Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum (or, as I like to call him, Sanatorium, because that’s where he belongs) has recently announced that gay people should respect his opinion. I say he has every right to demand respect, but that respect is earned, not grudgingly given when demanded. And, since the former senator from Pennsylvania is wrong to condemn gays and lesbians, and promise that, if elected president he will take action to deny them legal rights and status, he has not earned that respect and should not be given it.
Fine, says a friend of mine. But gays and lesbians, by the same token, should not demand respect and expect it to be given automatically.
My answer is that there are two different kinds of respect. Respect for a group, a class of people, is not the same as an individual demanding personal respect: it is that class demanding equal legal and social rights.
I may or may not respect a certain couple (gay or straight) as a couple, you see, but I am required by the ethics of fairness and to a degree by law to give that couple (gay or straight) exactly the same respect I give to any couple. If I recognize any couples (whether or not I respect them personally) as couples, if I acknowledge that they are couples, with the same legal and social rights as any other couple, then out of fairness and by law I must recognize all couples as couples.
I may or may not respect individual couples, gay or straight. I may or may not respect gay or straight couples in general. (Indeed, I know some gay/lesbian couples that don't respect other such couples.) It is my right to like or dislike, to respect or disrespect whom I please, individual or group.
However, groups have a legal right under law to expect what is termed “equal treatment under the law”, and to demand it if they aren’t getting it. The United States Constitution, and every other constitution I’ve studied, beginning with Hammurabi's, enshrines “equal treatment under the law”. All of the major ethicists in history, beginning with Aristotle, have insisted that – no matter what our personal opinions may be – we are required by logic to be fair to all: rights and privileges given to some must be given to all, or we are hypocrites.
Therefore, I explain to my straight friend, whether you or I personally like the idea of gay and lesbian couples having the right to marry legally, we must accept it as their legal right, as a class. No matter whether we respect gay and lesbian couples as individuals or as a group. We must afford them the same right we straights enjoy ourselves.
So all groups and individuals have a right to demand respect from you and me, including gays and lesbians, and including Mr. Sanatorium. And you and I have every right as individuals to give respect to, or withhold it from, any individual or group.
But all individuals and groups have, under the Constitution not only the right demand the respect of being afforded equal treatment under the law. And you and I have no right to deny them that equal treatment. By law, all citizens are to be treated equally in all matters pertaining to the law.
(And yes, of course religious organizations and individual clergy have the right to refuse to sanction gay/lesbian marriages under the law. It would never be constitutionally legal or ethically acceptable to force institutions or individual clergy to sanction marriages of which they do not approve. On the other hand, public officials [city clerks, justices of the peace, etc.], as agents of government, as servants of the people, must afford to gay and lesbian couples the same service they give to straight couples: issuing licenses and providing civil ceremonies to all comers, notwithstanding their personal feelings on the subject.)
However, this is not the case for Mr. Sanatorium. By law he has to give all individuals and groups equal treatment under the law, whether he likes it or not. He can spew and foam about how gays and lesbians are responsible for the economic woes we're in, and responsible for the ruination of straight marriage. Yet he has one legal power you and I don't have: he and his bigoted cohorts in public office can change the law.
Let me explain.
Rick Sanatorium has every right to demand respect for his views from gays. And gays (and lesbians, whom he forgot to mention, being a chauvinist) have every right to refuse to give it, and I hope they do. I hope straights also refuse to give him any respect. He has, by law, the right to speak his bigoted views, but nobody is obliged by law to respect those views. Thankfully.
The difference is that gay-hating elected officials like Rick have the power to enforce their views. Ordinary citizens do not. Ordinary gay-hating citizens can't take a gun and shoot all gay or straight couples, or even one of them.
But Sanatorium can change the laws so as to enforce his bigotry against gays and lesbians. You and I cannot do that! He can make laws that strip them of their legal rights, even deny them “equal treatment under the law”. And, since more and more courts, including the Supreme Court, are now stacked with arch-conservatives like Sanatorium, any litigation demanding equal treatment under the law is likely to lose.
So, for you and me, it is illegal to take action on our dislikes, but not for him; he makes the laws.
That is why so-called people like Sanatorium and Perry and Bachmann and Palin are so dangerous. If straights can expect equal treatment under the law when they want to marry, then so should gays/lesbians. You or I may personally not approve of it, or not like this or that gay or straight couple, but they have, or should have, the same legal rights that you and I and other citizens enjoy. People like Sanatorium have the power to legally deny them those equal rights.
What is more, people like Sanatorium, Perry, Bachmann, and Palin want to remove all legal impediments on the ownership and use of weapons. And their rhetoric is often violent in nature, inciting violence against people who are not arch-conservatives like them and their followers. That is how Gabby Giffords and others got shot in Phoenix; that is how a bloodbath of conservative-inspired violence took place in Norway.
If Sanatorium and people like him are elected to office in sufficient numbers, not only will they change the laws so gays and lesbians – and other minorities, like Jews and Muslims, Latinos and Blacks, and liberals (and, who knows, perhaps also lefties and ugly people and old people and you and me) – lose their Constitutional rights ....
but they will change the laws so their conservative followers can take guns and legally blow away minorities.
And that, my friends, is why I say we should give no respect to Sanatorium (even though he has every right to demand it), and why we must give respect to all groups to enjoy the same legal rights we enjoy.
And that, my friends, is why Sanatorium and people like him are so evil and dangerous.
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