It is no secret that the Mormon Church was among the most active—and generous—backers of Proposition 8 which added to California’s Constitution a provision restricting marriage to different-gender couples. Other religious organizations were also involved in that effort. Stripped to its bones, Proposition 8 was an exercise in a religious organization using the government—and a healthy dose of televised lies—to impose their view of religion on other people.
This is of course execrable for a variety of reasons. It is, at a minimum offensive to the bedrock principles of religious freedom on which this country is founded and which are expressed in the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It smacks of tyranny to insist that others believe as you do, an offense only intensified by the advent of using government to insist that others hew to your views. It is also problematic because an environment where the government is operated so as to insist that you agree with a particular religion inculcates an environment conducive to the kind of widespread conformist thinking which made the lies on which the Iraq war was built more generally palatable to the public.
I intend neither to minimize these problems, nor to slight those not listed. But I have another goal in mind for this analysis. The point of departure for that analysis is to look somewhat more deeply at the religious view being imposed on the people of California.
Let me suggest that gay marriage only appears to be the concern of the churches involved in perverting the political process. What really concerns them is that of which they perceive societal approval of gay marriage to be symptomatic. To them it represents an advancing wave of change, one which betokens increasingly less respect for and adherence to the principles on which their religion—and commensurately their power and influence—is based.
And that wave of change is real. It is no secret that a vengeful, authoritarian, punitive and controlling understanding of the divine is at odds with the messages of peace, love and charity which are at the heart of virtually every religious and mystical tradition. Nor is it particularly opaque that the shrill and hysterical insistence on particular religious orthodoxies masks either concealed doubt or inner psychological dysfunction on the part of its proponents. Advancements in trade, transportation and, particularly, communications technologies are leading inexorably to more connected and knowledgeable populaces around the world. The byproduct of more knowledgeable and connected populaces is tolerance and respect for differing ideas—including those on religion. This is part of an emerging understanding of the divine at odds with the traditional, fundamentalist religions.
Another factor which is driving change in the understanding of the divine is the continuing synthesis of traditional and “new age” understandings of spirituality. This contributes to that change not only by the usual ways in which new ideas filter through society and expand the boundaries of the conceivable and therefore the “center,” but by changing the architecture of the realm of conscious energy in which humans endeavor. The more people who advance the realm of consciousness around the divine, the more that consciousness is available to others. If you doubt this, consider for a moment the “observer effect,” where physicists had to take a pause when they realized that simply looking at an object changes it.
Thus the Mormon Church and other anachronistic institutions are using the political process to retard the advancement of human consciousness toward an understanding of the divine antithetical to the understandings they cherish. Given that the emerging understandings eschew the vengeful and authoritarian understandings of the divine, those are the understandings those anachronistic institutions need to maintain their grip on power.
This has implications for the political realm. The understanding of constitutional democracy upon which our country is founded, at least in aspect of the electoral franchise, is that an informed populace participating in a robust public debate will intelligently exercise the electoral franchise. This is why the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause is considered to be so critical to the success of democracy. The Free Speech Clause is intended to protect from interference or censorship the robust public debate which leads to informed exercise of the electoral franchise.
Even assuming that various problems with current Free Speech jurisprudence were resolved (the curious idea of protection for “commercial speech,” and the use of the Clause to insulate the machinations of wealthy actors from campaign finance laws come to mind), that public debate is still susceptible of being compromised by any variety of rhetorical devices, misinformational efforts, and appeals to emotion. The unambiguous implication of this is that if you want better democracy, you have to have better citizens. If you want the public debate upon which democracy is founded to be uncompromised, you need a public informed and intelligent enough to be a good deal less susceptible of rhetorical device, misinformation, and appeals to emotion.
You may think this a marginally proper consideration—that democracy should take the citizenry as it finds it, not contemplate the shaping of that citizenry in any way, salutary or otherwise. But that’s not exactly right. The fact is that the checks and balances which pervade the United States Constitution—and often understood to be part of its genius—deliberately harness the keen understanding of human nature and human failings which Madison and Jefferson had illuminated to them by the failings of the Articles of Confederation. So if considerations of human nature can form the basis of constitutional structure—arguably they must—I contend they are equally applicable to an appreciation of how to strengthen the health of the debate upon which democracy depends. Understand, however, that I intend this observation to apply at the macro, or structural level. There ought not to be operable policy tools explicitly aimed at changing the behavior or character of the populace--such would be a theocratically operable tool potentially subject to frightening abuse.
How does this relate to Proposition 8?
If the political debate is strengthened by an informed and intelligent populace, it is equally strengthened by an “enlightened” populace, one influenced by an emerging synthesis of spiritual understandings the handmaidens of which are increased tolerance and respect. By fighting gay marriage, the Mormon Church and other atavistic institutions are not only fighting a rearguard action against a wave of change which threatens their understandings and influence. They are also fighting an emerging consciousness around spirituality which is a far more palpable threat to their understandings and influence. And in doing so, they are also retarding the positive influence of that emerging consciousness on the democratic landscape. They are not only turning the traditional understanding of constitutions as protectors of individual liberty on its head, they are resisting a progress in human consciousness which holds great promise for the invigoration of democracy. And that is the other problem with Proposition 8.