It has not been a good fortnight for the United States. For a good deal of the 20th Century, the USA was admired as a bastion of liberty. Only far left activists would ever suggest the possibility that the USSR could defend freedom more effectively than the USA. The Berlin Wall was the ultimate symbol of this stark divide, and even to this day, when I visited recently, I could not help but feel a little angry at an injustice that ended over two decades ago. This only goes to show just how the US has fallen when a man who has exposed flagrant breaches of individual liberty is rewarded with persecution, and has to seek safety in a nation that we once took to be the world expert on snooping on its own citizens. The increased persecution of whistle-blowers, the growing use of illegal drone strikes, and now the revelation of mass spying on innocent citizens all suggest that civil liberties in the United States are no longer defended as vigorously as they once were.
Yet in another way, this week has seen a great step in the direction of personal freedom. It should not even be necessary to defend the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) for ruling against DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), a measure that on all accounts is grossly unfair, discriminatory, and unconstitutional to boot. I used to think that DOMA was religious bigotry enshrined in law. Yet the only theological justification is presumably that marriage is for the purposes of childrearing, and there have been no attempts to bring bills to prevent the old or infertile from marrying. If DOMA and Proposition 8 were the children of theologians, I would be disgusted at the clear breach of the separation of church and state but at least I would respect their proponents’ intellectual honesty. To put it crudely, in all likelihood DOMA and Proposition 8 only succeeded because some people are still revolted enough by the thought of gay sex to try to prevent any legal requirement to acknowledge that it happens and that it is perfectly okay.
This is at the heart of the rejection of Proposition 8. The judges struck the legislation down precisely because offence cannot be properly classed as harm. Undoubtedly many LGBTQ Americans are fairly offended by the proposition that they were born evil and upon their death will burn forever in a pit of fire. Yet I will defend the right of anyone to argue in favour of such a concept, no matter how revolted I am by it myself. It is the actions of bullies and bigots such as Proposition 8 that present real harm. In the same way, in the highly unlikely event that LGBTQ groups campaigned to shut down churches, I would condemn that in equal measure. The US Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, seeks to prohibit the government- that is, the part of the public with the ability to coerce- from interfering in its subject’s natural liberty except where quantifiable harm has been done. The whole point of the US Constitution is to stop laws such as DOMA from existing. It is a gross violation of liberty to proscribe an act that, while offensive to a significant minority of the public, does not harm their interests.
Any theological argument against gay marriage is of course completely invalid. Michelle Bachmann, facing investigation for campaign finance irregularities and therefore in need of a refresher course on the Ten Commandments herself, huffed “No man, not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted” upon hearing the rulings. The US constitution, however, does not recognise the holy God. It does, however, recognise the equal protection clause, and that DOMA violated this. Proposition 8 has not been tested against equal protection, and until the Lord himself turns up at Capitol Hill, and quantifiably demonstrates that same sex marriage harms Him greatly, this is not likely to happen- and the Republicans will have more to fear when God finds out just how well they have been adhering to his command to love the poor.
The striking down of both DOMA and Proposition 8 shows that on occasion, the United States does deserve its reputation as the upholder of liberty. Yet NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s own experiences and the ensuing outcry prove that there are liberties that the USA does not protect sufficiently. The events in the United States as of late demonstrate the necessity of a constitution that upholds liberty to its fullest extent. The actions of the PRISM program must be subject to judicial review; and if what they did was legal, the laws allowing this must be subject to constitutional review. The widespread invasion of privacy indicates to me that the due process clause has been violated. If not, then the American people must take action. Unless they want to hasten the transformation of the USA into a security state, a constitutional amendment must be passed that forbids excessive and unjustifiable government breaches of the right to privacy. It is worth noting a rather sad truth about the DOMA ruling. Aside from the Affordable Care Act, this is one of the few political events of the Obama era that progressives can celebrate, and he did not even have anything to do with it.
