FILIPINOS, SPORTING #LoveWins hashtags and slapping rainbows onto their Facebook profile pictures,

have been swept up in the euphoria over the US Supreme Court decision declaring same-sex marriage a
fundamental human right. Law professors are heartened to see Justice Anthony Kennedys poetic
Obergefell decision shared in social media. However, we must also read the powerful dissents and ask
why we might prefer that our unelected justices decide this sensitive issue instead of our elected
legislators.
Inquirer 2bu quoted teenagers opining that anyone with the capacity to love deserves to have his/her
chosen relationship validated. Obergefells logic is equally simple. Forget substantive due process,
decisional privacy and equal protection. It takes the simple premise that human liberty necessarily
goes beyond physical liberty, and includes an unwritten right to make fundamental life choices.
Choosing a life partner is one such fundamental choice and the decision of two people to formalize their
relationship must be accorded utmost dignity.
The typical arguments against this simple idea are so intellectually discredited that Obergefell no longer
discussed them. (My Philippine Law Journal article Marriage through another lens, 81 PHIL. L.J. 789
[2006], tried applying them to bisexual and transgender Filipinos.)
One cannot solely invoke religious doctrine, even if thinly veiled as secular morality. Religious groups
may confront this issue but not impose their choices on others. Their often vindictive tone contrasts
sharply with Kennedys, and increasingly alienates millennials who revel in individuality. Those criticized
as religious zealots should at least strive to be up-to-date, more sophisticated religious zealots.
The most common argument, procreation, is also the easiest to refute. Philippine Family Code author
Judge Alicia Sempio-Diy wrote: The [Code] Committee believes that marriage may also be only for
companionship, as when parties past the age of procreation still get married.
Another argument reduces marriage to a series of economic benefits and suggests a domestic
partnership system to govern same-sex couples property and other rights. This parallels having
separate schools for white and black children and claiming they are equal because both have schools. It
implies that some relationships so lack dignity that they must be called something else.
Protecting the traditional definition of marriage is too subjective. Obergefell reminds that traditional
definitions evolve and once prohibited interracial and accepted arranged marriages, and it is unrealistic
to conclude that an opposite-sex couple would choose not to marry simply because same-sex couples
may do so.
Recent last-ditch arguments alleged harm to children. No party to Obergefell contested that same-sex
couples may build nurturing families after adopting or tapping medical advances to produce babies with
related DNA. Prohibiting same-sex marriage harms children by making such families unstable, as only
one parent may legally adopt and have rights in relation to a child.
With all these discredited, the Obergefell dissents simply raised that marriage is so central a social
institution that it is better redefined by democratic process than unelected judges. Proponents may
consider opponents homophobic, bigoted, narrow-minded religious zealots, but none of these
disqualifies one from being a citizen. Chief Justice John Roberts argued that proponents should have
relied on how popular opinion was rapidly shifting in their favor than ending all debate by court order.
Justice Antonin Scalia decried how the US Constitution was turned into a fortune cookie in a judicial
Putsch that declared a radical unwritten right. Roberts cautioned that the first cases to use similar
doctrine upheld slavery and struck down labor regulations in the name of laissez faire economics.
Although invoking human rights is not subject to an election, it is wise to consult society in defining
these, and Obergefell stressed the lengthy public debates the United States experienced at every level.
One thus asks why an instant judicial solution is more appealing than backing Akbayan Rep. Barry
Gutierrezs proposed same-sex marriage bill. The Philippines has not had serious public debate given
how we recently focused on reproductive health, and our high court has not even explicitly recognized
decisional privacy. Further, the petition to legalize same-sex marriage recently filed at our high court is
blatantly deficient.
The petition (like the anti-RH petitions) does not even identify a client. There is no actual Filipino same-
sex couple, unlike the real Mr. Obergefell who sought to be named the spouse on his partners death
certificate after their deathbed wedding. This violates the most basic rule that judicial power may only
be used in an actual case and the high court should have instantly thrown out the no-case petition
(like the anti-RH petitions). The petition also has glaring errors (like the anti-RH petitions). It invoked the
Philippine privacy decision Ople vs Torres, which involved information in government databases and has
nothing to do with the decisional privacy of US same-sex marriage debates. Even liberals should be
hard-pressed to support this lest they be intellectually inconsistent and validate the anti-RH petitions
worst features.
Any citizen lacking the patience to back Gutierrezs bill has every right to short-circuit democracy by
seeking an order from unelected judges. One hopes our high court insists that it be sought properly.

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/86450/the-best-argument-against-same-sex-

marriage#ixzz3xz98YAvp
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

To not legalize same-sex marriage is to further perpetuate the problem of minority discrimination that has
stained human history. Both of our countries share examples of governments institutionalizing hate and
discrimination by enacting laws and decrees upon its minority citizens in various forms that aim to limit
and instill inferiority in citizens of minority groups such as Jim and Jane Crow laws and the apartheid
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws]]. Once this feeling of inferiority enters the psychology of
minorities, a lack of self worth leads to less economic and social prosperity as well as a denial of one's
own identity as they are barraged with the message that they are lesser .[[

The time is always now to end this vicious pattern of discrimination against homosexuals citizens. To
legalize same sex marriage is to award the right of marriage to every citizen and having citizens be
viewed as equals in the eyes of the government. While same-sex marriage is illegal, anti-gay legislation is
easily disguised when laws only pertain to married persons, as was the case of Mary Coughlan's
amendment in Ireland [[http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0311/gay.html]]. Once it is made legal, government
attempts to undercut the rights of same-sex couples will be transparent, and thus more easily dealt with.