God needs Proposition 8 like God needs a starship

I’ve heard from a lot of people over the past week or so that Proposition 8 was just and right because it’s against the will of God for two men or two women to marry, and it’s appalling not to follow the will of God, so the Constitution of California had to be amended to prevent same-sex marriages.

Star Trek V is probably my least favourite Trek movie ever, but there’s an exchange of dialogue in it that illustrates this argument for Proposition 8 perfectly.

Towards the end of STV, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Sybok (Spock’s half-brother, if you had forgotten) are standing in awe before God. Awesome, all-powerful, supreme being: Sybok believes, McCoy’s been converted, Spock is trembling on the edge – and Kirk steps forward and asks a very important question:

Kirk: What does God need with a starship?
McCoy: Jim, what are you doing?
Kirk: I’m asking a question.
God: Who is this creature?
Kirk: Who am I? Don’t you know? Aren’t you God?
Sybok: He has his doubts.
God: You doubt me?
Kirk: I seek proof.
McCoy: Jim! You don’t ask the Almighty for his ID!
God: Then here is the proof you seek. [Hits Kirk with lightning]
Kirk: Why is God angry?
Sybok: Why? Why have you done this to my friend?
God: He doubts me.
Spock: You have not answered his question. What does God need with a starship?
God: [hits Spock with lightning; then addresses McCoy] Do you doubt me?
McCoy: I doubt any God who inflicts pain for his own pleasure.

These people claim they believe in God. Yet the God they believe in is a God that they believe needs secular legislation to enforce His will on His people. Their God needs Proposition 8.

They don’t doubt their God needs a starship – and they won’t doubt a God that inflicts pain for his own pleasure.

A human marriage and a card marriage and a loving marriage

George Takei on human marriage:

The California Supreme Court has ruled that all Californians have a fundamental right to marry the person he or she loves. Brad and I have shared our lives together for over 21 years. We’ve worked in partnership; he manages the business side of my career and I do the performing. We’ve traveled the world together from Europe to Asia to Australia. We’ve shared the good times as well as struggled through the bad. He helped me care for my ailing mother who lived with us for the last years of her life. He is my love and I can’t imagine life without him. Now, we can have the dignity, as well as all the responsibilities, of marriage. We embrace it all heartily. (updated from Takei’s blog)

Orson Scott Card on card marriage:

In the first place, no law in any state in the United States now or ever has forbidden homosexuals to marry. The law has never asked that a man prove his heterosexuality in order to marry a woman, or a woman hers in order to marry a man.

Any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all.

Ditto with lesbian women. Many have married men and borne children. And while a fair number of such marriages in recent years have ended in divorce, there are many that have not.

So it is a flat lie to say that homosexuals are deprived of any civil right pertaining to marriage. To get those civil rights, all homosexuals have to do is find someone of the opposite sex willing to join them in marriage.

In order to claim that they are deprived, you have to change the meaning of “marriage” to include a relationship that it has never included before this generation, anywhere on earth.

Mildred Loving on loving marriage:

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people civil rights.