This morning I was doing my usual scroll through various news sites to see what was going on in the world, and I ran across Mike Huckabee opining on how he could have gay people as friends — big of him. I gather this was him moderating his position that the states had the right to ignore a Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage. An issue that was settled by a little event called the Civil War.
Then I read this statement:
“And as a biblical issue, unless I get a new version of the scriptures, it’s really not my place to say, ‘Okay, I’m just going to evolve.’”
“It’s like asking somebody who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli. We don’t want to do that,” Huckabee continued. “Or asking a Muslim to serve up something that is offensive to him or to have dogs in his backyard.”
No, it’s not. Because a particular religion’s holy book is not the law of the land in a secular pluralistic nation. The issue will be decided on two cardinal principles of American jurisprudence and the Constitution (which conservatives swear they venerate though that adoration only seems to apply to the second amendment). Those foundational precepts are Due Process, established in the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments, and Equal Protection found in the Fourteenth Amendment.
Huckabee’s entire argument is nonsense. One’s choice of food, or a person’s choice to keep a pet has no impact on the lives of other American citizens. The right to marry, the right to have that marriage recognized across state lines (another little concept from the Constitution called full faith and credit) that has an impact on people both financially and socially, in terms of health decisions, establishing parental rights, etc. etc. These are not trivial matters and comparing them to shrimp and bacon and dogs does just that.
The statement doesn’t make any sense at all even internally: The analogy would only work if someone was forcing Christians to have homosexual relations themselves or to marry a gay person. Jews don’t care if *other* people eat bacon-wrapped shrimp and Muslims don’t care if other people own dogs.
My favorite reaction to this was David Frum on Twitter, who said in response to the line about “unless I get a new version of the scriptures”: “It could happen. Sincerely, the Jews.”
Oh, god, I had no idea David Frum could actually be funny! That is great. And yes, you suffer through all the rest of us eating carne adovada while you have a cheese sandwich, and I’ve yet to hear you comment on this grotesque violation of your religious rights. 🙂 I can’t imagine what’s going to happen when E televises Lance Bass and Michael Turchin’s wedding. Heads will explode.