Spain gets it. Canada gets it. Why can't we?

In the last two days, Spain and Canada have joined the Netherlands and Belgium in legalizing same-sex civil marriage, i.e., the governmental recognition of equality under the law for all their citizens to choose to pair up and pay taxes together. This conveys such basic rights as the ability to visit each other in hospitals, have one person make decisions for the other if that person is incapacitated, to inherit according to the default laws of the country, and a long etcetera of civil rights that law-abiding heterosexuals like myself take pretty much for granted.

Spain's prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, put it most eloquently: "We were not the first, but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentlemen, by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality. We are not legislating, ladies and gentlemen, for remote unknown people. We are expanding opportunities for the happiness of our neighbours, our work colleagues, our friends, our relatives."

Canada's prime minister, Paul Martin, was no slouch either, pointing out that the "vote is about the Charter of Rights. We're a nation of minorities and in a nation of minorities you don't cherry-pick rights."

On the one hand, I'm very heartened by this global development. But it is also disheartening in that it shows up even more plainly how prejudiced, backwards, and intolerant our own country has become. In a nation founded on principles of equality and with a constitution that specifically separates church and state, I continue to be confounded that we are moving increasingly towards legislated discrimination against the civil rights of our neighbors, colleagues, friends, and relatives who just happen to be in love with someone of the same gender, and want to commit their lives to each other in a legally binding way. If your religion views same-sex unions as forbidden, fine; your church/temple/mosque/circle/whatever doesn't have to perform or celebrate these marriages. That is your right, and I equally believe in that - the government should not dictate to your church. (And yes, I realize that in some instances (like Mormons and their multiple-marriages), our government does tell a religion what they can and cannot do - and I question that. But that's another post.) Legally, as a nation, we should be at the forefront of the fight for equality under the law: one nation, with liberty and justice for all.

Where's a modern-day John Locke when you need one?

Andrew Sullivan has an interesting essay in the April 20th issue of The New Republic on the ongoing schism in the Republican party between what he calls the "conservatives of faith" (fundamentalists) and the "conservatives of doubt" (old-school small-government fiscal conservatives). I don't always agree with him, but he writes well and has one of the more interesting perspectives out there in the blogosphere (being a republican Catholic HIV-positive gay man). One of the money quotes from his essay:

"In the seventeenth century, men such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke looked at what the consequences were of various faiths battling it out for control of the moralizing state - and they balked. They saw civil war, religious extremism, torture, burnings at the stake, police states and the Inquisition. They saw polities like Britain's ravaged by sectarian squabbles over what the truth is, how it is discovered, and how to impose it on a society as a whole. And they made a fundamental break with ancient and medieval political thought by insisting that government retreat from such areas--that it leave the definition of the good life to private citizens, to churches uncontaminated by government, or to universities, where liberal education would seek and discuss competing views of the truth."

Sadly, our America today bears much more resemblance to those moralizing states than the Lockean ideal we started with. And I don't see any modern-day John Locke or Thomas Hobbes on the horizon.

You can read the whole essay here.