The Curious Case of Fielding Greaves

December 7, 2008

Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.
-Kahlil Gibran

By way of Jimmy Fishbob Geraghty, who found an eloquent response by a Marin college student to a MarinIJ letter to the editor by a one Fielding Greaves. It inspired me to respond. Fielding Greave’ letter is very typical of Prop 8 supporters, who now claim that somehow they are the victims of injustice when it was they who committed the injustice towards their fellow citizens. They all call protests “intemperate rants.”“Intemperate rants by Proposition 8 foes falsely charged that the proposition was intolerant, hateful, a violation of constitutional rights and designed from inception to discriminate, exclude and punish. They have called its supporters hateful, mean-spirited, homophobic, intolerant and segregationist. Such vile vituperation has no place in civilized discourse.”

I suspect British Loyalists called the Boston Tea Party “intemperate rants.” Gays, lesbians, and straights of good will have every right to be angry, disgusted, and determined to restore our constitution to when it cared about equal rights and dignity of its citizens.

There is absolutely no way a Yes vote for Proposition 8 to be construed anything but hateful, mean-spirited, homophobic, intolerant, and segregationist. You are stripping rights from law abiding, tax-paying citizens — rights you freely enjoy. You are asking a class of citizens to live under laws you would chafe against if it were you that were losing rights. You cannot love gay neighbor in a Christian way and vote for Prop 8. To render countless civil marriages of loving couples, can only come from a mean-spirited place. A yes vote for Prop 8 is segregationist as you are relegating gays and lesbians to second-class citizenship as they will not be treated equally at their County Clerk’s offices. There is nothing about Prop 8 that was civilized — the vote was pure fear and religious zealotry.

“The true inception of man-woman links is nature’s evolutionary genetic imperative in all species, for millions of years, to propagate for species survival. Perhaps as early as cave-dweller times, man-woman unions became recognized, acknowledged, and eventually solemnized and sanctified as a sacrament called marriage, officially established and universally honored by most societies and governments for millennia.”

We are modern man who has no problem reproducing and negatively impacting our planet. It is now our genetic imperative and necessary to our survival that we calm down in the reproduction department. I always found it curious that gay marriage foes hold that only marriages that reproduce offspring are valid, which pretty much insults heterosexual couples who are dealing with fertility issues. Science allows gays and lesbians to reproduce anyway, civil marriage just protects their children and their family unit. Our society wins in countless ways the more we encourage marriage and families — all kinds of families.

Slavery was standard throughout the ages. In ancient times, if you lost a war you and your loved ones would be enslaved by the victors. In these modern times we recognize slavery to be unjust, immoral, and illegal. Just because institutions were enshrined in the past, doesn’t make them right.

Those of other lifestyles are free to mate and to call it what they will – except marriage. Their attempt to usurp that term is akin to Boy Scouts demanding to join Girl Scout troops. Now, homosexuals, damaging their own cause, outrageously surpassed all bounds of decency, publishing names of Prop. 8 donors, targeting them for possibly lethal attacks. It’s time for homosexuals to get on with their lives and end their vile vitriolic verbal assaults against heterosexuals defending their religion, history and fundamental beliefs. -Fielding Greaves, San Rafael

I oppose all forms of violence. As a married heterosexual, I believe that those who donated and pushed Prop 8 down Californian’s throats deserve to be targeted for non-violent protest and pointed fingers of shame. I support boycotts, picketing, general calling out to demand accountability for their actions. Gays and lesbians do not have lifestyles, they have lives and they have every right to advocate for their equal rights as citizens — including entering into civil marriage. They have every right to be angry.

Heterosexuals have not earned the right to a monopoly on the institution of marriage as they for the most part have made a mockery of it from the shockingly high divorce rates and domestic violence cases. There is no way a person can make the case that heterosexuals deserve to be the lone guardians of matrimony. As a group we suck at it. It isn’t the gays and lesbians who threaten the institution of marriage, but the Britney Spears and countless heterosexuals who use matrimony to escape or impose control over another — marry for the wrong reasons or do it for fun.

Restoring their right to marry under the civil laws of this state and country is the best way for gays and lesbians to “get on with their lives” and decide for themselves whether they exercise the right to marry. It is impossible to “get on with one’s life” when one’s civil rights are being infringed upon. Perhaps it is those who have a problem with same sex marriage that should “get on with their own lives” and worry about their own marriages and piety in the privacy of their own homes and get out of the bedrooms of others. It is time for religious people to focus on how they can make a positive impact on the poor and sick and not spend time getting government to reinforce your personal religious beliefs. Shoo! Shoo! Out of our bedrooms!

You have the right to your beliefs which I would protect to my dying breath, but the right to your beliefs should never infringe on the civil rights of another.

Pushing unjust laws undermine your claim to follow Christ and those laws violate the spirit of our Founding Fathers of the Constitution that demanded we protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Mr. Greaves, you are simply on the wrong side of history. No one asked you or all these groups to protect my heterosexual marriage or marriage as an institution. You are not a victim in anyway, you are the tyranny of the majority.

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