dictionary to learn what the adverb "quasi" means. So in case you, too, are bereft of a dictionary, let me reiterate what my rarest-of-dictionaries says: "“having some resemblance” or "something that appears to be something it is not.” This precisely describes the pseudo-marital (how's that for an alternative word?) legal recognition homosexuals say they want...unless we're talking about Amendment C, of course--then we're supposed to believe they have no interest in it whatsoever.

The term "quasi" isn't some rare word like "antidisestablishmentarianism" or something. If you Google it like I just did, you'll come up with about 110,000,000 references to it. I wouldn't call 110 million uses of a word "rare." It also isn't rare in legal circles. It's been used in about 300 legal cases in South Dakota alone, and "quasi" already appears in South Dakota Codified Law (SDCL) 56 times in various uses (quasi-legislative, quasi-judicial, quasi-contract, quasi-corporations, quasi-sovereign, etc.)

Further, the term quasi is used multiple times throughout South Dakota government by several South Dakota governmental agencies, such as the state Brand Board, the Department of Corrections, the National Weather Service, the Housing Authority, the Board of Regents, the Academy of Sciences and several others, with terms such as: quasi-public, quasi-experimental, quasi-static, quasi-judicial, quasi-governmental, quasi-statehood, quasi-criminal, and so on.

Not to demean the intelligence of homosexuals (they are the ones broadcasting their "deficit of understanding," not me), but even they and their defenders have used it before, with articles such as “The Emerging Menu of Quasi-Marriage Options" and “The Introduction of Marriage, Quasi-Marriage, and Semi-Marriage for Same-Sex Couples in European Countries.” The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Law Association of Greater New York even filed an amicus brief in 2004 which referred to "quasi marital arrangements."

No, they understand perfectly well what it means and why the amendment says what it does. So instead of arguing for homosexual "marriage" on it's merits (whatever merits they may believe it has), they hope to exploit people's fear and greed.

They're playing the greed card by trying to make average everyday people think they stand to lose something. They've figured out that most people are too smart to buy that "civil rights" bunk they try to pass off in an effort to get special rights and legitimization of their sexual behavior.

So now they tell heterosexuals who otherwise would have the sense to vote for Amendment C that they may lose domestic violence protections, pension arrangements and emergency medical care privileges.

Harbingers of doom point to other states such as Michigan where the legality of domestic partnership benefits for state employees was in question after they passed their marriage amendment. However, this is a distraction because a judge already ruled last year that domestic partner benefits are a "benefit of employment, not a benefit of marriage."

They also point to Ohio, where there have been a number of cases where sissy punks who hit women have tried to hijack the marriage amendment as an excuse to skirt domestic violence laws. Several of these cases have upheld that the Ohio marriage amendment doesn't protect men who beat women, and several others are still in the appeals process. Despite the outright lies of Amendment C opponents, no guilty persons have "gone free." They have all been punished or are pending punishment. Besides, South Dakota domestic violence law (SDCL 25-10-1) is much broader than other states such as Ohio, defining those who are covered by domestic violence protections as “spouses, former spouses, or persons related by consanguinity, adoption, or law, persons living in the same household, persons who have lived together, or persons who have had a child together.” In other words, there is no requirement whatsoever that those covered have ever been married--they don't even have to be currently living under the same roof. This is another Grade-A certified red herring to distract voters from protecting the hen house from the foxes.

Unmarried heterosexual also aren't going to lose any of the protections they currently enjoy through wills and powers of attorney. They will still be able to leave inheritances to persons they aren't married to, and will still be able to make hospital visits and take care of medical care matters for one another as they have always done through powers of attorney and other legal instruments. Just more bogeymen to scare you with.

They're even playing the "tourism" card now. You see, South Dakota depends heavily on tourism (Mt. Rushmore and a host of other attractions), so again they are playing the greed card. But I've heard that number before. Back in the spring, when South Dakota passed our abortion ban in the legislature, there was all this talk of a tourism boycott. Yet tourism revenue was UP this summer. Hmmm.

Even if heterosexuals stood to be inconvenienced in some way by the Amendment C, it would still be worth it to preserve marriage as it has been defined since the beginning of the human race. But the simple fact is, heterosexuals aren't going to lose anything, and they aren't going to be inconvenienced.

Even homosexuals aren't going to lose anything, other than a future shot at the hen house. Rights and privileges they currently enjoy, they will continue to enjoy. Nothing is going to be taken away from anybody, except a chance for homosexual activists and activist judges to gut the meaning of marriage, and thereby further jeopardize the security of current and future generations of children who are already in the crosshairs of a negligent society.

There are a multitude of reasons why homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to call what they do "marriage."

If you're a Christian, the Bible makes it abundantly clear in both the Old and New Testaments that God abhors homosexuality. Why? Because, as He set down in Genesis and His Son reaffirmed in the Gospels and His apostle Paul confirmed in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy and other places, the Creator's design for human sexuality involves a man and a woman. As He set down and reaffirmed in all those places, the Creator's design for the family involves one man and one woman for life, raising children in that stable and safe environment which provides for the needs of the family and gives balanced gender role models that teach male and female children how to act and how to interact with the opposite sex. Homosexuality not only thwarts the built-in reproductive nature of sexuality, but also misuses and abuses the human body involving dangerous and unhealthy acts for which that body was not designed by the Creator.

Even the secularist has ample reason to protect marriage from hijacking by homosexuals. Those same unhealthy practices cause harm to our fellow human being, spread disease, and impact health care costs and rising insurance costs. Our nation's children are already under fire from rampant divorce and poor parenting; we don't need to rob them of the same security, normality and role models they need--regardless of whether you have a Christian belief or not. And when you allow something to be redefined and essentially counterfeited (like making money that isn't the genuine article), you end up devaluing the real thing and making it worthless, as we're beginning to see in European countries that have tried this social experiment. The family is too important for the good of our people and the stability of our civilization to monkey around with. It must be protected from dangerous experimentation.

So far, 20 of 20 states have approved marriage protection laws--with overwhelming majorities ranging from the high 50-percents to the high 80-percentile range. Homosexual activists are switching their tactics in the hopes of stemming the tide in South Dakota, Wisconsin, Virginia or one of the other states voting on marriage soon.

The last time I saw a poll, Amendment C was polling to lose--which would be a dramatic break from the trend I just mentioned, but maybe it's a sign that their diversionary tactics are working. Still, that poll is 3-4 months old, and by now people may realize they were having the wool pulled over their eyes.

Will the hungry foxes fool us into leaving holes in the hen house? I'm betting they won't succeed, but it will be up to you, the voter, to keep marriage safe, or to leave it exposed and vulnerable to those who would rip it to shreds.