Reaction to “Preserve marriage” opinion of 3/25

I am writing in response to Ryan Bailey’s opinion published in the March 25th issue of the Whit. I believe that Mr. Bailey has seriously misrepresented the motivations of San Francisco’s Mayor Newsom in particular and those who practice civil disobedience in general. Contrary to Mr. Bailey’s position, acts of civil disobedience are not attacks on entire institutions of democracy, but rather targeted attacks on specific injustices promoted by those institutions. Our country has a long history of such acts, including those of the abolitionists running the Underground Railroad, labor unionists, suffragettes, and the civil rights movement of the 1960′s. As Gary Wills noted (in his comparison of various anti-governmental attitudes, A Necessary Evil), these movements “… did not oppose government as such or in toto. The laws targeted were presented as dissonant with the spirit of the government itself. The whole governing structure did not need to be shaken down. In fact, the purpose of the disobeyers was to provoke action by the government to right a wrong it was equipped to deal with.” The purpose of disobedience is not a subversion of government, but an attempt to force that government and society at large to rectify injustice.
If we follow Dr. King’s definition of an unjust law as one which “a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself”, we clearly see laws banning same-sex marriages as such injustices. The denial of the legal rights inherent in current definitions of marriage to a minority group by a majority who are free to enjoy those benefits is by any definition unjust. The civil disobeyers who fought to gain the freedom of slaves to escape their masters, unions to organize, women to vote, and African-Americans to enjoy basic civil rights were engaged in exactly this procedure of forcing a recalcitrant government to recognize that it was involved in the promotion of unjust laws. Would Mr. Bailey deny that the end results of these activities were, in all cases, a more just form of government?
While Mr. Bailey is certainly correct that breaking the law is not anyone’s right, it is a moral obligation. This is not a disrepect for the institution of law since “an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.” (King, Letter from Birmingham Jail) Neither is it a denial of the democratic process. As de Tocqueville wrote, “… when I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not deny to the majority the right to command; I only appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of the human race.” Finally, this does not equate to a general belief that any law with which one “simply disagrees” should be disobeyed. In fact, as the openly disobedient Dr. King stated, one has a legal and a moral responsibility to obey just laws.
The idea that attempts to disobey unjust laws banning same-sex unions translates to an assault on the entire institution of democracy seems laughably reactionary. Is disobedience to unjust laws a greater threat to democracy than attempts to deny U.S. citizens suspected of terrorist activities the rights to legal council, rights more explicitly enshrined in the Constitution than any specific definition of marriage? Unfortunately, the impassioned “defense of marriage” practiced recently seems uncomfortably similar to the desperate attempts made by slaveholders, male voters, and Southern whites to maintain the status quo and privilege which made earlier civil disobedience “threats” necessary.

Michael Grove
Grove@rowan.edu