I don’t know Greater Media Newspapers columnist Greg Bean personally, but I have enjoyed his columns in this newspaper over the years. As the father of three boys in their 20s, I commiserated from afar with his pain and agony over the death of his son and mourned his loss. Otherwise, we are perfect strangers.
While Mr. Bean needs no one to run to his defense, I felt a vague compulsion to join him “in the fringe,” a characterization leveled by Timothy Eshelman in a recent letter to the editor criticizing a column Mr. Bean wrote in support of same-sex marriage.
In the letter, Mr. Eshelman stated, in part: “The will of the majority should be ignored when it violates Republican principles” — which he has defined for us as “documented Christian principles … codified into our Constitution … a nation dependent on a creator God … who is the only entity entitled to define marriage.”
I must have slept through that history lesson.
While I find Mr. Eshelman’s arguments against legalizing same-sex marriage misguided at best, his notions about the formation of our Constitution and the role of our government in general are disconcerting.
Referencing specifically his statement that we are “a nation dependent on a creator God,” he must realize that in fact the word God never appears in the Constitution. Not once.
Putting the practical absurdity of his position aside, if possible, it might be interesting to see how he clarifies which God guides our great republic on all matters of marriage, codifies Scriptures, and in turn compels our elected officials to follow its doctrine.
After all, Mr. Eshelman must know we are a diverse nation whose citizens are free to worship different Gods, with doctrines that may not necessarily align with the doctrines he believes in.
While at it, perhaps Mr. Eshelman might shed some light on why he tells us to ignore majority rule when it interferes with a set of narrow religious doctrines he believes in, yet wants it followed to the letter when it suits these beliefs. By the way, majority rule is, unlike “documented Christian principles,” actually a fundamental cornerstone of our republic, which is in truth a representative democracy where the people vote for representatives to wield power for them.
General elections — state and federal — come quickly to mind, and Supreme Court rulings, too. Let’s not forget the small affair of adding amendments to the Constitution by a two-thirds majority of both houses.
Our founding fathers were very good in drafting the Constitution, but, like all inflicted with the human condition, we are not perfect, and they anticipated this imperfection.
Already, a number of states have found the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed into law in 1996 by Congress, to be unconstitutional, and more will follow as the states work through the democratic process of challenging its constitutional legitimacy. It is informing to note that the Department of Justice recently announced it would no longer defend DOMA against constitutional challenges going forward.
Call me a stubborn idealist, but why is it so difficult for the righteous crusaders to see legalized same-sex marriage simply for what it is … a legal, loving union between two people and not some vast immoral conspiracy against the sanctity of a specific set of religious principles, as Mr. Eshelman seems to think exists?
It is a legalized union, by the way, that would enable them to share some of the most basic fundamental rights an American citizen can possess. It is not only within the “purview” of our elected officials, but their sworn duty, to ensure that the democratic process plays out for all its citizens beyond the constrictions of their own personal religious beliefs.
While there are those who find the notion of these deviant interlopers being legally married as some threat to all that is good and pure in their small-minded world, I prefer to believe that the majority of Americans see rather ordinary people who simply love each other and ask nothing more than what the rest of us take for granted. They are people who may in fact actually believe in the same God that Mr. Eshelman does, follow the same Scriptures, and who, as citizens of this nation, are entitled to the inherent decency of a thoroughly egalitarian government as it affects such things as Social Security benefits, veterans benefits, health insurance, Medicaid, hospital visitation, estate taxes, retirement savings, pensions, family leave and immigration law. To me, ensuring that fundamental human rights are not limited by religious polemic just seems to be the decent Christian thing to do.
Robert Walsh
Matawan