The California Decision and Political Correctness (essay)

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“Something is terribly… terribly wrong, when one person can take away your civil right to vote!” I heard an elected official from California express that outrage recently, protesting the federal judge’s ruling that the Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in California is unconstitutional.

This was a federal official speaking recently, a Republican Senator or Representative. His lack of understanding of the Constitution is shocking. Yes, the voters of California have the constitutional right to vote on how laws are made in their state, and in that state the right to legislate by referendum has been legally established. The Californians who voted in Proposition 8, of course, also had the constitutional right to approve a law reserving marriage for only one man to one woman.

But the federal judge who said that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional had not only a constitutional right but in fact a constitutional responsibility to determine whether or not this new law should be implemented. Once the law suit was brought to him by parties with a legitimate claim that the law would harm them, he had to decide whether or not the law was in sync with the federal Constitution, and he found it was not.

The same was true in 1954 when the U. S. Supreme Court determined that state laws supporting racially segregated public schools violated federal civil rights law and thus were unconstitutional and could no longer be enforced. The Justices had the responsibility to rule one way or the other on this matter, and the case went beyond the decision of the first federal judge – one man – only because the party losing the lawsuit in his court appealed to the higher court.

In other words, in this landmark case fifty years ago, one man was absolutely right – not “terribly wrong” – to make his judgment on a civil rights matter, and the judge in the recent California case was right too. This will continue to have been true if an appeal of this decision on Proposition 8 should be overturned on appeal at some point in the future.

So, it is right for one person to overrule state legislation that in the judge’s view violates federal law. Whether one disagrees with the California judge’s ruling or not, it is wrong or even terribly wrong, for a U. S. Representative or Senator to so mislead the public about the constitutionally mandated processes of our government.

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I also recently heard a report that when President Obama supported the right of a group of pacifist Muslims to build an Islamic Community Center near the site of 9/11’s ground zero, in which a commentator laughingly said the President “had succumbed to ‘political correctness.’”

At the moment I can think of only one reason that so-called “political correctness” has ever been sought: particular words and phrases, according to the principle of political correctness, are to be avoided in order to support certain citizens’ civil rights, to avoid illegal discrimination against designated groups of Americans.

One familiar example of political correctness is the expectation that no one (at least who is not black) will refer to African-Americans using the infamous N-word. Is it “succumbing to” political correctness to expect of ourselves and others that we will avoid using that belittling and offensive word?

Saying “mailman” to refer to a woman who delivers the mail to your house is another, somewhat less significant example of a violation of “political correctness.” Saying “mail carrier” is just as simple and easy as using "mailman", and "carrier" avoids gender discrimination. Does expecting of ourselves that change of long habit mean that we have fallen victim to some disease, as the term “succumbed” implies?

Saying “he or she” instead of simply “he” in either speech or writing when the person referred to is either female or male, as political correctness recommends, is not necessarily as easy or as simple as in that first example. That makes the principle of political correctness in this case more irksome, causing some understandable resentment. In many instances, on the other hand, when using “he or she” (or the especially inelegant “he/she”) is awkward, such as when the phrase has to be repeated over and over, many have discovered that it is just as simple as using “he” indiscriminately to rephrase the sentence using “they.”

It does seem odd to say that someone is the “Chair” of a committee, instead of the “Chairman,” and we have not found any suitable alternative that I know of. In the context of a committee organization, let us hope that eventually all vestiges of using “chair” only to refer to a place to sit will disappear.

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But the main point is, the Constitution is the supreme law of our land. For us to belittle or deride its provision for equal civil rights to all citizens is unpatriotic and un-American, whether one is referring to the duties of the Judicial branch of the U. S. government or to the way we speak and write about each other.

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