Proposition 8 & the Hypocrisy of the Left

By now the entire nation is aware of the fact that a decisive majority of Californians declared definitively that in their state “marriage” would remain defined in explicitly monogamous, heterosexual terms.

Equally obvious to all is the reaction that the successful passage of “Proposition 8” elicited from its left-wing opponents.

The gross incivility displayed by the proponents of “same-sex marriage” toward the majority of their fellow residents, and the Mormon Church in particular, is self-condemnatory. But it is the Left’s charge that “Proposition 8” violates the so-called “Church/State separation clause” in the Constitution on which I want to focus here.

That there is no such clause, that the expression “separation of Church and State” originates in and reaches no further than one letter written by Thomas Jefferson, and that our Founding Fathers intended only to insure that America would be devoid of a government sponsored Church are facts easily verified.

Even the Left knows this. And this is the point: for all of their Constitutionally-charged rhetoric, leftists, or at least militant leftists, care not a lick about whether religion per se fuses with politics. What motivates leftists is not fear that a Constitutional clause has been undermined, but a fear that religious claims of a particular kind will frustrate their grand designs.

So when those on the Right insist, as they have always insisted, that their ideological rivals are incorrigibly “secular,” they miss the mark. When Americans draw on their religious traditions to support causes championed by the Left, there is not a word spoken about the need to keep Church and State “separate.” If explicit religious appeals, including appeals to the Scriptures, promise to be effective devices for realizing the Left’s agenda, then leftists will not hesitate to make them.

There is ample evidence to support my contention, which is why it surprises me that the Right has generally failed to expose the Left’s hypocrisy and dishonesty on this issue.

To my knowledge, there isn’t a leftist alive who has (at least) publicly decried the “dark days” of, say, the abolitionist era, when men and women, inspired by their Christian faith, succeeded in “violating” the Constitution by “imposing their religion” on the rest of the American population who were either supportive of or indifferent to the institution of slavery.

I don’t recall ever having heard of anyone on the Left complain that Martin Luther King and other clergymen “mixed” religion and politics when they rallied countless Americans to end racial segregation.

In fact, whenever ministers and the laity invest resources into promoting “Racial Equality” or “Economic Justice,” or protecting “Immigrants’ Rights,” leftists not only don’t complain, they applaud.

And recall that the Democratic presidential candidates of 2004 and 2008 expressly referred to the New Testament to persuade voters to accept both their religiosity and their enthusiasm for an ever larger “Welfare State.” To his credit, at least Barack Obama admitted that he did in truth support “abortion rights.” John Kerry, on the other hand, claimed that while as a Catholic he “personally” opposed abortion, as a citizen of the United States he had an obligation to resist the urge to “impose” this “religious value” on others who may not accept it. Yet in telling this very same town hall audience that it is precisely his religious faith that informs his conviction that the government must do more to help the “disadvantaged,” Kerry exposed his position on abortion for the piece of deception that it was.

Would the Left have objected to the majority of Californians voting against Prop. 8 on religious grounds? Suppose Prop. 8 had fallen, and suppose that its slayers had supplied the (terrible) argument that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry because they are united by love and love, the Scriptures inform us, comes from God who is love. Does anyone seriously imagine that the same people who are now in a tizzy over a pending theocracy would be in the least bit troubled by the religious nature of this argument?

Leftists do indeed reject with every fiber of their being the fusion of religion and politics, but only when it is someone else’s religion and politics.