Paranoid threat

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Paranoid threat				October 14, 2006

Of the three constitutional amendments facing voters on Nov. 7, the second is instructional, if only because of its tangential relationship to the first. As a result of a ruling by a federal district court in 2002, the legislature can no longer disallow the incorporation of churches. Under Article IV of the Virginia Constitution, such incorporations were previously prohibited. Hence the legislature moved immediately to amend the constitution in order to bring it in line with the court’s ruling.

In 2003, the Supreme Court, in the case known as Lawrence vs. Texas, ruled that so-called crimes against nature laws that forbade sex between consenting same-sex couples were likewise unconstitutional. To date, the Virginia legislature has refused to remove that unconstitutional statute from the Virginia code. While it will bow to a ruling favoring churches, it will arbitrarily dig in its heels when it comes to a Supreme Court ruling favoring gays.

Given the constant bashing that gays have received at the hands of a legislature controlled by right wing enthusiasts, it is not surprising that the first constitutional amendment on the ballot – the so-called Marshall-Newman amendment - is one which defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. So poorly is the amendment constructed, however, and so broadly does it cast its net, that it may well obliterate the right of any unmarried couple, gay or straight, to enter into contracts that might be construed as bestowing the benefits of marriage.

Whether this amendment passes or not, there will be no change in the status of gays in Virginia. There are already several statutes that forbid gay marriage and gay civil unions. The latest one, also concocted by Manassas Republican Robert Marshall, is called the Defense of Marriage Act, and it too forbids gay unions and disallows contracts that smack of marriage arrangements between people of the same sex. It also runs afoul of logic, since it apparently would forbid such contracts between Aunt Minnie and her sisters because they are all women.

Why, then, do we need a constitutional amendment that duplicates existing statutes?

What Marshall and his cohorts will tell you is that they fear activist judges who might declare simple statutes unconstitutional. Never mind that you can count the number of liberal activist judges in Virginia on one finger, or that the Virginia Supreme Court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals are among the most conservative courts in the nation. Never mind that courts in allegedly liberal states like New York and California have recently sanctioned bans on gay marriage in those states, or that the Supreme Court is now well stocked with right wing ideologues. Never mind that the Defense of Marriage Act has sat on the books unchallenged for three years, or that well-respected Republican judges such as J. Harvie Wilkinson find that constitutional bans on same-sex marriage are a “threat to the American constitutional tradition.” No, we must fear activist judges just waiting to force gay marriage on defenseless Virginians. What utter swill.

What really lies behind this amendment is a consortium of political paranoia and religious zealotry of the worst sort.

In an essay titled “The Paranoia Style in American Politics” that appeared in Harper’s Magazine in Nov. 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter, writing about the McCarthy era, suggests that “The paranoid does not see social conflict as something to be mediated or compromised. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise, but the will to fight things out to the finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated.”

The point is that extremists on the right or the left are in desperate need of an enemy to fuel their paranoia. Since the advent of the Judaeo-Christian era gays have been a natural in that regard. They were the enemy of the Nazis, who rounded up 100,000 homosexuals and sent many of them to concentration camps. They were the enemy of communists, who tortured and jailed thousands of them in the Soviet Union. They are the enemy of Islamic states like Iran, which either imprison or lash them to death. And now they are the enemy of Marshall and his cohorts on the Christian right. As for the much-feared homosexual agenda, it has always consisted of a struggle of the politically powerless to survive with dignity.

The question arises as to what Marshall & Co. will come up with as their next assault on gays. Since their present amendment will surely pass and thus perpetuate their crusade, is it really too far-fetched to wonder if next year another amendment will surface requiring that homosexuals be branded with pink triangles? Don’t laugh. It’s happened before.

That this amendment deserves defeat goes without saying. The implications of the full text of the amendment could be devastating for any unmarried couple. But what really compels its demise is the pernicious paranoia that drives people who should know better to become the totally evil and unappeasable enemies of any civilized society.