Federal Court Ruling on Prop 8

When reviewing the ruling handed down yesterday from Federal District Court Judge Walker the ruling was constitutional right, but that is because the wrong arguments were made to begin with when it comes to this issue. Our constitution does not now or has never supported the creation of an underclass of individuals based solely on the grounds of anyone’s religious views and yet that underclass already excise in our country.

The term marriage as the government sees it has nothing to do with religion, but is in fact a legal contract between consenting adults that entitles them to social and economical resources. If we are to view civil marriage in those terms then all citizens should have the right to marry no matter their gender or for that matter how many individual they wish to marry. The problem is the economical cost to allowing a section of our current population that has up until now been disenfranchised to be entitled to the same benefits of those citizens who are not currently disenfranchised.

The biggest losses when it comes to legalizing marriage to nontraditional couples will be business leaders who will be forced to pay more in benefits to employees and the government who will also have to pay more in benefits to spouses. The question should be will that harm outweigh the benefits to disenfranchised individuals. In the past individual citizens were limited to one spouse in order to limit the cost incurred by business owners and the government when it comes to providing benefits to employees.

The vital question in this issue is can our country currently withstand the adding of these individuals to people already receiving benefits from government and businesses? Is there a way of providing some of those benefits without going too far too fast?

California is already bankrupt and now with this change more individuals will be encouraged to get married and demand of their employers and the state government the benefits that up until present they have had no right to because they could not call their partners spouses. All anyone who is married has to do is think of all of the benefits your spouse is entitled to in order to understand the cost that will be incurred in the future if nontraditional marriage is allowed country wide.

The only other issue is will these individuals be entitled to sue churches if they refuse to marry individuals because of their gender. The answer is that government should not be allowed to force any individual’s beliefs on to a church and that the free practice of spiritual beliefs means that the government cannot force any member of a church to commit a sin. In other words they would have the right to marry if they can find someone to perform the marriage which does not appear to be a problem in California.